Sleeping Beauty Bulgaria awaits EU's kiss to waken from its slumber

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

ZLATOGRAD, Bulgaria (AFP) — Fast asleep in the forests of the Rhodope mountains, this former miners' town, like a lot of other near-forgotten places in Bulgaria, is hoping for an EU financial kiss to waken from its slumber and start pulling in the tourists.

"We've got ancient Thracian sanctuaries, mineral water springs, a mine that's been turned into a crystal museum and even an ostrich farm," Zlatograd's deputy mayor Elvira Ugurlieva told AFP.

In a bid to revitalise the area, town authorities have applied for cash from the European rural development fund.

In communist times, the local Gorubso mine complex, a producer of non-ferrous metals, was the biggest employer in the region. But most of the mines have since been closed.

Still visible on the...