What Are Bulgaria’S Most Intricate Traditional Rituals?

Bulgarian yogurt has much more healthier bacteria and less calories than “Greek” yogurt. Balkchik palace in Bulgaria, not much people know it but the Romania queen Maria who used to live there at the time tried to blend Muslim and Christian religion into one, taking a walk there you will find a lot of ambiance combining both religions symbols

Bulgaria being “the oldest country in Europe” is a myth and part of a 19th century nation building lie. First, there is a difference between the Bulgars who were a Turkic speaking people and Bulgarians who are a Slavic speaking people. The so-called “oldest state of Europe” was founded by Turkic speaking Bulgars and it ceased to exist as soon as the Turkic speakers lost their language and religion and were assimilated into their own subject Slavic speakers. A short-lived “second Bulgarian Empire” was also established by Turkic speaking Cumans. Then there’s the “Turkish Slavery” period under the Ottoman Turks. In the era of 19th century “Romantic Nationalism” the state which was formed as a byproduct of a war between Russian and Ottoman empires was called “Bulgaria” and the fabricated narrative emphasized a tale of continuity where the country was “occupied and mistreated” for a long time but because of their superhuman abilities “Bulgarians” had resisted and preserved their language and religion. These types of lies are an essential ingredient for “nation building”.

As a Lebanese that has had the honor to work alongside Bulgarians, I have nothing but admiration for Bulgarian People. I really admire how polite and well mannered they are. I visited Bulgaria twice I honestly felt like I was in Paradise especially in the spring. I love and admire the amazing beautiful people of Bulgaria, 🇱🇧❤️🇧🇬 Zdrasti from Lebanon! 🇱🇧❤

I live in Denmark…Our sweet 92 year old neighbour was followed by three romani men as she walked home from the local grocery store. As she entered her house the romani men force their way into her home, where they, three grown men, robbed her. Besides robbing her, they thrashed her place and broke her one arm. She was never the same again.

Bulgarian living in London here, as someone who’s worked since I came back in 2015,the main issue the roma from eastern europe coming to more Developed countries is the fact they can come and abuse the system just like back home. But when the local authority’s detain them all they see in a Bulgarian issued ID.

There is a book called “Enchanted Wanderer” by the great Russian writer Nikolay Leskov (he isn’t as well known in the west as F. Dostoevsky, though I would rate him higher than Dostoevsky). In that book a Russian nobleman buys himself a Gypsy girl paying a huge price for her. Gradually she falls in love with her, but he loses interest in her. Read the book. It is a literary masterpiece.

At some point in the beginning the dude says that after the country joined the United Nations large swaths of Romani left for other countries or something of the sort. Quite the contrary – after the country joined the United Nations – in 1955, the border controls and travel restrictions intensified and were not relaxed until the end of the communist regime in 1989.

Romani was brought from asia(around India) by Genghis Khans horde, where they where used as slaves and then just dumped in Romania when the horde went back to Asia. The noblemen in Romania then took over these slaves. My great great grandfather married his housekeeper that was a romani. However now when I do DNA test I only get DNA from North of Europe. So not sure if that story is true. Guess she was just darker then average so they just presumed she was romani/gypsy. Or there been some cheating in the family:)

It’s interesting to note that there is a “demand” for calling this group Romani or Roma in recent years, perhaps decades (which ads a lot of confusion firstly with Romania and to some extent with Rome) yet at least in the Balkans, when these people refer to each other (within their social groups) they use the term Gypsy predominantly.

The Gypsies in England imparted some words like “Kushdy” or “Kushdy la” (check out”only fools and horses. Del Boy says it a lot) to mean something was good. We used to say it as kids. Only realised decades later it wasn’t English they were called Gypsies because to Europeans they looked like they had come from Egypt.

Sounds like our South African Townships in which the dwellers don’t pay for anything either and the Municipality costs are heaped on those that are forced to pay, otherwise they will lose their homes. Where I live our rates and taxes have more than quadrupled in the last 10 years since our Township at the foot of the mountain has exploded from around 6000 in 2006 to about 100000 in 2023. Obviously Crime, like Drug-dealing, Home-invasions, Rape and Murder has become rampant and hardly anyone goes out after dark any longer if they don’t have to, and then only armed. Needless to say, the market value of our properties is now lower than what the Municipality accesses for taxation. And those that have been forced to sell are making quite a loss if you take our inflation into account.

