A few days ago, when Bulgaria was struggling in the snow, one TV broadcaster showed an angry Romanian truck driver en route to Turkey whose vehicle was stuck in the Stara Planina range. He was behind schedule, losing money in the process and so, perhaps, justifiably angry. "Is Bulgaria in the European Union?" he said. "In Romania, we also have snow and the country joined the EU at the same time as Bulgaria, but, from what I see here, it seems that Bulgaria is not part of it."

His logic was simple. He claimed that roads in Romania were cleaned enough for traffic to continue unimpeded while, in Bulgaria, they were not. I’m far from questioning the driver’s words and whether they were just a sign of his nationalistic mindset but the truth is that Bulgaria’s authorities failed for the upteenth time to keep the country’s roads open. How difficult could it be to keep – not all – but at least major roads in a country smaller than Austria cleaned? After all, we’re talking about probably 10 roads at most.

And this time authorities have nothing to hide behind as they did on previous occasions when they used to excuse their actions by saying that the snowfall had been unusually heavy, hence their inability to react accordingly. This time around the weather forecast was perfectly clear: heavy snowfall ahead. Police even warned people to stay at home for the weekend and avoid driving. Authorities should have had their equipment on stand-by and taken it out onto the road the moment it started snowing. Unfortunately, little of this happened, or, at least, this was the result we all saw on TV. For three days news bulletins were full of stories of blocked and closed roads, vehicles turned upside down, tourists stuck in mountains with no supplies and villages left without water and electricity. We had the customary officials claiming that all necessary measures had been taken but TV cameras showed different pictures. Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov was quick to announce that Sofia’s streets were clean while the rest of the country (maintained by the Government) was not. As if someone in Plovdiv or Lovech cares about Sofia streets being clean!

It must be something in the snow that fell on Bulgaria that makes it all different. We see pictures from the Alps every winter but we don’t see closed roads. We also see modern equipment being used in Austria while in Bulgaria we see the customary Soviet-made trucks accompanied by two workers, armed with shovels, throwing sand down on the road as the authorities’ main weapon against ice. Frankly, this technology is more dangerous for the cars following the truck because most of the sand goes over them, but it must be a question of concentration, I guess.