The mayor's open door, a cold snap and 29 canvases in Novi Pazar

Prof. Hristo Hristov, Mayor of Shumen, will see members of the public from 14:00 on Monday 28 September in room 203 of the municipal administration. From 10:00 to 13:00 the same day, the deputy mayors, the municipal secretary and council chair Asya Asparuhova hold open hours in their offices. Book in advance on 054 857 771, through the online form on the municipality website, or at room 301.

The municipality is where address registration, local tax and parking permits either happen or get stuck. If you have a file that has gone quiet, this is the day to bring it, with the paperwork and someone to translate.

Planned repairs and switching work took the electricity off across a run of villages in Shumen province on Thursday 17 September. Construction repairs meant possible interruptions in Dolina, Ruzhitsa, Harsovo, Krasen Dol and Karavelovo until 16:00, and a full cut in Pet Mogili and Vekilski until 15:30. Switching work brought shorter breaks to Sushina, Lovets, Ivanovo, Konevo and Kyolmen between 15:30 and 16:15, with further planned cuts in Mengishevo, Bozhurovo, Chernookovo and Kraygortsi.

For a village house on that list, that was a fridge, a water pump and a router with the afternoon off. TV Shumen publishes the day's outage list; worth a glance before anything that needs a plug.

Two officers from the Shumen regional police, inspector Stoyan Radoslavov and junior inspector Biser Blagoev, spent a session at the Zlatna Esen pensioners' club, based at the Stiliyan Chilingirov chitalishte, going through the scams currently aimed at older people: phone fraud first, then theft, robbery and financial crime.

The phone scripts will be familiar to anyone who ever had a British landline: a caller claiming to be a police officer, a doctor or a relative, ringing with something urgent and frightening, and steering towards cash or bank details. The advice was the same three things in any language: do not let the caller rush you, give nothing over the phone, and ring the police or a family member first.

The club members, the report notes, already knew most of the tricks. If your Bulgarian is limited, the scripts do not need translating: an urgent stranger who wants money now is the tell.

The classical dance school at the Anastas Stoyanov youth centre (CPLR-ODK) opened its new season with a haul from DANCEWAY PRO STAGE 2026 in Soko Banja, Serbia, a five-day professional programme run by Balkan Alliance and Dance Way Pro.

Five dancers, Maya, Daneliya, Magdalena, Yoana and Alexandra, took masterclasses in classical, jazz and contemporary dance with international choreographers, among them Alla Marasanova, a soloist of the Mariinsky Theatre. The school staged four pieces at the closing Grand Gala in the Vrelo summer theatre, including Maya's solo 'Frida', and every dancer came away with a medal and diploma. The school's leaders, Svetla Dencheva and Yulia Nikolova, were named best choreographers of the year in classical dance.

For a city of around 60,000, a Mariinsky soloist taking your children's class in Serbia is not a small thing. Parents weighing up after-school options in Shumen might file the name of the school away.

An exhibition of paintings by Assoc. Prof. Svetozar Chilingirov opened at 17:30 on Thursday 17 September at the Petar Persengiev Municipal Art Gallery in Novi Pazar and runs to mid-October, gallery director Borislava Borisova told BTA. It fills all three rooms.

Chilingirov, an associate professor connected with the fine-art teaching programme at the Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, said the show holds 29 paintings, most never exhibited: eight to ten figurative compositions and plein-air landscapes, many of them seascapes painted around Tyulenovo and Shabla on the northern Black Sea coast. It is his first solo show in about three years, the last having been in Shumen. His framing of the figurative work is worth the trip: modern art, he argues, has become 'a little anti-human', the figure taught in the academies and then painted by nobody.

Novi Pazar is about half an hour east of Shumen by car. Entry details were not given; the gallery is the place to check.

Shumen Online's forecast has the province mostly sunny on Friday 18 September with highs of 29 to 31°C, after early fog in the low ground and river valleys and overnight lows of 10 to 15°C. Saturday stays sunny and a degree or two warmer. Sunday clouds over in the west of the country with afternoon showers and thunder, and temperatures ease slightly.

The real change comes the following week. A strengthening north-westerly brings cooler air, cloud and rain, locally heavy with thunder, heaviest in western and central northern Bulgaria. Tuesday 22 September is forecast windy with highs of just 16 to 21°C, and by Wednesday 23 September mornings drop to 6 to 11°C.

Daytime highs fall from around 30°C on Friday to under 21°C by Tuesday, with mornings in single figures the day after, which is September here doing what it does. If the wood or the pellets are not yet in, the calendar has just given you a deadline.