Emilia is from Vidin.  She is studying art at university in Sofia.  Her summer job is helping kids or brave adults paint ceramic figurines.  I bought one but wasn’t brave enough to paint it so it may remain white or may not.  This duck looks like the regular old white kind so really only needs some orange feet, and orange bill and some black eyes. 

The bright young girl painting some pottery asked why I didn’t speak Bulgarian which I thought was a great question.  Emilia, who studied English and is quite fluent, explained to her that I was from America so spoke a different language.  The young lady said she liked America so I gave her an American flag bandana which I’d put in my backpack for just such an occasion.  Emilia got one too. 

I returned later in the day and spoke more with Emilia about Bulgaria and America and how different and similar the countries were.  Emilia said Bulgarians were proud of their history so were hurt when visitors knew nothing about Bulgaria or its history so I’m going to read up.  She did point out that many of those same Bulgarians didn’t really know more about America than they saw on TV.  Oh Dear, wish most of our tv shows weren’t so dumb or violent. 

While I was talking with Emilia the second time three young women approached and asked if I’d take part in a “tourist survey.”  This was a summer project initiated by the Mayor of Vidin and the university in Sofia where the women are students. 

Future mayors, city planners, heads of tourism offices or Prime Minister of Bulgaria.  The Vice-President of Bulgaria is a woman, MARGARITA POPOVA .

When asked my home, with only a tiny bit of hesitation, I answered that I was from Roanoke and would spell it.  ROANOKE in VIRGINA  at which point the surveyor said, “I will put USA.”     They needed proof of my existence to verify my survey answers so asked if I’d be in a photo with them.    In return Emilia took my photo with the women.  The woman in the yellow shirt actually conducted the interview.  Interesting to note the length of our shorts.   But I think I fit right in!

I found this 2010 New York Times article interesting, these were the positive point but there were some comments saying things weren’t quite so rosy. 

Women’s Influence Grows in Bulgarian Public Life

By DAN BILEFSKY Published: February 7, 2010

The annual Global Corruption Barometer produced by Transparency International, the nongovernmental group based in Berlin that monitors international corruption, has shown for the past several years that women are less prone to taking bribes than men.

A 1999 study published by the World Bank claimed that women were more trustworthy and public-spirited than men and concluded that greater representation of women in Parliament in a sample of 150 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia led to lower levels of corruption.

is important to bring women into politics, not as a hammer to fight corruption, but to fight gender inequality,” Ms. Hodess said.

In the case of Bulgaria, sociologists say the recent rise of women in politics, which was instigated by Mr. Borisov’s mentor, Bulgaria’s former king and prime minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, can be traced to the Communist era, when socialist ideology empowered women to be equal to men.

Tatyana Kmetova, director of the Center of Women’s Studies and Policies, noted that under Communism, women were expected to work and often received the same wages as men.

“We never had a feminist movement in this country,” she said, noting that in the late 1970s, Bulgaria had the highest percentage of working women in the world. “During Communism, women in Bulgaria were represented in almost every walk of life, from plant managers to medicine.”

Rumiana Bachvarova, Mr. Borisov’s cabinet chief and a leading sociologist, said that women were achieving a singular influence in Bulgarian public life, in part because — as elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc — they had proved to be adaptable during the difficult transition since Communism fell.

“While men suffered from losing their state-guaranteed jobs, women embraced the new freedom as an opportunity to reinvent themselves, to start their own businesses, and many became the breadwinners of their families,” said Ms. Bachvarova, a mother of two, who left a job at a state radio station and started her own market research firm before entering politics.

Ms. Fandakova said that the appointment of many women to City Hall had helped encourage female-friendly policies: 17 new kindergartens had been opened in Sofia in 2009; education had been made a priority, while she was advocating more women’s shelters for victims of domestic violence. “The desire to tackle social problems is in my heart, partly because I am a woman as well as a former teacher,” she said.   http://www.nytimes.com/