Who is Valeri Domovchiyski?

He is a Bulgarian striker born in Plovdiv on 5 October 1986, who won two league titles with Levski Sofia and has also played in Germany and Greece. English Wikipedia lists him at Rakovski as both player and manager. He had a trial at Blackburn Rovers in January 2008.

What is Bansko known for?

Bansko is a ski resort at the foot of the Pirin mountains, with a gondola lift from town built in 2003. English Wikipedia also calls it a known hotspot for digital nomads. Its International Jazz Festival, held each August, has existed since 1997.

On This Day in Bulgaria: Valeri Domovchiyski, Blackburn trialist (5 October), Shumen.UK

Q: What happened in Bansko and Svilengrad on 5 October 1912?

Both towns were liberated from Ottoman rule on that date during the Balkan War. Bansko was freed with the help of detachments including one led by the poet Peyo Yavorov, while Svilengrad was taken by the Bulgarian army after it captured Sheinovets peak in the Rhodopes.

📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Monday 5 October

If you follow English football, you will know Blackburn Rovers. In January 2008 they gave a trial to a 21-year-old Bulgarian striker who turns 40 today, with a rather well-travelled career behind him.

What happened on this day

Valeri Domovchiyski was born in Plovdiv on 5 October 1986 and grew up in Rakovski, where his parents are from, before moving to Levski Sofia. He made his Levski debut in 2004, a full match in a 4:0 win over Pirin, and soon pushed the club's star striker Georgi Chilikov out of the starting line-up. Two league titles followed, in 2005-06 and 2006-07, and a goal against Chievo in Champions League qualifying that English Wikipedia says helped Levski become the first Bulgarian team in the group stage.

Then came England. On 2 January 2008 Blackburn invited him for a five-day trial under their manager, Mark Hughes, and later a second, week-long one. On 21 January a loan deal for him was turned down, and by the end of the month he was on loan at Hertha BSC in Germany, where on 17 May he scored his first goal in a 4-1 defeat by Bayern Munich. English Wikipedia says that made him the last player to score against Oliver Kahn in an official match. The career after that is a tour of clubs, including a Botev Plovdiv debut, for the "canaries" (Norwich fans, take note), that ended with a sending-off on the stroke of half-time. Bulgaria's coach Lothar Matthäus once dropped him permanently for refusing a call-up to a friendly against Serbia, which in theory is how squad discipline works; he was recalled in 2011, and he now plays for FC Rakovski, the club from the town where he grew up.

Towns celebrating today

Three towns list 5 October as their day, and two of them were taken on this very date in 1912.

Bansko leads with its slopes: a ski resort at the foot of the Pirin mountains, with a gondola from town since 2003 and, in English Wikipedia's words, a known hotspot for digital nomads. Its day is the anniversary of its liberation in 1912, with the help of detachments including one led by the poet Peyo Yavorov. Two days later, according to Bulgarian Wikipedia, Yavorov told the townspeople to throw away their fezzes because from that day they were free Bulgarians, a line now on a plaque in the churchyard.

Svilengrad is known for its Old Bridge over the Maritsa, built in 1529 on the order of Mustafa Pasha, around which the town grew. Bulgarian forces took the town on 5 October 1912 after capturing Sheinovets peak in the Rhodopes, ending more than five centuries of Turkish rule, though it was burned house by house the following summer and only finally secured at the end of September 1913, after a treaty in Constantinople left it in Bulgaria. It sits close to where Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece meet.

Stara Zagora is where Zagorka is brewed, the largest brewery in Bulgaria according to Wikipedia and part of Heineken. Bulgarian Wikipedia lists 5 October as the city's day without saying why, so I will not guess. It does record that in 1901 Stara Zagora overtook Shumen in population, which those of us who live in Shumen will file under ancient history.

Why this matters for British expats

Two bits of cultural literacy travel from this day. Rakovski, where Domovchiyski grew up, is by far the largest predominantly Roman Catholic town in Bulgaria according to English Wikipedia, in a part of the Balkans that is otherwise largely Orthodox, so a big Catholic church near Plovdiv is not a mistake on the map. And "liberation" is not one date in Bulgaria: Russian troops entered Svilengrad in January 1878, yet after the Treaty of Berlin a year later it was left under Turkish rule, so the liberation it marks is 5 October 1912, the same day as Bansko's.

Sources and further reading

Bulgarian Wikipedia's entry on Valeri Domovchiyski has the club-by-club career and the honours, and its English counterpart adds the Blackburn trial and the Hertha goals. The pages on Bansko, Svilengrad, Stara Zagora and Rakovski supply the 1912 liberations, the Old Bridge, the city day and Bulgaria's largest Catholic town.