What you call a dowry is absolutely not a dowry. A dowry is money flowing in the other direction, i.e., from the bride’s family to the grooms. What you describe doesn’t have a traditional word in English because the English tradition is the dowry, which is ‘endowed’ on the bride by her father. Money paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s has names in the languages of the areas where the tradition naturally evolved. In English, it has been called bride price, though that terminology is not popular, presumably due to being viewed negatively. Whether a culture traditionally uses dowry or bride price, i.e., whether money is paid by the bride’s or the groom’s family respectively, depends on the manner is which real property (i.e., land) is inherited. Calling a bride price dowry is just euphemism.

For a moment I don’t know any honest Romani, me and some members of my family (greatgranny and granny) in Ukraine and lately here in Italy were fooled by Romani (they adore gold things and stole the from my grannies…), and at my work (I worked at Body shop years ago) they stole products 6 times in a year, they were 8 women and… it was a nightmare. BUT I think there are some honest people, for now I try not to communicate with those ladies, because of my multiple experience. Aah, I used to know also a young man, he told me a lot of interesting things about Romani community in Lombardia (Italy) So I avoid them as much as possible and I hope not all of them are the same.

They are here in Penn begging, one girl came up to me in a supermarket asking me if I could buy groceries for her children, nothing in her basket was food for children, I of course refused and turns out she asked about 4 other guys all refused. I also see them fake playing instruments attached to speakers looking for money. They also got busted in another state for installing card skimmers and then waiting outside the store to download the card details.

All i read is generalisations and stereotypes about roma people. Not a single comment about understanding their situation and intiatives taken to integrate them into the mainstream society. Your hatred towards them will never be powerful enough to bring a change in them. Only love and understanding can do something.

The story was told about my German great-grandmother who came to America with her four children. While waiting to be collected by her husband who had gone ahead, she went to the fish market in New York City every day and put a large fish under her coat to take-home to feed her children. Would you steal to feed your own children? I would, and so would you, I’ll bet.

The East Europeans hate them, because of their color and ethnicity. They are just plain and poor racists. why the E Europeans are not prosperous, because of their culture and conduct life based on ethnicities and so many wars all the time. if they have opportunities for education and other opportunities like Bulgarians, Romanians Hungarians Ukrainians Russians, etc. I saw them in Russia during the Soviet time. They lived in Africa and Russians treated them and still treated them badly. Europe’s Overlooked Roma People. Europe is home to a largely overlooked population of 12 million people who share a language and a culture quite distinct from the European norm. While spread out across the continent, the biggest populations live in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia. Together, the Roma people constitute a bigger European nation than the Czechs, Hungarians, or the Dutch — and yet have little political voice or cultural presence in the wider society. The once-common term “Gypsy” (derived from “Egypt,” from where they were thought to have originated) is now considered not just inaccurate but derogatory. The Roma are now thought to be descended from several low north-Indian castes. (The language still spoken by about two-thirds of today’s European Roma — called “Romany” or “Romani” — is related to contemporary Indian languages.) A thousand years ago, the Roma began to migrate through Persia and Armenia into the Ottoman Empire, which later stretched across much of southeastern Europe.

My best friend was a Romani. Everything I had been told about them was not true. They do keep a secret to many of their lifestyles, but it was done more to protect their culture and in a sense nobody else’s business. I am from America, and my friend is now dead, but I miss him allot. I worked for him, blacktopping. He lived in the same house for over 60 years. He run his own paving business as long. I met his family, and his nieces were chaperoned when on a date. Some of them drank etc, but my friend never did, and used drunk Americans getting rowdy and loud as an example of how NOT to act. He was a big man, and could handle his self well, which I seen him do in a restaurant once after he snatched some loud foulmouthed guy up by the hair of his head and threw him out the front door for cussing the waitress in front of several families with small kids and women. I found him and his brother to be nothing like I was told gypsies were. They worked very hard, they were very clever, and very high moral family values. Its why they stuck to themselves in many cases. Of course, like any people, there were bad ones, that ripped off people and did mostly shady deals, but not the ones I worked for. I had more laughs and life was so at ease when I spent my days with them than any time in my life. I called him Gypsy Joe, he`d get mad at first, but he realized I was only joking. He told me one day to look up the word Gypsy. It means a person that travels allot. He said I`m Romani, and nothing else.

