Filming and narration by Peg Kirkpatrick, editing and production by Gary Kirkpatrick. Copyright 2024
Blog 2024
Plovdiv
About 350,000 people live in Plovdiv making it the second largest city in Bulgaria. It was founded on the Marista River. People support themselves here on tobacco production, food processing, textiles and brewing, as well as high tech, festivals and tourism. There are six universities in this small city. It is known for its Roman era theater, still in use, and centrally located. There are old Orthodox-style churches, mosques, and a large Jewish temple. It was the European Capital of Culture in 1999 and 2019, no small honor.
We came in a van capable of seating 20, but there were fewer on this typical cold but sunny day. They waited for us on a side street near the Cathedral. We were accompanied by a guide. I’ll call him Boris. A big friendly guy, he speaks excellent, American accented English, the country’s second language, so this capability is pretty common.
Along the way Boris talked about life in the Soviet era. He told the story of his father wanting a car. He was able to accumulate the required 50% down payment. Then he waited. And waited. And waited for eleven years for the notification! When it finally arrived off he went to the official, and one and only, car dealership in the country. He’d ordered a red car. We have no red cards, they said, but here’s a green one. He could not refuse delivery without having to start the waiting period from zero. This was not unusual, our guide said. Generally consumer goods were hard to come by and the only imports allowed were from bloc countries. East German products were prized, though not by anyone in the West.
On the plus side, you could count on a job and if none were available, an income nonetheless. There are still people who prefer the communist era for its safety net. Also, while there were no real elections, government was stable. Maybe a few heads would roll now and again, but the government never fell. Nowadays the government is unstable. There are plenty of real elections, in fact, but there have been seven of them since 2021.
Once in town we walked up one of the city’s seven hills to take a look at some of the interesting architecture from the Ottoman period, something you do not find in the young (1887) city of Sofia. A mansion we passed was built by a well to do merchant. He was forced to change his name to a Turkish one and convert to Islam in order to do business.
Under the Ottomans, Christian churches were allowed, but they were not permitted to look like a church but rather but to blend in with the Ottoman architecture. Mosques were subject to no such restriction. Non-Muslims paid higher taxes. These sorts of policies made the Ottomans very unpopular.
We walked to the well preserved Roman era theater in the old center. As was normal for the Romans, the theater was carved out of the hillside, so seating followed the hill’s climb. No need to erect grandstands.
Nearby is the Circo Massimo, an oval race track, located beneath the area’s main drag. They have excavated only a small portion of the track, a main entrance. It was built at ground level and buried over time.
There are numerous eateries in the area, so this is where Boris dropped us off at lunch time. We saw lots of kabob shops, a contribution of the Turks, and places selling a variety of freshly baked doughy goodies like the one below. You can eat cheaply and well but you have to sit outside. Crossing back over the Circo Massimo you can find plenty or restaurants with indoor as well as outdoor seating, with plenty of people preferring the outdoors even at daytime temperatures around 5c/40f. The one we chose had a dozen salad offerings, which Bulgarians love, along with a variety of meat dishes. Lunch for two cost us around $20, payable with credit cards, almost universally accepted in the country.
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Flood stories from Picanya
It was getting dark when we boarded the Picanya metro replacement bus, but there was enough light to see the fields of cars piled 4 and 5 high in fields near Paiporta. You can still see white bits of clothing and paper scattered about, sticking onto small trees and broken branches, left there by the raging waters. Unfortunately the bus was going too fast for shooting photos. On the walk into the center of Picanya from the bus stop, this being further away from the Rambla than the center of town, there was little sign of damage other than undamaged cars had obviously been driven on muddy streets, their windshields splattered, their tires terracotta colored, the paint badly in need of a wash.
We were on our way to see the youngest children of Picanya sing seasonal songs, starting in the center of town at the Centro Cultural. They wore traditional outfits, and were accompanied guitars, bells and a dulzaina, a traditional instrument in the oboe family. I called it a ‘squeaky’ for obvious reasons- they are not easy to listen to. Once we walked out of a concert where there were twenty of them. Insufferable. But here they fit in, part of the culture.
We went to a second location with the the children (they sang at 9), an ancient convent’s garden, then made our way with our friend M through town, first for a coffee at one of the local bars. They serve coffee, beer, wine and the like, as well as various pastries and gelato with loudly colored ice creams under glass at the entrance. Then we walked through town to M’s house across the Rambla del Rozo, the artery for the flood waters. In town you can see the high water mark at around waist level. Many structures with ground level installations, apartments and businesses, were still closed, but the bars, hairdressers etc are up and running.
