Manal El Shinnawi: Egyptians Could Come to Bulgaria's Ski Resorts

Novinite has interviewed Egypt's Ambassador to Bulgaria, H.E. Manal El Shinnawi, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary since diplomatic relations were established between the two countries which has celebrated in February.

Mrs El Shinnawi began working for Egypt's Foreign Ministry in 1989. Between January 1998 and January 2001, she was Second Secretary at the Embassy of Egypt in Harare, Zimbabwe. Between September 2004 and September 2008, Mrs El Shinnawi was Deputy Head of Mission at the Egyptian Embassy to Greece.

In September of 2012, she was promoted to Deputy Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs.

She has been Egypt's Ambassador to Sofia since May 2013.

Your Excellency, you said on the 90th anniversary of bilateral relations that this year will be highlighted by increased cooperation in culture and tourism. Speaking of culture, are there any interesting events related to Egyptian culture we should wait for?

This year commemorates 90 years of diplomatic relations between Egypt and Bulgaria. We care to make it a special year. So we started actually by making several cultural events, because we believe that Bulgarian people know a lot about Egyptian civilizaton, history and culure. We care to make cultural bonds between both countries. This year started by having this big cultural event. We invited Dr Zahi Hawass, a well-known Egyptian archaeologist and Egyptologist, he is our former Minister of Antiquities, to come and give a lecture here. I believe it was very good that he spoke about his latest discoveries about Ancient Egypt. We were overwhelmed by the big number of Bulgarian friends who attended this lecture. Before that we had a visit, a few days before Dr Hawass, we had a...