Tweet sparks Elon Musk fever in Eupore’s poorest corner

Bulgaria:

An off-the-cuff tweet from Elon Musk has Bulgarians over the moon, hoping the world’s richest man plans to visit the EU’s poorest region.

The boss of Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter — who’s not immune to attacks of online whimsy — recently commented on an image of northwestern Bulgaria’s towering Belogradchik rocks beneath menacing clouds.

“Pretty sure that was in Elden Ring,” Musk tweeted, referring to one of his favorite video games.

Bulgarians were quick to teach him.

“Dear Elon, this is from Bulgaria! I invite you to see this place,” said Tourism Minister Ilin Dimitrov.

Hundreds of other Twitter users did the same, raving about the attention paid to a country that rarely sees the spotlight on the rich and famous.

An official invitation was promptly sent, accompanied by a silver rhyton drinking horn, a symbol of the ancient Thracian civilization of which Bulgaria is proud.

– Mystery deepened –

The plot thickened when the chef of a high-end restaurant about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Belogradchik published an email purportedly from SpaceX alluding to a visit from Musk in April 2023.

The whole episode created a social media buzz, with memes galore showing the billionaire drinking the local rakia alcohol or dressed in traditional Bulgarian clothing.

Not everyone was star-struck. “He will come and buy our land,” one woman worried.

But the online frenzy has delighted Vladislav Terziiski, who snapped the photo of the spectacular Belogradchik rocks and fortress some five years ago.

“It is so rare that good news from Bulgaria generates such interest,” he told AFP, welcoming “the wave of comments, jokes, anecdotes and expressions of national pride”.

As for a possible visit from the man himself?

“I’m quite skeptical,” Terziiski said. “But I have some hope in my heart.”

– ‘Three Day Miracle’ –

The Belogradchik Fortress is waiting for its “messiah,” political scientist Dimitar Ganev joked on Bulgarian television.

Nearly obscured by fog on a cold November day when AFP visited, the impressive rocks were indeed waiting… for tourists.

While visitors often frequent the site in the warmer spring and summer months, the largest group on that November day was a three-person camera crew filming for their own project.

Also, few of the 5,500 inhabitants of the small town at the foot of the fortress were so excited.

Like the rest of Bulgaria, whose population has declined since the end of communism, Belogradchik has lost half of its inhabitants since 1991.

Musk “does what he wants, why don’t you come and visit a beautiful site and a poor region,” said Svetoslav Zahariev, a construction worker in his 50s, who was “disappointed to find the same misery” upon his return here after 16 years work abroad.

According to Eurostat, more than 40 percent of the region’s population lives below the poverty line, making it the poorest in the EU.

Local officials are pushing for concrete government policies to help develop tourism, rather than empty statements.

“You see how one photo has reached Musk. We can’t do this all alone, we need a government policy (for the tourism development of the region),” former mayor Boris Nikolov told AFP.

The number of tourists increased sharply after the Belogradchik Rocks were named as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature by a Swiss foundation in 2007.

But people left “disappointed with the lack of infrastructure and accommodation,” deputy mayor Rosen Mladenov lamented.

“What is this country that relies on a tweet from Musk to develop its tourism!” he smoked.

And even if the tech billionaire comes, he would be “only a three-day miracle unless he invests here,” Nikolov said.

So far, Musk has remained unusually quiet, ignoring numerous questions on Twitter from the Bulgarian media asking him to confirm or deny a visit.

Should Musk venture to this neglected corner of Bulgaria, he should not risk one of his Tesla cars on the bumpy roads, a Sofia newspaper warned. Instead, it said, it was best he came in a rocket.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)