Some Ill-Informed Observations On Bulgaria

The last time I went to Central Europe, it was Eastern Europe, and it was Communist. The last two countries I visited – Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia – have gone the way of the USSR, and communist youth camps like the one that introduced me, a child of Polish descent, to the land of my ancestors are also (at least until the global economy goes even more tits-up than present) a thing of the ancient past.

Which means my already ropy geography gets quite spectacularly ropy once I’m east of Italy and into the region I know enough of to call the Balkans. Hell, I’m skiing them at the moment, and I’d STILL struggle to outline them on a map.

As to history? Well, pace my father’s interventions, that would go, as for elsewhere in the Balkans: “Hordes from the Central Asian steppe, ummm, two World Wars, ummm, Communism, ummm, are they in the euro yet?”

A case in point? Z and I were watching RED, the fabulous spy movie with John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman playing something close to their respective ages, and Karl Urban looking noticeably hotter than he did in the Lord of the Rings, which ends with a credit scene in Moldova.

“Where’s Moldova?” quoth my spawn.

“Nowhere,” quoth I. “It’s a made-up country for the purposes of the film. It’s like making up a ‘Stan, only funkier.”

And so matters rested, for a while.

“Mum!” he says, some weeks later. “A says Moldova is a proper country. And it’s part of the UN. And she works for the UN, so she should know.”

“I’m sure you must have misheard her,” I say, confidently. “Moldova was in Dynasty when I was little. It’s a made up place in the Balkans. Like Ruritania, in the Prince of Zenda. They had Prince Michael of Moldova…”

“What’s Dynasty?” he says.

“A TV series,” I say. “With Joan Collins. Long ago.”

“Who’s Joan Collins?” he says.

“A B-movie actress. She was famous for being famous when I was little,” I say. “Oh, and for Dynasty, obviously.”

He digests this, and returns to his screen.

“Look!” he says. “Moldova IS a country!”

“What?!” I say.

“I checked,” he says. “This is the national website of Moldova. It’s a proper country and here’s its flag. They even have their own internet domain. And they ARE in the UN.”

“Ummm…” I say, flannelling.

“You’re a moron,” he says. “You know NOTHING about geography.”

“The map of Europe has changed a lot since I was at school,” I say, feebly. “There were only 12 countries in the EU…”

Anywise, we are in the Balkans right now. In Bulgaria, in fact, which, gentle reader, I have always known to be a proper country, largely because it existed before I was born and continued to exist during my entire lifespan, not always a given in Europe, as in Africa.

And, yes, as an English citizen of Britain, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, with a Polish grandfather and a grandmother who grew up speaking French but whose family defined as English and popped across the Channel to give birth, I do know quite how uniquely confusing European geography can be.

As witness the following conversation in Vegas.

Bloke: “You’re British! So why don’t you guys give Ireland back to the Irish?”

Me (taking a deep breath and trying not to get into the whole English versus British thing): “The Irish already have Ireland. If they wanted Northern Ireland they could have it! Believe me, we’d love to get rid of it! But they don’t, so we’re stuck with it.”

Bloke (becoming rapidly less attractive by the millisecond): “But you British need to give Ireland back to the Irish!”

Me: “We’re trying! We’ve been trying for decades. Ireland is a separate country. It’s only Northern Ireland that is part of the UK, and we don’t want it. But nor does Ireland.”

Bloke (now decaying at plutonium speed into a goblin): “But Ireland is for the Irish.”

Me (taking deep breath): “Ireland is an independent nation. I belong to the United Kingdom, a different nation, which includes England, Wales, Scotland, some islands and a bit of Ireland, Northern Ireland, that got left behind when we gave Ireland back to the Irish because a lot of the Northern Irish think they’re British. And they’re not, well, most of us… .You see, Ireland is an ISLAND. If you think of a map, it’s on the American side of Britain, and Northern Ireland is a bit of that island… Oh, never mind…”

Anywise, here we are in Bulgaria. Which feels, well, Balkan. The language is reassuringly familiar, with notes of Polish and Greek (the Bulgarian for “one” is the same as the Greek, while “two” is the same as the Russian, and “da” means “yes”) overlaying a language really rather similar to, not to say borderline identical with, Russian.

In fact, you could get a long way in Bulgaria speaking Russian. Were it not for the fact that, for reasons related to recent history, when Russians speak Russian to Bulgarians, Bulgarians will go out of their way not to understand them, very much as the Poles do to Russians and Parisians do to, well anyone, ever, frankly.

Which is a right pain in the butt when you’re stuck in the queue for a lift pass, and the Russian insists on speaking Russian, the Bulgarian insists on speaking Bulgarian, and even in high school Russian you can understand both sides of the conversation but neither will give a bloody inch.

But I digress.

Bulgaria’s eclectic cuisine pleases. It’s a charming meld of heart-attack Slav dishes based on pork, lard, sausages, more pork and perhaps some pickled cabbage or veal, and those Eastern Mediterranean favourites such as stuffed aubergines and what everyone outside Bulgaria would call Greek salad. With feta. Which isn’t called that here.

Essentially, Bulgarian cooking can’t quite make up its mind whether you’re up a mountain tending sheep in winter or in the vineyard sweating over your grapes, although it’s pretty damn sure you’re not a vegetarian.

We are in a ski resort right now, so there are also a lot of potatoes with cheese, which comes (here) in two varieties: “yellow” and “white”.

National music tends to the bouzouki variety, a constructive reminder that the Greeks, much as they believe they’re Hellenic are in fact at least as Balkan as the rest of them, or dreadful Casio keyboard lounge (we’re in a ski resort, and I’m sure things are better in Sofia).

Axemen, ferocious warriors who slogged their way across the frozen steppe over a millennium ago, are a treasured part of the national heritage, leading to some comedy restaurant names and a lot of parental shouting along the lines of “No, you can’t have that axe! Where are you going to put it? Stop it! Or you’ll break that hideous doll and then I’ll have to buy it…”

The folk? Well, it could be because we’re in the south. But despite the fact that people seem to have those same Slav features I do, which means that our faces, in repose, alcohol or somewhere in between, tend towards Dostoyevskian, Chekovhian or Bukowski in mood, which is to say pissed in either the American or the British sense of the word, or, after about 6pm, both, they have a remarkably southern Mediterranean friendliness and warmth.

The skiing? Well, that’s pretty cool too… And I’ll be posting about that once my hamstrings feel less like rubber.