Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
are what they sell upstairs at TSUM - springs and cogs and small oddments of shaped metal that look as if
they must fit together in some way. Scores of people were gravely picking through the boxes.
The busiest department was on the ground floor in what I suppose you would call the notions
department. It was like a crowd scene in a Godzilla movie after the news has got out that the monster is on
his way to town. All they seemed to sell was buttons, wristwatch straps and ribbons, but then I saw that what
everyone was queuing for was a freshly arrived consignment of alarm clocks. They were just simple, cheap-
looking plastic alarm clocks, but the shoppers were clearly ready to kill to get one. The department was run
by two of the most disagreeable-looking women I ever hope to see. I watched with a kind of dumb
fascination. A shy-looking young man whom I took to be North Vietnamese finally reached the till and they
ignored him. He held out a wad of money with an entreating look and they just dealt with the people behind
him. I don't know why. Finally one of the salesladies pushed his money away and told him to clear off. The
man looked as if he could cry. I felt almost as if I could too. I don't know why they were so nasty to him. But
he put his money in his pocket and melted into the crowd.
Imagine living like that. Imagine coming home from work and your partner saying, 'Honey, guess what?
I had the most wonderful day shopping. I found a loaf of bread, six inches of ribbon, a useful-looking metal
thingy and a doughnut.'
'Really
? A doughnut?'
'Well, actually, I was lying about the doughnut.'
The odd thing was that the people looked amazingly stylish. I don't know how they manage it with so
little to buy. In the old days the clothes on all the people looked as if they had been designed by the manager
of a Russian tractor factory. People constantly came up to me and Katz offering to buy our jeans. One young
guy was so dementedly desperate for a pair of Levi's that he actually started taking his trousers off on the
street and urging us to do likewise so that we could effect a trade. Katz and I tried to explain that we didn't
want his trousers - they were made out of, like,
hemp -
and asked him if he had anything else, a younger
sister or some Cyrillic porno, but he appeared to have nothing worth swapping, and we left him desolate on
a street corner, his heart broken and his flies gaping. Now, however, everyone was as smartly dressed as
anywhere else in Europe - actually more so, since they took such obvious care and pride in their wardrobe.
And the women were simply beautiful, all of them with black hair, chocolate eyes and the most wonderful
white teeth. Sofia has, without any doubt, the most beautiful women in Europe.
I spent the better part of a week just walking around. Sofia is full of monuments with crushingly socialist
names - the Stadium of the People's Army, the Memorial of the Antifascist Campaigners, the National
Palace of Culture - but most of these are contained within some quite lovely parks, with long avenues of
chestnuts, benches, swings, even sometimes a boating lake, and often attractive views of the green, hazy
mountains that stand at the city's back.
I saw the sights. I went to the old royal palace on Place 9 Septemvri, now the home of the National
Gallery of Painting and Sculpture, where I suddenly understood why I was unable to name a single Bulgarian
artist, and afterwards crossed the street to have a look at the tomb of Georgi Dimitrov, the national hero - or
at least he was until the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now the Bulgarians appeared not to be so certain. There was
some minor graffiti on his mausoleum - unthinkable even a couple of months before, I would wager - and
you could no longer go in and look at his body, preserved under glass in the fashion beloved of
Communists. I remember when Katz and I went to see it in '73, Katz leaned close to the case, sniffed in an
obvious manner and said to me in a slightly too-loud voice, 'Something smell a bit off to you?', which nearly
got us arrested. Dimitrov was treated like a god. Now, with Communism crumbling, people didn't even want
to see him any more.
I went too to the National History Museum and the Alexander Nevsky Memorial Church and the National
Archaeological Museum and one or two other diversions, but mostly I just went for long walks and waited for
evening to come.
Evening was kind to Sofia. When the shops were shut the queues vanished and people took to strolling
on the streets, looking much happier. Sometimes there were small political gatherings outside Dimitrov's
tomb and you could see that people were enjoying the unaccustomed luxury of being able to talk freely. One
evening outside the old royal palace somebody set up along a wall an arrangement of photographs of the
