Inspiring Travel Writing from Kapka Kassabova
Kapka Kassabova was born in Sofia and educated by two members of the poor Bulgarian intelligentsia and by a French college. After the end of the Cold War, the family emigrated to New Zealand, and four years ago, Kapka moved to Edinburgh.
Kapka is co-author of the Globetrotters Guide to Delhi, Jaipur and Agra, and author of the Globetrotters Guide to Bulgaria (2007). Her travel features won the 2002 and 2004 Travcom Cathay Pacific Travel Writer of the Year Award in NZ.
Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Portobello), a travel memoir of her Cold War childhood and post-Communism, came out in 2008 and was selected by Jan Morris as her book of the year in the Financial Times.
Her travel interests include Buenos Aires and tango, Bulgaria, Ecuador, and Morocco. She is a researcher and content writer for www.whatsonwhen.com. She is also a contributor to the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the TLS, Vogue, and BBC radio.
Kapka is also the author of two poetry books, Someone elses life and Geography for the Lost (Bloodaxe).
www.kapka-kassabova.com
Kapka is co-author of the Globetrotters Guide to Delhi, Jaipur and Agra, and author of the Globetrotters Guide to Bulgaria (2007). Her travel features won the 2002 and 2004 Travcom Cathay Pacific Travel Writer of the Year Award in NZ.
Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Portobello), a travel memoir of her Cold War childhood and post-Communism, came out in 2008 and was selected by Jan Morris as her book of the year in the Financial Times.
Her travel interests include Buenos Aires and tango, Bulgaria, Ecuador, and Morocco. She is a researcher and content writer for www.whatsonwhen.com. She is also a contributor to the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the TLS, Vogue, and BBC radio.
Kapka is also the author of two poetry books, Someone elses life and Geography for the Lost (Bloodaxe).
www.kapka-kassabova.com
Articles by Kapka Kassabova
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Bungy-jump in New Zealand
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Kapka Kassabova
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New Zealand
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South Island
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Queenstown
New Zealand: bungy-jump into a river in the south island (head-dipping optional) and feel simultaneously on top of the world and at the bottom of a canyon. Some people buy the video of their moment of glory, but I find that tacky. The whole point is...
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Bulgarian Mountain Gems
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Kapka Kassabova
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Bulgaria
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other areas of Bulgaria
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Veliko Tarnovo
A glorious, derelict 19th-century house with a locked wooden gate perches on a steep cobble-stoned street. Its shuttered windows overlook the sprawling castle ruins of Tsarevetz, City of Tsars, where the rulers of the Bulgarian medieval kingdom...
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Little White Town
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Kapka Kassabova
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Bulgaria
Belogradchik, the ‘little white town’, is both little and white, and dwarfed by a petrified landscape of giant, reddish rock formations thirty kilometres long. This is the centre of Bulgaria’s lovely but unloved north-west, the...
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Abundance and Waste in Manabi
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Kapka Kassabova
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Ecuador
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Manabi
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Tosagua
‘Agua, aguita! Helados, heladitos!’ cry the food-vendors on the bus. ‘Papas, papitas!’ Ecuadorians love diminutives and use them at every opportunity. There’s nothing diminutive about our bus driver and his assistant, however. They are big boys and...
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Madrid's Dark Passions
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Kapka Kassabova
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Spain
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Madrid Region
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Madrid
It is midnight in the downtown Madrid neighbourhood La Latina, and nobody is sleeping. The bars overflow with music and chatter, and people of all ages stand around with glasses and small plates of tapas. The neighbourhoods of Madrid are laid-back...
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Quito
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Kapka Kassabova
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Ecuador
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Quito Region
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Quito
Between the slopes of the Volcán Pichincha and a misty valley leading to the Amazon jungle, Quito is scattered like a burst necklace 30km long. It’s early morning and the sun rises the way it will go down tonight - vertically, with alarming speed....
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Tangier Blues
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Kapka Kassabova
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Morocco
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Northern Morocco
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Tangier
Petit Socco is Tangier’s most notorious meeting place. Transactions of all kinds used to be made here: from intellectual discussions to European pedophiles hunting for juicy young flesh. The fin-de-siècle façades enclosing this small square hint at...