Tagged
Tag: Bulgaria
Church Treasures Return to Greece After 109 Years in Exchange for Tsar Samuel’s Remains
Religious treasures removed from Macedonian monasteries during World War I are back in Greece after an exchange with Bulgaria. The agreement leaves ownership questions unresolved but allows negotiations over additional objects.
How Batteries Are Changing the Electricity Trade Between Greece and Bulgaria
Bulgaria’s rapidly expanding battery fleet can absorb cheap power when regional prices fall, including electricity imported from Greece. But the data show a more complex trade pattern.
Kilkis–Lachanas: The Battle That Made Modern Greek Macedonia
The Battle of Kilkis-Lachanas in June 1913 secured Greek Macedonia, destroyed Kukush, and helped shape the borders and population of modern northern Greece.
The New Balkan Passport Wars
Across the Balkans, passports have become political weapons. From Bulgaria’s mass naturalizations in North Macedonia to maps of “Greater Albania,” governments are using citizenship and identity to extend influence across borders without moving soldiers.
The Brothers Macedonian
I have written extensively about the Macedonian Issue over the past two decades and, rather than add my own two drachmas on this matter here (I have said plenty elsewhere over the years) I would…
My Bulgarian Summer: 1994
“What would your papou say?” my mother said, partly in jest. Her father, my grandfather, like so many Greeks resident in America during the Balkan Wars, rushed back to Greece to fight in the war…
Train Station: Sidirokastro, 1994
It is summer 1994, just south of the Greek-Bulgarian border, basically a cease-fire line from several wars dividing this piece of the ex-Ottoman world among the ex-Byzantines. That summer, my perch was in Sofia, Bulgaria,…
Is It A Dialect Or Is It A Language?
It has come to my attention that a few Skopje surrogates in Greece headed by Alexandra Ioannidou wrote an article of some type back in February 2018 insisting that the Skopjan speech is a language,…
Ortakio: A Former Greek Town in Bulgaria
Ivaylovgrad, Bulgaria A painful legacy of European nationalism during the early 20th Century was the population exchanges that took place in an effort to create nation-states. Although this may have theoretically been a good idea,…
Greek cross-border business exodus into Bulgaria
Can’t do business in Greece? Get out, cross the border and compete by being in a lower income market, Bulgaria. tax rates are 10% compared to Greece’s 26%. This is a no brainer and will…
Skopje (FYROM) 2014
In choosing the title, “Skopje 2014,” I am referring not to the costly, kitsch Vegas-on-the-Vardar reconstruction of downtown Skopje, but rather the state of the Slav Macedonian state in 2014. This country is in existential…
Balkans: End of the First Balkan War
The Treaty of London, signed by the belligerents in May 1913, ended the First Balkan War. The Balkan League had crushed the Ottoman Empire and sent the borders of Turkey in Europe to the Chatalja…
