On 7 May 2022 starts the seventh consecutive Ruse Summer Free Tour season

Visit the website of Ruse Summer Free Tour: http://rusesummerfreetour.com/

A press release by the Ruse Summer Free Tour

On May 7, 2022, for the seventh consecutive year, the free walking tours in Ruse, known as the Ruse Summer Free Tour, will start. They are intended at both Bulgarian and foreign visitors and residents of Ruse, and their route covers the most iconic buildings and places in the central parts of the city.

In 2022 the tours will be held every Saturday from May to September inclusive. They will start at 6PM from the Statue of Liberty, where professionals and enthusiasts from the tourism industry in the region will share their knowledge about the history and urban legends of the places that visitors will go by during the tours.

Ruse Summer Free Tour starts on 1 May 2021 for a sixth consecutive summer

Ruse Summer Free Tour will be guiding its guests for sixth consecutive year (source: Ruse Summer Free Tour)

This text is a press release of Ruse Summer Free Tour.

The free walking tours in Rousse, known as Ruse Summer Free Tour, launch on 1 May 2021 for a sixth consecutive summer in a row. The tours are intended to both Bulgarian and foreign guests as well as the residents of Rousse, and their route passes by the most popular buildings and places in the central parts of the city.

As with the previous three seasons, this year too the tours will take place every Saturday from May to September at 6:00PM from the Statue of Liberty where professionals and enthusiasts from the tourist industry in the region will tell the stories and city legends behind the places visitors will go by during the tours.

Virtual bourgeois tour of Rousse

Alexandrovska Street has preserved to a large extent its architectural image from the beginnin of the XXth century (source: Vladimir Mitev)

On 11 November 2020 the founder of the blog “The Bridge of Friendship” Vladimir Mitev was the guide for a virtual tour of the center of the city of Rousse. The tour took place through photos and comments for the public of the Danish organisation “Democracy in Europe”, which deals with political education and debates on Europe. Vladimir Mitev is part of the team of the Ruse Summer Free Tour. 

The Romanian law on smells was presented as exemplary at an ecological protest in Rousse

Rousse’s air is being polluted by the indusrial zone in the Eastern part of the town (photo: Pixabay, CC0)

The ecological activist Rostislav Kandilarov urged the political and civic organisations, which are supportive of the demonstrations in the Danubean city, to support a similar Bulgarian law

Vladimir Mitev

The Bulgarian political and civic organisations have to follow the example of the Romanian law on smells and to put forward in the parliament a law, which would allow the citizens to attack in court smells, without any need for the Regional Inspection on Environment and Waters to have established that there is pollution. That was the opinion, which the ecological activist Rostislav Kandilarov expressed on the large ecological protest, which took place on 24 September 2020 in the centre of Rousse.

Ruse Summer Free Tour starts on 6 June 2020 for a fifth consecutive summer

The central garden of Rousse (foto: Ruse Summer Free Tour)

This message is a press release of Ruse Summer Free Tour.

The free walking tours in Rousse, known as Ruse Summer Free Tour, launch on 6 June 2020 for a fifth consecutive summer in a row. The tours are intended to both Bulgarian and foreign guests as well as the residents of Rousse, and their route passes by the most popular buildings and places in the central parts of the city.

St. Coca-Cola and the Socialist Angel

Farid Ghadami on Danube’s riverbank(photo: Podul Prieteniei)

This Iranian novel is inspired by Farid Ghadami’s experience in Bulgaria in the summer of 2019 (photo: Farid Ghadami)

The city of Rousse through the eyes of the Iranian writer Farid Ghadami

A chapter of Farid Ghadami’s novel called “The Commune of the Dead or An Elegy to Sofia’s Bloody Shirt” which is based on his experiences in Bulgaria, mingled with other stories about Mayakovski, Vaptsarov, Nenko Balkanski, Stalin, James Joyce and a Bulgarian girl named Sofia in the 11th century who joins Assassins (Hashashin) in Iran. This novel will be published in Iran in May 2020, in Persian.

It is on the morning of the13th of August that Yana, with her son, comes to pick me up for Russe: a five-hour drive through the lush mountains of the Balkans. At the invitation of the International Elias Canetti Association, I will give a speech in Russe on the anniversary of Canetti’s death, and luckily for me, Yana and her son want to go to a Metallica concert in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, which is an hour and a half away from Russe, and they are going to drop me off in Russe first and cross the Bridge of Friendship between the two countries and go to Bucharest.