As you approach the Rambla the streets slope downwards to where the pedestrian bridge once was. It’s laying on its side, replaced by a temporary pedestrian bridge installed by the army engineers. A smell of rot is in the air. Photos of volunteers and soldiers are attached to the fence. The Rambla, once lushly vegetated, including a tree from which I once pulled a few ripe figs, is now stripped of everything green and gone is the waist high wall that kept people and their cars from going over the edge and down the 10 meters or so to the bottom of the normally dry gully.
There were 11 deaths in Picanya. One was a young woman who was found between cars. Apparently she was carried there from Chiva. A young man survived after being whisked downstream from here to Paiporta, a distance of about 2 kilometers, a bit over a mile. He beat the odds, didn’t he.
We went inside M’s house. A temporary plywood doorway was installed to replace the large heavy door that the flood had ripped from its hinges. Inside on the ground floor there was a half meter/18″ of mud that relatives shoveled out. They cleaned and disinfected everything. The ceramic wall tiles are largely intact, with just a few broken ones. The hallway was flooded to some two meters in height. The garage door was ripped off. The car was pulled out, floated to the corner, where it took a left, went a block and parallel parked!
M had .experienced six or seven floods in this house, where she’s lived for over fifty years, and her parents before that, but never anything like this, including the disastrous flood of 1957 that led to the re-routing of the Turia River. Without that re-rerouting, Valencia city would have been a huge disaster area, the streets around our apartment surrounded by waist deep water and a half meter of mud, with many times the number of ruined cars.
A flood survivor’s story
We have friends in Picanya. We saw yesterday them for the first time since the flood. I sat with ‘M,’ whose house is located on the Rambla del Poyo, the normally empty gully that serves as drainage for the hills to the west. The Rambla is about 75 meters wide by about 15 meters deep and looks quite capable of holding a substantial amount of flood water as it almost always dry except for a little trickle in the center.
On the day of the flood, October 29, her daughter ‘D’ called to say she was coming by to get her son as it was starting to hail. She was in a nearby town where she had driven with her daughter, and did not want to be out in the weather. She got to her mother’s house, retrieved the son and went home, just in time. It was not raining in Picanya.
M was reading when she heard a whooshing sound. She thought it had started to rain. Then whooshing again. She arose to look out the front window. Horror and fright gripped her. A vast and high speed wall of water was flashing by, rising to within a meter or a meter and a half of her balcony on the main floor, about 3 meters above the street. M looked down the stairs. The water rose to the seventh step as she watched. She knew that whatever was on the ground floor would be ruined or at least mud soaked if it was still there.
Her house has three levels, ground, main and second. She climbed the stairs to the top. Relatives started to call to find out how she was: alone, still safe and dry, but trembling. In the meantime her son S was about a kilometer away at the metro station, waist deep in water. He made it out safely.
The roar of the waters subsided. When able, she descended the stairs to street level. Her large and beautiful curved top wooden door was on the floor, battered and swollen. She would not be able to use it, and a replacement would cost up to €6000, as it is hand made from high quality lumber. There are many such doors in this town. Her car had been ripped out of the garage along with the door that had been closed when the raging waters slammed it. It was down the street. The back of her house was littered with tall cane stalks, a tire and assorted stuff. Clothing and other items she and relatives stored on the ground floor were ruined, although D could not bear to part with a few things filled with memories.
A little more than a month later, after two weeks in her son’s girlfriend’s house, M is back home. The water and electricity are back. She is still boiling the water although she says the authorities say it is safe to drink. The car, a nice BMW perhaps five years old with low mileage, is a total loss. The metal gate entrance gate is still intact and working so she is safe from intruders, although when she was gone L, D’s husband, stayed there some nights while her son stayed others.
D lives close by in a 5 story apartment building, occupying a top floor flat, safe from the flood waters’ immediate effects. The apartments on the first level were flooded. One of the occupants with a child stayed with D until they were able to get to an apartment in Valencia city. There was no water as the main pump was damaged. Soldiers and fireman came to pump the water out of the basement garage. They lost whatever was stored there- typically there are storage units, called trasteros, in these garages. The elevator’s door was broken and its electrics ruined.
D is a psychologist. She owns and directs a residence for people with mental health challenges in a nearby town. She was not able to get to work. While her husband tried to save their car by removing it from the underground garage before the flood waters rose too high, at street level it was still damaged beyond repair. She rented a rental car from the train station in Valencia – how she got there I do not know – so she can now get to work. There were enough employees who lived close to the facility or who stayed in it to allow it to keep functioning. That town was also flooded but the facility remained safe enough to avoid evacuating residents. Her brother also works in the same field but in a different facility. His car is a total loss. He was able to borrow a car for a while but now is trying to find another so he can get to work.
