Tourists in Bulgaria's Sozopol seek sunken ships

Bulgaria’s Plovdiv with weekly flights to Moscow starting Christmas
A direct weekly airline between the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv and the Russian capital Moscow will be launched on Christmas Day, December 25, 2009. The line will be serviced by S7, Russia’s second largest air company after Aeroflot. The round-trip Plovdiv-Moscow flight ticket will cost EUR 220, the Standart Daily reported. The management of the Plovdiv Airport “Krumovo” is also currently involved in negotiations for the starting of direct regular flights to the Greek cities of Athens and Thessaloniki, and is also considering similar options for Istanbul and the large Turkish resorts.

Bulgarian capital Sofia lights Christmas tree December 1
The newly-elected Mayor of the Bulgarian capital is going to light the Sofia Christmas tree and the city Christmas lights at 6 pm on December 1, 2009. For the first time in December 2009, Sofia is going to have a Christmas bazaar not unlike the other European capitals. It will be called “Koledariya 2009”, and will be held in the park before the monument of the Soviet Army, featuring Christmas cookies, warmed wine, and puppet shows for the kids. The 2009 Sofia Christmas tree will be the same living tree used for the last few years. It is the 50-year-old 15-meter pine in the garden before the Rila Hotel. It will be decorated with 800 meters of Christmas lights.

Russia cancels five charter flights to Bulgaria
Russia canceled five charter flights to Bulgaria for Christmas and New Year because of visa issue, chairperson of Bulgarian Association of Travel Agencies (BATA) Donka Sokolova said as quoted by Pari daily. Visas for Russians cost 35 euro. The prices increases by additional 12 euro because of the visa centers Bulgaria uses and the cost of using their services. Sokolova also commented on the number of foreign tourists coming from other countries. Tourists visits from Great Britain will decrease 10 percent. Bulgaria hoped that Russian visitors will compensate for the decrease but such development is unlikely to take place after flights were cancelled.

Bulgaria and Greece to open Makaza border crossing point in 2010
The new Kardzhali-Komotini border cross point between Bulgaria and Greece will open in 2010 to ease the increased automobile traffic between the two countries. The news about opening the border point, also known as Makaza, was reported during the Tuesday official meeting between the Bulgarian President, Georgi Parvanov, and his Greek counterpart, Karolos Papulias. Parvanov is on an official visit to Bulgaria’s southern neighbor on Papulias’ invitation. The two have discussed the pending need to accelerate the opening of new border points, including local ones over the 1 M of tourists crossing the common border each year as well as the needs of population

Nationalist VMRO takes Bulgaria IDs to Court
Bulgaria’s Nationalist VMRO party is filing a complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court (VAS) over the English language use on the country’s IDs. VMRO insists that texts in the ID Act mandating the use of Bulgarian and English on ID papers are anti-constitutional and demands their amendment. Bulgaria is the only European Union Member State where the inscriptions on the new, biometric IDs are bilingual, VMRO points out, adding the EU has no such requirement, while Bulgarian ID cards have complete doubling of the information in the two languages. Bulgaria is also the only country whose international passports’ cover bears bilingual inscriptions,