One of the major Bulgarian translators of Romanian interbellum and modern literature will come to Rousse

Hristo Boev (with the microphone) and the Romanian writer Bogdan Boeru (photo: Hristo Boev, Facebook)

The event with the participation of Hristo Boev will take place on 6 March 2020 in the regional library

There will be a book launch on 6th March 2020 at 18 o’clock in the regional library “Lyuben Karavelov” in Rousse. The novels “The Innocents” by Ioana Parvulescu (2018), “770” by Bogdan Boeru (2018), “Crook Ltd.” by K.G.Balan (2019), ”Defect” by Florin Irimia (2017), ”Women” and ”The Town with the Acacia Trees” by Mihail Sebastian (2019), ”A Death that Proves Nothing” and ”Ioanna” by Anton Holban (2019) will be launched.

Rousse and Romania: distant neighbours

The Bridge of Friendship at Rousse-Giurgiu (photo: Yavor Michev)

The connections between the two banks of the river Danube are hindered by the difficult crossing of  the Bridge of Friendship and the lack of initiative

Martin Dimitrov

This article was published on 2 April 2019 on the site of the Bulgarian newspaper “The Capital”. It is republished here with permission by the author.

Two hours. That is how much it takes sometimes for Ralitsa Popova, accountant in a Bulgarian company with an office in Bucharest, to pass the Bridge of Friendship between Rousse and Giurgiu. Had it not been for this delay, she could pass the 75 km distance between her home and the office in the Romanian capital for around an hour and 15 minutes – as she did in calmer days. “You can imagine what does it look like in the summer, when it is packed with trucks and the temperature is 40 degrees”, she says. The same amount of time is spent by a lot of people in Sofia to reach work or to return home from their jobs. Consequently, it should not be an exception to work in Bucharest, but to live in Rousse, if the bridge could be passed faster. But Popova is one of the few, who have chosen to live in their birth city and work in the Romanian capital.

Ivan Kyurkchiev: I work for the close cultural relations with Romania

Ivan Kyurkchiev (photo: The Bridge of Friendship)

The director of State Opera – Rousse discusses the cross-border cultural cooperation and the events which mark the Opera’s 70th anniversary

Smaranda Şchiopu

Vladimir Mitev

Ivan Kyurkchiev has been the director of State Opera – Rousse since 2017. He comes from a family of musicians and he started playing the violin at the age of 6. He  graduated from the musical high school in Rousse, studying viola and opera singing. He fulfilled his military service in the choir of the construction troops, with whom he had his first concerts abroad. In the last year of his studies of opera singing in the Conservatory in Sofia he was selected to specialise in ”La Scala” in Milano for two years. In his second year he won the competition ”Enrico Caruso” and then he received the chance to stay and work in Italy. Kyurkchiev has sung in many Italian  cities, in South America, in Marsilia, Bordeaux, Montpelier, Budapest, Prague and other European cities. In 1996 he became the director of State Opera – Rousse for the first time. In 2000 he established his events company ”Opera Verdi”, which has organised performances for almost all Bulgarian opera theatres in Europe and the USA. At the end of 2017 Ivan Kyurkchiev became the director of State Opera – Rousse for the second time. 

This text is part of a journalistic project by Smaranda Şchiopu and Vladimir Mitev, through which they try to better understand the Bulgarian-Romanian relations in the cross-border area around the Danube. 

A ballet gala took place on the scene of Theatre Tudor Vianu in Giurgiu

Mizuki Higashino and Masaki Takada from the Ballet of State Opera Rousse on the scene in Giurgiu (photo: Cornel Calagiu)  

The Ballet of the State Opera Rousse has interpreted classical and contemporary ballet fragments in Giurgiu

This text is a press release by the Theatre Tudor Vianu Giurgiu.

Călin Şabac

I haven’t read any announcements for visits in Giurgiu of classical and contemporary ballet teams in the last 20 years. And now, as a result of an inspiring cultural cooperation between the Theatre “Tudor Vianu” in Giurgiu and the State Opera in Rousse on the day of 22 April 2019 we hosted on the scene of Giurgiu a real ballet gala. Famous fragments from 20 masterpieces of the universal ballet heritage were interpreted by 30 ballet dancers from the Bulgarian neighbouring city. The public of Giurgiu applauded the impressive performances of the Bulgarian dancers numerous times.