The metro to Picanya still is out of service. Cars still sit on the tracks there.
Soldiers stayed in the day care center while working in the town. The center has now reopened. The elementary school reopened as well.
We met them yesterday at a shopping center near us. They have lost all their holiday decorations as well as clothing and other items so they drove here. While there is an over-abundance of donated items in the town from caring and generous contributors from all over, and World Central Kitchen has been fabulous, coming every day for weeks, there are still many things they need that they can not get locally.
M seems much exhausted by the ordeal. She can not summon the will to do her normal holiday meal where for years she hosted relatives. They are doing the holiday meals, and she will not have to lift a finger.
Photos and videos by M, reproduced with permission
Volunteers providing meals
We joined a hundred or so volunteers are helping at Valencia’s World Central Kitchen to provide hot meals for people in locations effected by the floods of a month ago.
They are very well organized. When we arrived, we first had to check in. I was not registered so they took my name and phone number. You can register on Telegram if you have the group link. Then we visited the assignment board. Two volunteers had a long list of activities. The cooking was already started so there were three sections for packaging the food. Then there was the delivery process, broken down by location. Each activity had the number of people needed notated with phone numbers.
At the packaging stations, there was a table set up to receive the huge paella pans. Two or three people placed portions in the sturdy containers. These were passed down to several people who installed the lids. Then people placed the containers in large gray insulated boxes. These were then placed in vans either provided by volunteers or rented by WCK.
There were no shortages of materials or labor. There was coffee for the volunteers and a bathroom that looked totally normal that had been dropped in by WCT when they arrived.
WCT was founded 2010 by Spanish American chef José Andrés to help in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake. It has served millions of meals since then. They are sometimes located in war zones, and there have been several fatalities.
Bulgaria’s Complexities
I have long seen Bulgaria as just a small, insignificant, and now former communist country in Eastern Europe. We went there primarily because it is one of the two EU countries we had not visited. Now that I have been there, my curiosity has been aroused, and I have learned more about this country and the forces that complicate its functioning. The following complicating factors are in no particular order.
1: The United States has has just two neighbors to deal with, Canada and Mexico, and Spain has just France and Portugal, to give two examples. Many countries have similar situations. But Bulgaria is bordered by Romania to the north, Greece and Turkey to the south, North Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo to the west. Some of these are Islamic, some Orthodox Christian, with ethnic Turk, Slav and Roma and other populations. War and natural disasters could bring waves of immigrants into Bulgaria.
2: Bulgaria is in the Balkans. Many wars have been fought in this area, most recently in the 1991 and 2001 involving the countries of the former Yugoslavia. In the First Balkan War (1912-13), Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war on the Ottoman Empire. In the Second Balkan War (1913), Bulgaria attacked the countries it was aligned with in fighting the Ottomans! Then Romania attacked from from the north, and the Ottomans regained some of the territory they lost to Bulgaria. Going back in time we see the area conquered by the Ottomans. In the 6th to 3rd century BC, the region was a battleground for ancient Macedonians, Thracians, Persons and Celts before the arrival of the Pax Romana. The latter is recorded on Trajan’s column in Rome.
3: I have long been confused by the term ‘The Balkans,” and it’s not just me. In fact there is good reason for the confusion: the term is ambiguous. The word itself comes from the Balkan mountain range that extends through the entirety Bulgaria and into Serbia. The term “The Balkans” usually includes Albania, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, European Turkey, oddly just the coast of Romania, and strangely most but not all of Serbia and, weirdly, large parts of Croatia but not all of it. Sometimes it includes all of Romania, Serbia and Croatia, and just the southern parts of Slovenia. Then there are references to something called the Balkan peninsula, a quasi geographical term. It adds Albania and Greece to the list. To add even further to the confusion, the Balkan Peninsula is not a peninsula, say the geographers, and even if it were, most of these countries are not on it. And in lieu of the term Balkans, some just say “Southeastern Europe.” But who knows exactly where that is?
4: Bulgaria sits precisely in the path between Turkey and the rest of Europe. The Ottomans marched to the gates of Vienna before being turned away for the final time in the 18th century. To get to Vienna the Ottomans had to have control first of all of the country we now call Bulgaria. While the Turks are now confined to its borders, Bulgaria is still are motivated to keep an eye open to its south. And the north. And the west. And the Russians. They are looking intently at what is happening in Ukraine and what the EU and the US are doing, and not doing. None of these countries can fend off Russian on its own.
