Polonia / POLES vs BULGARIANS [160]

New member here, Bulgarian, very first post/comment.

I see the domain of this website - polishforums - the ultimate guide to Poland. Great - the first reaction of mine - I have no idea how I ended up in here, but I also realized that I don't know almost nothing about Poland, almost a void spot on the map of Europe to me, so why not learn something about that place once and for all? I open this thread, quite unusual and attention grabbing title, expecting to see a humorous content in the vibe of comparrison as you can sense in another similar forums, where differences and similarities between nations are discussed...and what I see - one of the most similarities between the Bulgarians and Poles - in one corner you see a reasonable decent guy, two meters away from him - a dumbass you would love to hang on a tree. I hope at least the sense of humor here is on decent level.

But something that can induce feeling of curiousity in any sane person is to read/see how a Polish guy (in this case) had troublesome communication with not the best representative of another nation (Bulgarian, in this case) and starts a thread with title "POLES vs BULGARIANS". Until you start questioning yourself how such personal encounter can give birth to such phillosophical comparative thought between two nations, you sense that the thread's title itself sparks lines of wisdom from some other represantives of Poland who are exactly the same as the Bulgarian the author of this thread met at first place. In an instant, what you begin to hope for is this to not be the overal level of the whole forum.

The first thing I saw, and in a brief manner I scrolled trought all five pages, is that neither most of the Poles, nor the two (maybe I missed some) Bulgarians who commented in this thread know what they are talking about, as far as Bulgaria, Bulgarians and Bulgarian history goes. Let alone the more complex pages about the past of the Bulgarian-Polish connections before and after the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turks. Of course, there's always at least one typical biased illiterate Serb, as in the comment above, with it's anti-Bulgarian, and pseudo "pro-Slavic" spurts, accompanied with the usual poor knowledge in history you see nowhere else outside Serbia.

As a Bulgarian I know few things about Poles and Poland, aside the very basics of Polish history, concerning Germans and Russians, a lot more about the history of Poles in Bulgaria in 19th century, and that you are Slavs, that we have many common words, although your language is the weirdest among all the languages in the group. I know about Varnenchik, also there's park-museum and mausoleum devoted to him in Varna, as well as the largest neighborhood in whole Eastern Bulgaria, named Vladislavovo. In general, in my experience, Poland isn't a country that is disliked by the Bulgarians I know. And I know many. Either because there are simply no reasons Poland and Poles to be disliked, or because not much about Poland is known. I know few Poles, and all of them are decent guys and girls, including an ex-girlfriend.

To summarize it up, I don't really get how a thread with such title is possible.

Polonia / POLES vs BULGARIANS [160]

@mafketis
How Poland is divided? Ideologically? Politically? About the international orientation? People's positions on certain issues?

Bulgaria is politically divided as far as international orientation goes, that's the main belief around here, although the last presidental elections showed that voters of one of the major parties voted for the candidate of the other major party, i.e the belief that people worship certain political party unconditionally simply because they are "supposed" to do it was proven wrong. The nationalism, the patriotism is fashionable in Bulgaria - even in institutions such as universities. Although many simply cannot identigy themselves as part of certain political party, regardless of it's political leaning, most of the people who express their positions tend to be nationalistically-oriented. Speech of political correctness is considered low level and rarely tolerated, if at all. I don't personaly know a single Bulgarian person who is welcoming towards the illegal migrants from Africa and Central Asia. The government is in unspoken dilema - should they expell the "refugees", as they already do to a degree, or welcome some of them in order to avoid to look like "xenophobes", or to be pointed with a finger in other words. They are between pressure from the Bulgarian people and pressure from outside. They know that whatever path they pick, they will not end well anyway.

I agree that the Bulgarian language has it's distinguished vibe, but probably to me Polish is the weirdest because although I've never studied the rest of the languages in the group, I understand them all, except Polish. I get a some of it when I read it, but the speech...

@Ziemowit
I've red somewhere that there are claims that Varnenchik did not died in Varna. Also there are poems, written by participants in this battle, who claim that he was buried near the place he was killed. Currently there are 2-3 (as far as I know) places (churches) suspected for having Varnenchik's grave under their floors. Because most of them were destroyed and rebuilt again and again (and so since the 1600s), to attempt to discover his grave, large archaelogical operations are required. Today, with the technology we have access to, such archaelogical operations are more easily carried with least damage. Time will show.

Tsar Simeon had two marriages, and he had numerous daughters from both of his wives. The only thing we know is that he had an affinity to infliltrate foreign courts with family members, as he did with Byzantium, for example, becoming a tutor of the East-Roman emperor himself. He had so many daughters that even the chroniclers did not knew their count. He used them for diplomacy at will, so a dynastic connections with the ancestors of the modern Poles would not be impossible. This is the first time I hear about this.

As for the "odpochivka", seems like your wife picked the worst time for shopping. :) Odpochivka means "a rest", something shop owners across the Black Sea coast take advantage of regularly, because of the hot weather.

Weird enough, in Bulgaria many people think exactly the opposite. That we are amateurs in corruption, compared to the west. There's a saying that the difference between Bulgaria and the west as far as corruption goes is that although the Bulgarian government steals much less, they don't know how to do it, nor how to hide what they are doing. :)

Polonia / POLES vs BULGARIANS [160]

@mafketis
I understand. That's a bad trait most of us, the people. We are so passionate to seek for the differences that at the end we are blind for the similarities. With this sentence I think now I sound like an LGBT activist. :)

For second time you did mention Brits as far as this forum goes, and the Polish culture being disliked in...Polish forum. Can you throw some light on this?