Seems a bit disingenuous to discuss Romani culture without mentioning the crime that is associated with it. It’s not just squatting on land or taking taxpayer resources. They shoplift from honest businesses and run con games on non-Romani. Yet they’re often characterized as “unfairly marginalized”, etc. I used to live in a community that had a single Romani family with an unusual last name. If you searched the internet for this name, you’d come up with multiple mugshots of cousins from neighboring communities. I expect this comment will be censored at some point, so think hard if you want to bother responding.

I am in DK and born in RO but also lived in CA for many years. Unfortunatelly “Roma” word makes people think about Romania and think all romanian are “roma people”. Or Italia? Do not think so. But I can say I met some very hardworking guys and very clean. In fact they have kind of casts like indians. Some of them are educated and rich and very clean, some of them that everybody sees bagging and stealing are poor scavenger. Well they descend from India, it is very clear that they do not have the same features like european people. Well, long time ago, before industrial revolution they have some more or less respected jobs like peddling, horse training and trading, metal work, pot mending, recycling and collection of scrap metal, wood carving, storytelling, singing and music, dancing, and herbology. As the techonlogy does evrerything today they do not have many things to do as they consider that integration means kind of loosing their freedom. But still some of them settled in some places and mixed with the local population without knowing their ancestors were gipsy Today the only way to survive is to steal or integrate. The cameras and new way of surving people make difficult to steal so easily and they started to work in many places but if they can, even with a good salary, still “take” some food from food stores or beg where they can. In CA I noticed that there are no gipsy or if they come there everybody think they are indians. May be in US it is another story but they are “trevellers” like irish trevellers.

What is the true definition of gypsies? Once we answer this will understand their technical ideology. Some say there sperm began from an unknown land where the male met a women in a time of migration whom were young in age say or take around 13 both orphans uneducated and both couples decided to settle under a cliff to create and born a child while both are not know to whom their parents orginally came from and continued their life with the same ideology. Most gypsies were in middle east, the other were tossed in india and now their are few whom the west call them aliens or alien immigrant or alien landed settling in the west due to unknown origins.. I would prefer to call them cave men or cave folks or adam and hawaa. Again they are usually beautiful people with out any stereotype concerns or worries of how they hold them selves in the public eyes. They do seem to have been involved with sorcery, fortune tellers and also a sense and rare relationship with god whom have attained personal wisdom of god. The last time I seen a gypsie was when I visited Lebanon and she was a female shinning beauty with her eyes and the people in that village were questioning of her origins and mostly the man were seeming to be intrested with her in some type of fortune telling. Damm you just got to love how our life is in this pleasant universe

If you go deeper into the meaning of traditional marriage it’s also strongly similar to this market philosophy. Both situations they kind of looking for personal wealth.or assets. Though in traditional marriage tha dignity is carefully maintained by sticking to stranded culture and traditions. The Gipsy people are also maintained the same things

I think sometimes when people make decisions an match up their opponents, they dont estimate where the spawns are coming from. I would imagine instead of attacking my opponents attacks, its good to strategically try to specify which tactics are coming out of various ports n at what frequency. Its productive to analyze my opponents chess moves, yet its alsogood to analyze what locations did my opponent train in, also how many of his peers came from the same training location or a different one. We must also analyze wherw these fellow students of the opponents went. Such as analyzing all of the various colleges to compare which high school students applt to which colleges. Then strategize my opponents tactics from there.

the history behind it is very dark, it probably emerged during the Islamic rule of ottomans, they would have sold slaves in these markets, most of them forced to be sold because the rullers were intressted in picking beautiful local women and as time goes people accept this as a way of getting their doughters married, and now a few centuries later, it’s just the way to do it.

Romani sometimes are against the name “Gypsies” and sometimes they are proud to be “Gypsies”. Those in the Balkans insulting Gypsies call them “Blacks”. Selling girls as brides by Gypsies at a very young age is quite common in Romania, too. I have heard a story from Timisoara/Temesvar, cultural capital of Europe in 2023: A gypsy asked a German if he would like to buy a wife. The man replied “But you can’t do that!” and got lectured “Why? I have two.” Why do Bulgarian officials do nothing to stop that? Maybe their fear being accused of anti-ziganism by naive fools in Germany and Brussels.