5: The Bulgarians have been under foreign control since the Roman era at least, except for 68 years in the early 20th century (1878-1946) and between 1989 and the present. That just 101 years out of around 6000. Bulgaria became a principality in 1878, with full independence coming in 1908.. Ottoman control meant the suppression of Bulgarian culture. For example, churches had to look like ordinary buildings. To achieve a higher status you had to convert to Islam, which helped your tax situation as well. Many “Islamified” their names to fit in better with the predominant power. The country fell under the Russian yoke in 1946, a domination that lasted until 1989. Bloc
Given all this foreign domination and the cultural cross currents implied by its history and geography, it is no wonder that the Bulgarians find self government to be difficult. Since 2021 they just keep holding election after election when the latest coalition falls apart. The Italians have done the same since the end of WWII, the Belgians were without a government for years, France has a delicate arrangement keeping out Le Pen, so these unstable coalitions need not ruin everything, nor bring the end of democracy let alone self-rule. The bureaucrats keep things going. And no one said democracy was easy, nor perfect, just better than dictatorship and foreign domination or outright rule.
Bulgarian Traditional Folk Dance
In days gone by we did international folk dancing with groups in Florida and Pennsylvania. I led the group in Pennsylvania for several years. Among our favorite dances were those that came from Bulgaria. While in Sofia we found a performance at a restaurant and walked the 1.8 kilometers for the performance starting at 8 pm. It was dark and pretty cold but the trip was worthwhile.
I shot the first video from our table, so there are interruptions and imperfections, but you can get a good feel for the event. Pretty good food and wine too, by the way, all for about $50. More about the Bulgarian cuisine to come. The second video is a performance of a professional group with professional filming.
Bulgaria and the fall of the Bloc
We visited the Socialist Art Museum and the Museum of National History in Sofia, both small museums. They are on opposite sides of the city, about 7 kilometers apart. We traversed the distance by city bus, scanning our credit cards to pay the fare. The Sofia we saw on the route is not pretty, unlike the city center where we are staying with its some sparkling monumental buildings, parks and public art. The center has a large pedestrian area lined with upscale shops, mostly ones I have never heard of unlike much of the rest of Europe where brands predominate. But here there’s only the dreary architecture of Communist era concrete block apartment buildings erected in response to the housing shortage in the lousy economy that characterized that era, and smaller, older and generally neglected housing.
First we went to the Socialist Art Museum. We assumed It would display the poster art we were familiar with, like the ones we saw in St.Petersburg, Russia, for example. Instead there are paintings, good ones too, mostly in oil, celebrating the life of working men and women.
Night Threshing, 1954 Ivan Petrov
After the Shift, Gaidarov
There is also a very long propaganda film touting the communist regime’s achievements. Everyone is smiling, there are lots of ceremonies with appearances by high government officials, a visit to the hometown of one of the Communist party heads complete with reconstructed humble home. Outside are dozens of statues, many of Lenin, as well as other big wigs and odes to the common man.
The Communist Party lost power in November 1989 when party head Zhivkov resigned and Bulgaria began the transition to a parliamentary democracy. In the Bulgarian History Museum, however, history ended in 1946. It’s not like people are afraid to talk about it. The one guide we met spoke about it freely on the way to Ploviv. He recounted how his father bought a new car. There was one car dealer, the government. He had to make a 50% down payment. Eleven years later his car was delivered. He ordered a red car. He was provided with a black one and had no choice in the matter. As was the case throughout the Eastern block, consumer goods were scarce, expensive and often of poor quality. There was no competition providing incentives. This sort of discussion is openly held, not a secret. And there are people who think things were better under that government, and they are not afraid to say so.
The first election in June 1990 was won by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, just a re-branding of the Communist party. Conditions remained difficult, as was the case in most countries of the Soviet block. After 2001 conditions improved greatly. Bulgaria became a member of NATO, joined the European Union and the single market in 2007. It’s orientation to western Europe followed not only the long period of Soviet domination, it also marked a change in attitude that went back to the 19th century. While the 1878 treaty gave the country its freedom from 500 years of domination by the Ottoman Turks, Bulgaria was angered by the Berlin treaty of 1887. That treaty lopped off a significant number of native Bulgarians from the 1878 principality. As a result of its anger toward the western European powers, Bulgaria backed Germany in both world wars. It handed over many of the country’s Jews but a popular outcry saved about 27,000 lives at the end.
