In a sense it is my baptism too – it is the first Orthodox church I’ve ever been in. Part of the ceremony entails the priest taking the child away from the parents—under squalling protest—and walking into a section of the building that is closed off to the normal churchgoer. After a slight pause priest and child re-enter the body of the church through another door in the screen.

Then we head over towards the National Archaeological Museum, find a coffee house near it. We circle the red brick, 4th-century Church of St. George and look at the 14th-century frescoes inside. We are surprised when we enter an underpass and see military uniforms of modern but indeterminate date on show in the context of excavated Roman brickwork.

We walk down the hill and end up in a square in front of what seems to be the main mosque. The Municipal Mineral Baths to our right have decorative majolica tiles on the facade which look as if they were related to Viennese Jugendstil with a Turkish/Moslem influence. I have just seen a postcard with the interior of the courts of law with hints of the same history. In this case the white honeycomb tessellation on the roof of the vault reflects a Moslem preoccupation with geometrical perfection and reminds me of some of the wonderful Moroccan craftsmanship in Rabat and Fez.

What causes us some astonishment is that when the call for prayers is heard from the mosque it is almost inaudible, as if the muezzin was whispering from deep down in a well. It is a case of political strangulation and quite a contrast to when we lived in a hotel next to a mosque in Dakar. There we were woken up at daybreak every day and even though I don’t share the faith it beats the hateful alarm clock.

We think that perhaps something is wrong with the speakers until we notice a mobile ‘stall’ set up alongside the mosque and a passer-by explains to us in English there it is a campaign going on by Attaca, a right-wing political movement. They are collecting signatures to have the call to prayer banned because they are too loud. Church bells don’t seem to be measured on the same audio scale though and I suppose that the Jewish community can only be thankful that its prayer meetings are not publicly proclaimed because the synagogue is round the corner. Since it is Shabbat we have to leave our visit till tomorrow.

We go for coffee in an ice-cream parlour in one of the tree-lined side streets a couple of blocks from the synagogue and talk about work strategies. There are already lots of issues becoming visible — the fact that there is a political party with a radically nationalist, anti-Moslem stance would suggest that issues of so-called national identity are currently giving someone political leverage. Minorities always provide that opportunity no matter which country one takes as an example. I’ve read enough to grasp that Bulgarian identity construction is something that has undergone a number of radical transformations over the last 140 years or so since it (re-)gained independence from the Ottoman Empire.