Considering how easy it would be to condemn or ridicule these customs, I think the narrator was very non-condemnatory or negative while explaining these Roma customs. While odd they may seem to non-Romas, who is to say that these marriages aren’t just as successful and happy as those in the western lands of Europe? Statistics in the US say that half of American marriages fail. I’ve lived among Romas and see how badly they are treated overall. One big complaint is that they have dirty neighborhoods but there are no dumpsters put there to get rid of garbage. They are kept out of schools but then criticized because they have not learned any skills or job training. I admire them that they are able to exist in such harsh situations.

When I was a young man in America, I met and made friends with the father and son of a gypsie family living near a gas station that I worked in. They were very nice people. I would lend them my hand tools from time to time. One time I loaned the father a small power tool of mine. That night they move away, owing back rent. My tool never to bee seen again. I learned that you have to be very careful to whom you share favors and to never trust a gypsy again. A real shame. This was in the 1970s.

There’s an old American saying that you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl. In other words, in this situation if their culture is lazy, if they live with disgusting habits, they won’t magically change once they get married and put in a nicer place. They don’t want to learn your culture.

a few years ago a group of french special forces police had a joint exercise with the bulgarian special forces. the french police parachuted and landed in the vicinity of a small village in northern bulgaria. however, the central police in sofia did not inform the villagers. so in the middle of the night two brothers and a friend were sitting by the field of alfalfa. they guard he alfalfa, because if they dont, the gypsy roma will come at night and collect it all. so, the 3 of them see strange men in the field. they grabbed some sticks and beat the french special forces to the point they french needed medical attention. this is what SOME romagypsy do. not all. true story.

I kid you not. While working in Bulgaria in 2003, a gypsy approached after becoming acquainted for several months and over a meal and a drink, he offered 40,000 pounds for the betrothal of my 13 yo daughter to his pretty dim 15 yo son… (cousin marriage, it turned out to be). It’s the reverse situation I know, but he obviously saw his chance to get over to the UK with his entire family, well before we opened the borders… We did think about it seriously, i mean… daughter money daughter money, who wouldn’t but then we figured that we really couldn’t inflict our freshly minted teen on anyone else… Joking aside, it happened…

you can still see “Groom Wanted” or “Bride Wanted” ads in Indian newspapers … and a dowry will be paid there too. Also, there is a European group also in America now called the “Travelers” …. they are a bit more upscale but it seems they are all named John Smith which just so happens to make it difficult to hold them to a contract they are trying to get out of ..(ahhh, you have the wrong John Smith) ….. Also, the criminal aspect seems like what is said to be a feature of the Rohingya of Myanmar and Bangladesh …. they too are not popular with their neighbors. Perhaps there are many more such outsider groups with difficulty in getting along with others but have a sense of strong internal cohesion …. certainly for centuries people said that about the group that is now bombing and starving the people in Gaza.

What you describe of what each half wants in a marriage is the main set of “rules” for just about any marriage! Men are more interested in age/beauty. Women are interested in money/wealth. The bottom line. It’s actually a business deal. Marriage. It is. “You give me something then I give you something”. Why I’m not married. Happy being single and free! 😆👍

As a father you invest 18 years of effort and attention as well as a lot of money in a daughter. You carefully teach her many things like how to behave and have a good character. So they why should some guy show up one day and just take her away for free?! Of course they should pay a substantial dowry that reflects her lifetime worth. That’s more civilized and just.

In my village we often had Romani visitors camping out they where seen as excellent entertainers, professional thieves, beggars, and scammers but also a general nuance to landowners as their camps litter and pollute something fierce then the landowner is forced to pay for the expensive environmental cleanup after they move on. Went in school with some of them and yea they where weird and had some very oldschool gender norms let me tell ya. I remember one guy throwing a huge tantrum in cooking class as he was expected to do both cooking and dishes, a woman’s work. He left after about a year with his family trailer over night after his dad robbed the bike store who’s owner was foolish enough to let him work there.

It is their culture and if we look at so-called western culture where you’d check to make sure you’re future son-in-law was able to support your daughter as you saw fit isn’t that the same thing but with the money side unspoken? I think it’s mostly a situation where Roma people are criminalised for not being cash cows to the taxed society. The thought that others don’t put up with the taxes imposed on them by officials – not all elected – makes them jealous then angry. Of course there are many who proport to be Roma or gypsy but are not, they’re just travellers and have a criminal underside and give the Roma a bad name as these communities are all lumped together by the ignorant. I have no issue with them and have welcomed them.