Bulgarian Yogurt, Embroidery Attract Interest of Bulgarian Pavilion's Visitors at Expo 2025

Momchil Rusev

Students Violeta Damari (far right) and Desislava Petkova during the launch of the April issue themed “Bulgaria at the World Expos” at BTA's MaxiM Hall on May 18, 2025 (BTA Photo/Minko Chernev)

Sofia,

18.05.2025 17:18

(BTA)

Desislava Petkova, Master's student in the programme Society and Culture of Japan, and Violeta Damari, Bachelor's student in the Department of Japanese Studies at Sofia University, spoke about the strong interest in the Bulgarian pavilion at EXPO 2025 in Osaka. They have been working for the past month in the Bulgarian pavilion at the World Expo in the Japanese city. Petkova and Damari were guests at the launch of the April issue themed “Bulgaria at the World Expos” at BTA's MaxiM Hall on Sunday.

"We are dressed in our uniforms that we wore for a month at the Bulgarian pavilion in Osaka. They are a simple kind of costume with embroidery - the Tree of Life embroidery and the Sliven embroidery," Petkova said. She added that in the first days of her stay in the Bulgarian pavilion at the world expo she felt in a parallel universe. “Experiencing such a large-scale exhibition sends us into a small world of Bulgaria, but at the same time we meet many people from other countries - Japanese, Americans, English, Germans, French, Chinese, people from all over the world,” she said.

“Everyone was looking for the yogurt,” Petkova said. "For us it may be something trivial, but for them the taste of yoghurt is unique, it is also part of their daily diet because in Japan there is Bulgarian yoghurt. This is how something we use everyday can become a bridge between two cultures, creating a strong bond that lasts 50 years," she added.

The great interest in Bulgaria and the patience of the locals have made a strong impression on Damari.

"There were days with such a long line outside the pavilion that the space in front was full," she said. "Sometimes guests had to wait 90 minutes, I expected some to leave, especially in the hot spring weather, but they waited in line to get into the Bulgarian pavilion," Damari added.

Bulgarian embroidery has also piqued the interest of visitors at the Bulgarian pavilion. "From morning till night people were asking about our costumes - is this traditional embroidery, what is Bulgarian embroidery, they had many questions, they wanted to take pictures with us," she said.

The April issue of LIK magazine, titled Bulgaria at the World Expos and published in English and Japanese, was presented simultaneously in Osaka, Sofia and in 40 BTA national press clubs across Bulgaria and abroad.

The magazine, timed to Expo 2025’s 13 April opening and Bulgaria’s new type-A pavilion, blends on-site reporting by Ivan Lazarov with essays on how Bulgarian culture travels. It traces this journey from Aleko Konstantinov’s 19th-century world-fair diaries through the 1970 Osaka Expo—where yoghurt, the Children’s Radio Choir and a pyramid-shaped pavilion won Japan’s heart—to today’s drive, described by SME Agency head Boyko Takov, to make Bulgaria “a factor” in tourism, investment and science. The pavilion’s designers promise an “experience that leaves a mark,” while pieces on Bulgarian yoghurt, the Valley of Roses’ ties with Fukuyama and Munakata, and a chronology of global expos, all drawn from BTA’s expanding digital archives, show how national identity is forged in dialogue with the world.Since January 2024 LIK has been freely accessible. All issues since its revival in 2022 can be downloaded from the BTA website. The April issue Bulgaria and the World Expos is available in Bulgarian, English and Japanese.

/MR/