Closed up in our homes because of the danger of coronavirus infection, many Bulgarians have been trying to find useful ways to spend their time. And with the internet that is easy.

The first way is music. Many Bulgarian musicians have streamed unplugged concerts, or have uploaded videos of past appearances. The bands D2 and Ostava performed live on Facebook, others, like Mary Boys Band posted concerts recorded at different times.

And if music is not enough, you can always brush up on your knowledge of a foreign language with the help of your telephone. The idea of an easy-to-use mobile application came to entrepreneur Ivan Manev after he tried to find ways to maintain and improve his English vocabulary:

Ten years ago I had to learn English because I was working for an international company, he says. I started with lessons in Bulgaria, then in London and in Malta. That was when I realized what the difficulty is when you learn a foreign language – you learn the rules and the grammar but don’t have the vocabulary. That was why I tried to find an application that would help improve the vocabulary. Being a person who is active, I wanted something that would help me learn while I am on the move.

Ivan Manev’s application works with a flash card. On one side is the word in one language and on the other – the word in the second language. And to help us learn how to pronounce it, there is added sound and every word downloaded is pronounced by a native speaker.

Users can choose among 34 languages. At the moment downloading the application to your phone is free. To develop the potential of the application, however Ivan Manev needs an investor and he already has a plan:

I started implementing AI, he says. The idea is to offer our users a hands-free experience and be able to operate the application by voice commands. We want to learn from users’ behaviour, to see where there are problems and to give individual advice.

If your kids are bored and have played every game that comes to mind there is a channel that comes to the rescue - “Tell me a story”.

The channel, the idea for which belongs to actor Rosen Belov, has collected fairy tales in the Bulgarian languages, with new magical stories added every day. Rosen Belov came up with the idea of this magic online journey because of a childhood memory – when a child Rosen loved to listen to his mother and his brother telling the stories of various fairytale characters. The actor says that his initiative helps him take a different view of what is happening:

I realized that even under these circumstances of isolation, we are given an opportunity to sit down and think where the world is going. We have forgotten how to be human, we have forgotten how to take a look at the people around us, we have torn ourselves away from our families. Andin these times of isolation, we are again driven to take an interest in the people closest to us, to think of others not just ourselves. We have been forced to go back to the years when life was not so hectic.

Rosen Belov says that the trials we are now facing will make us wiser, more mature and more caring.

Photos: wikipedia.org and private library