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Bulgaria teaches me empathy. What is it like, definitely not to be the center of the world, and still manage to be self-sufficient and creative? What is it like, to be a 56-year old overweight red-skinned Bulgarian guy under 165 cm, coming from the a small town called Russe, at the same travelling all over Bulgaria to visit kizomba, salsa and bachata workshops, to do pranayama and wander along the whole of the Bulgarian sea-cost riding bike together with his 23-year-old-son? I met a person like that as we participated together in a two-day kizomba workshop taught by a Portuguese in one of the numerous Sofia malls; we rode tram together; we spoke Russian; he kept repeating that he loves me – just like that.
…They are
often not good looking, men and women, in a way a destitute state of welfare
makes you look. They are tired and they have to fight for life much more than
we bastards do, they bear traces of excessive smoking and drinking way to often
– and I understand why, knowing a bit about the everyday life here. I come here
to spend my German money which I basically get without having to do anything.
(Indirectly – maybe I’ve long ago deserved this money; directly – I am just a
lazy parasite). They serve me my hipster-style salad with quinoa and chia seeds,
they sew my high quality hand-made designer leather-boots – for prices I do can
afford. And sometimes they are really annoyed to see my well-fed self-satisfied
consume-oriented mug, as I am again on the search for a vegan cake to accompany
my vacuum pot coffee; no-no-no, I am actually not vegan, I am just a
lacto-vegetarian, which means I do eat dairy, but I avoid eggs…
As I originally
come from Russia, having moved to Germany in the age of 22, one maybe wouldn’t
expect me to be unused to rough life conditions and people exhausted by their
troublesome instable existences. But it’s not as simple as it may seem at first
sight, because Bulgaria offers a wide scale of poverty, devastation and
disorder not just somewhere outside the average tourist’s field of vision .It
offers it even in the very heart of its capital, securing you a spooky feeling of
having nowhere to escape. All of this just next to the highly westernized
progressive locations I so eagerly frequent.
It’s no way
a trivial combination, at least for me, as St. Petersburg, my native town, is
way too clean and prosperous to provide you the kind of existential fear I
regularly experience in Sofia. The civilizational level is incomparable: in
Sofia I have to use my smartphone’s pocket light function as being on the way
in the city center at a late hour, as otherwise I risk to break my ankle due to
the adventurous nature of the pavement; and if you are asking yourself about
the street lanterns – well, they are more of a formality here. Course you can
witness every possible sign of decay and misery somewhere in the Russian
province as well; but there it is not neighboring on the kind of young creative
community which is to be found in Sofia.
Other major
cities offering a notorious variety of fancy cultural phenomena give you the
feeling of being in the center of the world, even if they can show off with
their considerable social and infrastructural problems as the hipster capital
of Europe Berlin. But that’s not the
case in Sofia; Sofia feels like a big village, Sofia feels provincial, Sofia
feels a bit on the range of civilization – and at the same time perfectly in
style. That’s the point. They know what they want and they do what they want
the best way they can, not giving a fuck about how hopeless the reality around
may seem, and just like that they do convince and impress: I visit Sofia for
the seventh time now, I love it and I highly enjoy life as I vomit the whole of
this spiteful talk into the Word-file right now.
Haven’t you
ever felt yourself like Sofia before? I did, and I also totally wanna BE and DO
like Sofia: awesome, hip, not giving a fuck.
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