[size=75:133i3tu5]waz.euobserver.com 22 March 2010

Bulgaria Renames "
Hostile"
Airport

"
Ladies and gentlemen, we have just landed at the airport of Hostile Sofia. Please keep your seat-belts fastened."
This is how Bulgarian cabin crew greetings sounded until recently for passengers arriving at the new airport terminal of Bulgaria's capital.

It used to be named after the nearby suburb of Vrazhdebna, which means "
hostile."
Bulgarians, eager to display their hospitality, disagreed and a grass-roots pressure group made the authorities find a new official name for the facility – it is now simply called "
Sofia Airport."


Vrazhdebna, on the northeastern edge of Sofia, earned its grim name during the middle ages by being the place where the city's defense against intruders was deployed, reported the daily, 24 Chasa.

Germany, Bulgaria's ally in the beginning of World War II, established a military airfield in the area, which was in service until several years ago.

The first person to raise the name issue was popular radio journalist Petar Punchev. "
I don't want Sofia to be hostile, let's change the airport name,"
he wrote in 24 Chasa. The paper asked its readers to suggest new names.

This unleashed an outpouring of more than 1,000 letters to the editor. Some suggested Vasil Levski or Hristo Botev, 19th century national heroes who led Bulgaria's independence movement against Ottoman rule.

Others recalled the 7-14th century medieval empire and proposed the names of its founders, the khans Kubrat, Asparuh and Tervel.

Saint Cyril and Methodius, the 9th century founders of the Cyrillic Alphabet, were also nominated as was Orpheus, the mythical Thracian singer linked to the Rhodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria