Bulgaria is the oldest contemporary country in Southeastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea to the east and south, Greece and Turkey to the west and Serbia and Romania along the Danube to the north. The country’s history is rich and complex and the Bulgarian people are proud of their culture, heritage and nationality.

The main industry is metallurgy, and Bulgaria is one of the leading steel producers in the Balkans. There are two metallurgical plants in Plovdiv and Pernik, as well as other ferrous metallurgy units in Kurdzhali, Novi Iskar, Debelt, and Pirdzhod. The country also has a large coal reserve and its energy consumption is the lowest in the Balkans. In the high-tech and telecommunication sectors, Bulgaria has excellent conditions for business – a highly qualified workforce, macroeconomic stability, and a growing domestic market. For this reason, a number of multinational corporations established regional offices or headquarters in Bulgaria even before the country joined the European Union. Hewlett-Packard is just one example.

There are many similarities between English and Bulgarian, which makes it easier for foreigners to learn the language. But there are some things that foreigners should keep in mind in order not to make common Bulgarian grammar mistakes.

One of the most common errors is using a verb in the wrong tense. Bulgarian verbs express lexical aspect, and perfective verbs signify the completion of an action while imperfective ones are neutral with respect to it. This means that most Bulgarian verbs form perfective-imperfective pairs, like idvam/doida ‘come’ and pristigam/pristigna ‘arrive’. In addition, the present subjunctive has completely replaced the infinitive and supine forms in Bulgarian.

Another common mistake is forgetting to use the genitive case. Genitive is an important part of the Bulgarian morphological system, and it is used with personal names, places, numbers and adjectives. It is also used with the past participles of some perfective verbs and to indicate possession in certain grammatical constructions.

A lot of the vocabulary in Bulgarian is derived from Proto-Slavic, with local innovations accounting for 70% to 80% of its lexicon. The Bulgarian lexicon has an extensive set of words for family relationships, including a wide range of terms for uncles and aunts, as well as for siblings and parents.

Making bulgarian yogurt is super easy, all you need is milk with live cultures and a cooking thermometer. A good place to start is Trimona, a bulgarian company that makes a plain yogurt with no added sugar, thickeners, artificial hormones or antibiotics. The company uses pasteurized milk and milk from cows fed on grass rather than grain. Their yogurt contains only five ingredients: milk, live cultures, vanilla extract and stevia. The company also has a website that provides step-by-step instructions for making your own Bulgarian yogurt.