Summer in a Bulgarian village: Elections, lethal grannies and a bear
BANYA, Bulgaria — Like the storks that glide in on their annual pilgrimage from Africa, we try to spend every summer in my wife’s home village of Banya in southwestern Bulgaria. Fittingly, it was one of Banya’s storks that saluted us as fellow returnees this year by bombing our car with its well-digested lunch of frogs as we turned into the street where Anna grew up. With their 2-meter wingspans, these ain’t pigeons, and the stork shit caked the roof like a jumbo pot of yoghurt. Anna studied the mess with approval, as if reading her fortune from the muddy dregs at the bottom of a coff...