Nod for No
Communist architechture has something of a bad reputation. And you know why?
Because it SUCKS.
Right now I am in Dupnitsa. Dupnitsa is in such a pretty location. There are mountains all around the town, and some even still have some snow, even though it’s painfully hot down here. It’s so jarring to look away from the mountains to find, not graceful old European buildings, or even aesthetically pleasuing new ones, but instead, horrible, dirty, gray, monotonous Soviet-style apartment buildings.
Bulgarians believe that drafts from open windows carry sicknesses that will kill them. So they like to keep windows closed.
They similarly believe that cold pavement will make you ill. So when I sat on a cold stone step at a restaurant (I had escaped outside to get some fresh, non-nicotiney air), my host sister ran out to drag me back in, as the stone would make me sick. Of course.
Going out without socks or wet hair will definitely make you ill. Even if it's 85 degrees and you have Bulgarian class in 10 minutes and your hair will dry on the way.
Don't give people even numbers of flowers in a bouquet. Odd numbers only.
Rakia (home-brewed whiskey) will cure all ills.
Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, and although the Turkish Yoke ended in the 1700s, they're still very bitter and angry about it. Consequently, Bulgarians don't like Turkey.
Or Greece. Because the Turks allowed the Greeks to prosletyze Greek Orthodoxy under the Turkish Yoke.
Bulgarians aren't too fond of Romanians, either. Not clear on why.
I’ve been in country for six weeks so far, and sometimes it’s been hard, you know. At my low moments, I wonder if I really made the right decision, if maybe I shouldn’t just call up Sofia and ask for that return ticket home. That’s when I think of Marla.
I studied in Jerusalem in 1998-1999, during my junior year of college. I was there through the University of California’s Education Abroad Program, and all of us UC kids got to know each other pretty well. We made up something like a fourth of the entire program. (We were ubiquitous to the point that in official class lists, students were classified as “year-long students”, “single semester students” or “UC”.) One of the other UC students was Marla Bennett. I’d hesitate to really call Marla a friend, but I definitely liked her. We just never had any classes together, she went to Berkeley and I was at Santa Cruz, we simply never became close, but I liked her. She was a nice person, just good. This is Marla: in the spring of 1999, a whole bunch of us went on a school organized hiking trip in the Galilee for a few days. At one point, I was really tired, and sat down to take a breather. My tired and sweaty classmates all passed me by without a word. Except Marla. She stopped when she saw me. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Yeah,” I told her. “Just taking a moment to catch my breath.” “You’re sure you’re fine?” I assured her I was, and satisfied, she went on.
That was the sort of person she was, just really thoughtful of everyone. I know that she did volunteer work with Ethiopian immigrants, and she helped out with the crew for our Hillel production of Les Miserables. You can Google her name and read a hundred articles about her myriad kindnesses. But, like I said, we weren’t close and after we returned to the US, we didn’t keep in touch. So I didn’t know that after she graduated from college, she went back to Jerusalem to do her master’s degree in Jewish Studies. She was just finishing up her degree program when she was killed by a suicide bomber in the cafeteria at Hebrew University. July 31, 2002. She was twenty-four years old. She was working On August 1, I was reading the news on the internet in my stupid temp job in Ann Arbor when I saw the news. I took a break and sat outside on the lawn and cried and cried and cried.
So, when my spirit is low, I remember that Marla isn’t here, and I feel renewed in my commitment to do be a positive force in the world. The world is worse for her absense, and it’s up to the rest of us to pick up the slack.
Sometimes, I think the Bulgarian language is a really, really, really elaborate joke someone is playing on us poor trainees.
