Anyone spending more than a couple of days in Bulgaria will have dined out at least once. That's about enough to discover the Ultimate Bulgarian Dining Experience and its main pitfall: how to survive without offending your hosts – and actually eat something at the same time. In itself, Bulgarian food is very similar to all other Balkan food, so anyone who's been to Tottenham or Kreuzberg will not be very surprised.
"And what's your view on France expelling Bulgarian Gypsies?" Denitsa Mihaylova asked 15 minutes after we had been introduced at a cocktail party. Immediately she added, "You see, I'm asking this because I'm Gypsy myself."
At first, you'd never guess. Denitsa wears business suits, works at the consular department of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, holds a BA in economics and is writing a master's thesis that deals with the problems of Gypsy integration. She is 25 and has a four-year-old daughter.
Bulgarians are very sensitive to all kinds of monuments. Monuments are OK if they celebrate some kind of a glorious if rather imaginary past – the more distant, the better. The past is safe as there is no one alive to get offended, but monuments can also generate considerable acrimony if they relate to not-so-distant events, especially in the case where Bulgaria's sometimes odd sense of "national honour" is concerned.
Fishermen are reluctant to engage in conversation with strangers, as this usually scares off the fish they hope to catch. And "Where is the church?" is not a question one would usually ask near a reservoir that is several kilometres from the nearest village. However, when you're on the southwestern bank of the Koprinka Reservoir, in the Sredna Gora, the question is pertinent – despite the reluctance of the local anglers.
My dear Ambar and Kumkum,
Greetings from Sofia: a place you have been to, briefly and only once, 24 years ago, during your extensive travels around the world! As for me, I am here for the second time in my career on my eighth assignment abroad. The first time was as a first secretary in 1988-1990, a time of crucial political and socio-economic changes in Europe and particularly in this region. The effects of those changes are still continuing today.
At the time, those were either the butt of jokes, or valuable possessions: objects of envy to be lavished with care. The cars of Communism provoked wildly diverging feelings while they were still being manufactured. To start off with, the planned economy of the Soviet bloc never succeeded in hitting the right production benchmarks, which means that citizens were unable to just walk into a shop and buy a car. Provided they had saved the money, they had to put their name on a waiting list, sometimes spanning over 10 years.
I was walking down the street and the sun was angrily hammering through my eyelids. I wasn't thinking about anything. Well, actually a great little story a friend of mine told me recently popped into my head. It went like this:
On a chichi street, in a posh and trendy bar, two friends met up. Businessmen, yuppies, stock-brokers. Obscenely rich. One of them was wearing the perfect jacket. The cloth, the colour, the length. An absolute gem. One-of-a-kind. His friend gazed at it admiringly and asked:
"Where did you get that jacket? It's amazing!"