Bulgaria is an ancient country with a rich, diverse culture. The Thracian, Roman and Hellenistic civilizations left impressive traces in the country. Monuments, artifacts, ruins and inscriptions are scattered across the country bearing witness to a remarkable material and spiritual culture of antiquity.
Bulgaria’s government is a multiparty parliamentary republic with free elections and universal adult suffrage. The head of state is the president, while the prime minister is elected by a majority in the National Assembly and serves as the chairman of the Council of Ministers. The country has a highly developed system of education with state universities, technical institutes and teacher’s colleges in most cities and towns. Competition for places in state universities is fierce.
A large number of Bulgarians live in rural areas. The family structure is usually two-parent with children, though grandparents are often present as well. The role of women in the household is generally equal to that of men. They are responsible for a greater share of domestic duties, but also participate in household budgeting and agricultural decisions. However, women lag behind men in educational achievement and occupy leadership positions less frequently.
The Bulgarian language is a member of the Slavic group of languages and its lexicon has a high degree of vocabulary transfer from the Proto-Slavic language, with some local innovations and formations added by the Bulgarian idiom. The Bulgarian grammatical system is based on a five-class system of mutable parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns and verbs. A further three classes of immutable parts of speech – adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions – form the rest of the lexicon.
The linguistic complexity of Bulgarian stems from the fact that there are a considerable number of distinct grammatical formations within each of these categories. For example, Bulgarian verbs have more than 40 different tense forms, depending on the aspect and mood employed. Moreover, Bulgarian has two aspects and five moods, a number of which are unique to the language.
A common breakfast in Bulgaria is mekitsa, which are deep-fried simple donuts filled with anything from eggs, spinach and feta cheese to sour cream, sweet milk and zazhite (cinnamon) or a combination of these. Another traditional dessert is banitsa, a filo dough-based cake with different fillings including sour cherry, pomegranate and chocolate. It is customary to include a lucky charm or saying written on paper inside each piece of banitsa for good luck.