Part 2 in a 3-part retrospective of the year I've spent in Bulgaria.
It
is that absolutely idyllic point in a hot, dry day when the
air is in the process of cooling and it has reached that temperature
when one
cannot feel the presence of heat or cold on the skin. It's like being in
a swimming pool that has similarly reached that perfect temperature in
which one simply floats, feeling nothing to indicate that there were
anything
surrounding them. It is abhorrent to me, around this time of day, to jog
or hurry or do anything at any pace other than relaxed, a hint of
sleepiness just on the periphery of my consciousness.
Sofia
is gorgeous in the early summer sun, especially around 5 or 6. For some
reason, I usually hate this time of day (Douglas Adams having once
perfectly labeled it the Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul), but when the
weather is upliftingly, soul-affirmingly warm like it has been for the
last few weeks and the shadows play their way over the ground, it's
actually one of the nicest times in this city.
Sofia
really is lovely, despite all of its shortcomings. It's a city that
seems shaped--in my mind, at least--by its dual identities as a European
city in a poor country. It is laid out in a circle, with points
conveniently radiating outward from the center, and it is, in every way,
designed to be lived in, contrasting with some other cities I've
visited that seem to be lived in despite the difficulties presented by
doing so. It has a system of public transportation that seems extensive
compared to most cities in the States, but pales in comparison to some
of its richer European counterparts (a host of German cities comes to
mind). It is a city of 1 million plus, but the area that this population
occupies seems quite small. Its distinct neighborhood-level divisions
and its concentration of public spaces and eateries result in a
small-town feel in more than a few places, which I really like.
I may be spoiled, having lived where I did up until two days ago, when I bid adieu to my penthouse suite
studio. I lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city, and it
was central to a great many things. Sofia University, the Institute of
Art Studies, Orlov Most, the Borisova Gradina, a wealth of
bars, shops, and coffeehouses, Zaymov Park, Alexander Nevski Cathedral,
and everything I needed to live were within an easy, short walk of my
apartment, and the more time I spent out among these things, the more I
enjoyed the nature and culture of the city.
Once
I got outside it, however, was when my eyes began to be opened to the
greater nature of Bulgaria. Living in the largest and richest city in a
country will teach you some things about that country, but it can also
create a bubble through which it may be hard for other facets of the
place to penetrate. Sofia really has been lovely, this year--though I am
not certain, were I to stay indefinitely, how long I would continue to
feel this way--and I can't really imagine a better place in Bulgaria to
have been, considering my affinity for urban culture and the
accessibility of certain things that come with it. But to really get to
know a place, you have to experience as many of its locales as you can.
The first time I left Sofia
and came back--the last weekend in August, when Greg, Fred, and I went
to Burgas for the weekend--I had a minor revelatory moment when, after
gliding through endless kilometers of hills and fields, our train
suddenly emerged in the veritable center of the city. Having spent most
of my entire life in the States, where urban sprawl has transformed the
outskirts of many cities into endless tracts of houses, it had never
occurred to me that there were cities without suburbs, into which one
could simply emerge as suddenly as one looked back out the window.
Sofia, at least, is one such place, where the country starts as soon as
one has passed its last industrial plant.
This fact led to what was perhaps my biggest eye-opening moment of the entire year. On Lazarovden, I went out to the village of Gorni Bogrov to observe the ritual of the Lazartsi in
whatever form it still existed. When I got there, I was floored by what
I found - a rural Bulgarian village with narrow roads that one could
walk across in 10 minutes. To be sure, the houses were somewhat modern,
and the roads were paved, but there, smack dab in the middle of an
endless plain with mountains rising in the background, was a small
cluster of houses whose limit was defined by a one-lane road running
around its periphery. Each house had a garden, some had horses, and once
you stepped across this road, you were definitively out of the village.
Quite frankly, I had not expected to find something like this in 2012
in a member of the European Union. My conception was that the rural
village had died, but, as it turns out, it was just a few kilometers
away the whole time.
Of
course, I've gone to a host of other really cool places in the time
I've been here. I've spent this weekend, in fact, in the seaside town
of Burgas hanging out with some fellow Fulbrighters for our last
collective weekend in Bulgaria. Burgas--and its coastal neighbors that
I've visited, Byala and Varna--are extremely pleasant this time of year,
as is to be expected. The Black Sea coast is, in a lot of ways, nicer
than what we have in the States; though the culture is decidedly
different, it offers most of what one might find at the Jersey Shore or
in the beach cities of the South Bay, only with finer sands and (in
general, at least) less trash. The weekend we spent in Byala
was obscenely pleasant--though that was due in large part to the
company--and the time I've spent in Burgas has been much the same. I was
never much of a beach person, but I'm beginning to enjoy the setting
more and more.
One
of Bulgaria's biggest draws is its geography, which is on full display
during the 400-kilometer journeys from Sofia to the coast. The country
is bisected latitudinally by the Stara Planina (literally, "Old
Mountains"), the Balkan Mountains, which are stunning in and of
themselves; one of my big regrets from this year is not having made time
to explore them. In the eastern half of the country, they form the
northern boundary of the Thracian Plain. Much of the land to their north
is uneven, forming endless foothills to the range until these run up
against the Danube Valley. To the south, in the west of Bulgaria,
several other mountain ranges rise to meet the Balkans, forming much of
the terrain that has shaped the culture of shopski kray.
When
we all first arrived in Bulgaria for FISI at the beginning of August,
we were immediately swept off to the skiing town of Bansko, nestled in
the Rila Mountains (in the summer, it had functioned as mountain resort
for the rich and well-connected). The landscape was, of course,
gorgeous, and it was a rather idyllic setting for us to gain our first
exposure to this place. Mt. Vitosha, which looms over Sofia like a
watchful protector, is one of the symbols of Bulgaria, and is an
important peak in the Balkan Range. Sofia, which lies on an elevated
plain between the Balkans and Rilas, is, one forgets, a mountain city,
and there is a lot of good, accessible hiking to be had. I was fortunate
to have had a day, in the beginning of the year, to hike Mt. Vitosha, though I wish I had done it more than once.
There
are also a lot of cool things to see and do within plausible day-trip
distance of Sofia. Plovdiv, another of the largest cities in Bulgaria,
is a 2-hour drive/bus ride from the city, and its Old Town offers a lot
of very cool things to see, historical and otherwise, which many of us did back in October. A few weeks after that, I took a short trip to the nearby city of Pernik for St. Ivan Rilksi Day,
which was a much better time than I expected, and in December, Greg,
his family, and I took another such trip to Belogradchik, about a 3-hour
drive from Sofia, to visit the Magura Cave, which was awesome in every way.
Perhaps
the thing that has made so many great things possible this year has
been Bulgaria's relatively small size. The furthest point in the country
from Sofia is 7 hours away, and bus tickets are extremely cheap
compared to what we're accustomed to in the US (Chinatown buses
notwithstanding), so really, the sky's the limit. The biggest limitation
to my traveling this year has been the constraints of time I've been
under. But as far as the plausibility of internal travel is concerned,
Bulgaria is a place that is about as good as it gets. There are a lot of
fascinating and wonderful things, all much different from each other,
and all within a not-obscene distance from each other, either. I'm glad
that I've taken the advantage of it that I have.
