Profiling property in Rousse

There is a hardly a week that passes without a story about the latest property hotspot in Bulgaria, be it a small town on the Black Sea coast, or a perhaps the latest discovered village just a hop, skip and a 4x4 away from the ski lifts at Bansko. I'd, therefore, like to start by saying that Rousse is not such a place (and let it always be so!). However, since our company opened an office in this small town exactly one year

Tales from the Rousse Riverbank

'Everything that I was to experience later in life, had already happened in Rousse' THIS enigmatic phrase was written by Elias Canetti, Bulgaria's only Nobel Prize winner for Literature as he reflected on Rousse's cosmopolitan atmosphere in the mid 19th century. Canetti was born when Rousse was the place to be in Bulgaria - since 1944 geography and politics have combined to transform this once thriving European city into somewhat of a backwater compared to its former self.

SOUNDING BOARD

I FEEL obliged to respond very briefly to Koos Schouten's Double Dutch column last week (`Goodbye', The Sofia Echo, June 3). Although I sympathise with his problems in dealing with the bureaucracy in this country, I can't help feeling that he is tarring all areas of the system with the same brush and thereby misrepresenting state employees in certain sectors to our readers, who don't necessarily have any personal experience to fall back on when forming an opinion.

SOUNDING BOARD

Sir I WOULD like to do two things in this letter. Firstly, to share with others a warning to be aware of overstaying the (supposed) three month stay with a foreign registered car (in my case a UK-registered vehicle), and also to ask who the hell is running customs at Sofia Airport (and if Crown Agents have anything to do with keeping this ridiculous rule about foreign registered cars).

Brits restore fortress

Expat of the week

A new cycle of life

ANDY first arrived in Bulgaria on tyres. When he came here in 1996, he was cycling from London to Istanbul.

A piece of Bulgaria that is forever England?

Pathfinder

In the past few weeks, while taking a well-earned rest from Sofia Echo deadlines, I came across a house for sale deep in the heart of rural Bulgaria, and decided to buy it. I immediately negotiated a price and embarked on the purchase process.