Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
restaurants serving foods that haven't been seen elsewhere in the country for years, a shop selling
chocolates, brandy and cigarettes and other luxuries so unattainable that the average Bulgarian would be
foolish even to dream of them.
It amazed me that I didn't get beaten up every time I emerged from the hotel -
I'd
want to beat me up
and I know what a sweet guy I am - but no one showed me anything but kindness and friendship. People
would come up to me constantly and ask if I wanted to change money, but I didn't, I couldn't. It was illegal
and besides I didn't want any more Bulgarian money than I had: there was nothing to buy with it. Why should
I stand in a queue for two hours to buy a pack of cigarettes with leva when I could get better cigarettes for
less money in ten seconds in my own hotel? 'I'm really sorry,' I kept saying, and they seemed to understand.
I began to get obsessed with trying to spend some money, but there was nothing to spend it on,
nothing. One of the parks, I discovered one Sunday morning, was full of artists selling their own work and I
thought, Great! I'll buy a picture. But they were all terrible. Most of them were technically accomplished, but
the subjects were just so awful - vivid sunsets with orange and pink clouds, and surreal, Salvador Dali-like
paintings of melted objects. It was as if they were so far out of touch with the world that they didn't know what
to paint.
The further you roam in Sofia the better it gets. I took to going for day-long walks out into the hilly
districts on the south-east side of the city, an area of forests, parks, neighbourhoods of rather grand
apartment buildings, winding tranquil streets, some nice homes. As I was walking back into the city, over a
footbridge across the Slivnica River and down some anonymous residential street, it struck me that this
really was quite a beautiful city. More than that, it was the most European of all the cities I had been to.
There were no modern shopping centres, no big gas stations, no McDonald's or Pizza Huts, no revolving
signs for Coca-Cola. No city I had ever been to had more thoroughly resisted the blandishments of
American culture. It was completely, comprehensively European. This was, I realized with a sense of
profound unease, the Europe I had dreamed of as a child.
It is hard to know what will become of Bulgaria. A couple of weeks after my visit, the people of the
country, in a moment of madness, freely voted for a Communist regime, the only country in eastern Europe
to voluntarily retain the old form of government.
This was 1990, the year that Communism died in Europe, and it seemed to me strange that in all the
words that were written about the fall of the Iron Curtain nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a
noble experiment. I know Communism never worked and I would have hated living under it myself, but it
seems to me none the less that there is a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that
appears to work is one based on self-interest and greed.
Communism in Bulgaria won't last. It can't last. No people will retain a government that can't feed them
or let them provide toys for their children. I'm certain that if I come back to Sofia in five years it will be full of
Pizza Huts and Laura Ashleys and the streets will be clogged with BMWs, and all the people will be much
happier. I can't blame them a bit, but I'm glad I saw it before it changed.
