Sofia Part 1 - Planes, crossings and the business of the Old School

When I'm met at Sofia airport by my mother's friend Andrei, dressed neatly in a grey suit, waistcoat and carrying an umbrella like he has walked off the set of a 1950s James Stewart film, I feel underdressed.  Jeans just are not appropriate for an airport meeting now.  This is my first lesson in cultural differences.   Hospitality.  What I had thought was the Bulgarian culture of my youth was in fact a dilution.  Something brought by a group of people who dragged their customs from Bulgaria, sheep dipped them in the Israeli way of life and then walked with them to England.  The grilled red peppers, tripe soup and arguments over card games came along but a whole lot more stayed behind.

demonstration outside ministerial building

Andreii, despite being a pensioner spirits away my suitcase and does not let me touch it again until he has heaved it up two flights or stairs in my hotel (the receptionist smiles alot, watches his heavy breathing and does nothing).   Lesson number two. Bulgarian hospitality: wonderful, warm, attentive but involves following you around in whatever you may be doing.  If you say you want to be alone, that means that you do not like them, and is considered a brush off.  This is lovely for someone with an command of the language that mostly stretches to saying national dishes and a few swearwords.  It is also very comforting to be fussed over but I do wonder the limits of this cultural attentiveness go?  A guard of honour outside my hotel room?  trying on lipstick for me?

As we walk out of the hotel, I am shown the great buildings of Sofia.  And they are great.  The parliament - which is opposite dictator Todor Z|hivkov's demolished mausoleum is a grand, but not imposing building.  When I was here in 1991 when people were filled with expectation before the first post communist  election, uniformed officers still paraded up and down here in Russian goose steps.   There is no trace of it now. As historian Vladimir Ratchinovski later tells me, when communism fell down, people wanted to get rid of a lot of things, even old historical artefacts.  Perhaps it was a feeling for brushing the slate clean and throwing it all away.   Outside the ministerial building down the road there is a small demonstration.  There are elections imminent again, and cuts, I imagine worse than the UK with an unemployment rate of 27% is a focus.

As we walk in the streets, it feels strange to hear young people speaking Bulgarian.  I've only ever heard it from the mouths of the older generation, often sprinkled with Hebrew.  It's like the two languages have played a double act together.  Both hot, vibrant and full of Bulgarian white cheese (sirineh), interspersed with watermelon and dates.

Andrei tells me about his skype chats to his son in New Jersey, and how his sons familly prefer to vacation in the Carribean rather than to come back to Sofia for Christmas.  As another bulgarian friend tells me later 'all the smart people are out'.  That is only one point of view of course, but it begins to become clear over the next week that there are an awful lot of older generation who have sons and daughters working abroad.  Some make money and then come back.  Others like Hristo and Mila, a handsome young couple who came from the same small town only to meet, incredibly, in the UK, never want to return.  'I hate the politicians - they are all corrupt I'm never going back' .    People like Nelly a bubbly 65 year old, still working hard who looks 10 years younger have formed little support groups - parents who vow to look after each other in the place of sons and daughters who are abroad.

When I get back to the hotel, the woman at the desk says wait a minute, and then hangs out of the window to smoke a cigarette.   She must be related to the woman in the shoe shop who, after my poor attempts at saying excuse me, shouts 'I can't understand anything you're saying, go away'.  In 1991 I remember going into a shop that looked a bit like a classroom with a few boxes and coat rails.  The only thing they sold were blue coats, in one size only.  They were quite good blue coats actually. Since they were my size and the coat cost the equivalent of 50p I was delighted.  Now I'm beginning to think that old habits die hard.  This is despite the hoardings by the tram sponsored by the Be Happy sushi chain and the zebra crossing sporting a sign reading 'Volvo believes life is precious' .  

apartment block in Sofia suburb Krasno Selo, Mt Vitosha in the background

The other side of the coin are people like Gregor and his family, who work 10 hour days as standard, are immersed in business culture and aspire to making bulgaria a contender in the European Union.  They tell me about pollution, recycling, but don't talk about unemployment.  They tell me of skiing, take out their iphones to play with apps, and almost have emblazoned on their foreheads 'focus'.  These are the same people who put their children in schools like the one I saw in Plovdiv, where parents pay for a better education, and the steps leading up to classrooms are painted with sentences in English, like 'how much does it cost' and 'where is the library?'.

Behind it all, somewhere, is big business, like the placard on the zebra crossing that says 'Volvo supports a safe life'

Focus, freedom vs poverty and absence.  This is a land, like so many others, of contrasts, and I know I'm only beginning to skim on the surface.