These days the Bulgarians are struggling with democracy. They form coalition governments, and since 2021 there have been seven elections. My sense is that they very much appreciate their independence, whatever else they disagree about. There is no great desire to be part of any other country. Whatever it means that the National History Museum stops in 1946, it does not mean a desire to go back to the old days of Russian domination.
November 23, the state of things in Valencia
There is still a lot of clean up left to do. This photo shows this location unchanged since the flood. This does not signify a lack of effort but more likely insufficient resources despite nation-wide efforts. Valencia rejected offers from abroad which may have helped, coordination difficulties aside. From Las Provincias
There are many volunteers at the Feria, a site normally used for expositions. It has large areas ideal for collecting and distributing donations. Large amounts go in and out, out on off road military transport vehicles that can go just about anywhere. Friends in Picanya report an abundance of goods and volunteers still. They are concerned that support will fall off too soon however. They also report that there is no school for the children. The day care center they use for their youngest is housing soldiers.
The metro is set to be fully operational as of December 6th. Green buses lent by Madrid are replacing metro service where possible in the meantime. Because the metro to the airport is not working you can go by bus or taxi. We went by taxi the other day. The driver took a route we’ve never been on before. He explained that the normal route is still closed to traffic due to flood damage. He also explained that taxi drivers were protesting recently over the local government’s decision to allow them to work seven days a week. They are normally limited to five. As a result of the loss of tourism including cruise ships there is less work for taxis now than before. The government mistakenly believes, he said, that because the metro is not working and some bus service has been disrupted that there is more demand for taxis. Now with seven day permission more taxis will be out looking for fares, resulting in them spending money just driving around.
I found this photo in an AP story. It shows the before and after satellite images of Valencia. AP story
Sofia
November 23, 2024
Sofia is situated on a plane set between hills and mountains, including ski areas within thirty minutes. This can make for a swinging descent all the way to the runway. This caused the young, brightly lipsticked English fluent Bulgarian woman seated between us to do the Bulgarian-Orthodox double cross as if this were her last, yet she does this trip frequently.
We were told clearly by a retired Bulgarian couple living in Valencia that this was not the best time of year to visit Sofia, nor was Sofia the best place to visit in Bulgaria. Plovdiv, they said, is much more beautiful. Take a bus tour, they said in their very good albeit Boris accented English. Of course we’d already laid the plans and were leaving the next day. It’s a young city architecturally, they explained, and little to brag about from a tourist perspective, though worth three days. I breathed a sigh of relief, as we have only five, take off one for the bus tour and we probably won’t die of boredom. As we flew in we could see it’s large collection of what we call Communist Blocks: apartment towers in all the grayness of concrete. Fortunately there are some sites of interest in Sofia.
We saw some after we meandered (being somewhat lost) to our roomy warm flat in the center, located in a turn of the century behemoth with an ugly entrance hall and an ancient elevator with no inner door and barely room for the three of us, as our landlord took us in to show us around. A tiny bit later we walked past the 6th century all brick Church of Saint Sofia on the way to the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, a magnificent structure not far from chez nous (our place). It has those beautiful if gaudy golden domes common to Orthodox architecture. As we came upon it the disharmonious bells rang out, perhaps to announce the solemn procession of the long bearded priests soon to begin. Check it out:
Inside are the huge portraits of venerated men on the tall walls, along with Mary and Joseph in the iconic Byzantine style. There are several icons to which the Orthodox pay their respects, bowing and kissing of the item. There is one icon in the very middle of the main aisle. After stopping there many were visiting another of the icons, then greeting other priests and the occasional lay visitor. It all looked very chummy, friendly, happy looking bunch.
Shortly a large procession of all male priests began, following what was clearly the head priest, who diverted into a throned canopy to receive ring kisses, preceded by his sign of the cross blessing posted at breakneck speed. The priests then walked into the area behind the huge screen. You can see through its entrance but much remains invisible from the audience area.
It was dark and getting colder, on its way to -3c/25f overnight, so we started home. We came upon an outdoor market, festively lighted and wafting aromas of sausage and baked goods and emoting enough good cheer to get you through the long cold winter nights.
Sausages galore. Some lovely baked yummies. Wine, which according to our air travel companion is the favorite beverage over beer. For dinner we ordered a white made by the restaurant we chose for dinner, which turned out to be a rather odd tasting Sauvigon Blanc. Hoping for better. The salad, which the Bulgarians consume in great variety, was not, on the other hand, a disappointment.
More to come!
