In the summer of 2005, my husband and I lived in Polkovnik Serafimovo, a tiny Rhodope mountain village about seven km south-east of Smolyan and named after Vladimir Serafimov, a colonel who saved the region from a Turkish attack during the Balkan Wars of the early 20th century.
We stayed in this village for six weeks as recipients of artist residencies through the co-operation of two men, Lyubomir Levchev and Hughes Griffis, whose arts foundations joined forces a few years ago to form an exchange programme between Bulgaria and the United States.
Naturally, we were excited to have been chosen for this opportunity. We had absolutely no idea what to expect, given that we, like most Americans, knew almost nothing about Bulgaria, never mind its villages! Our friends were perplexed: “Why Bulgaria?!” (My answer: “Why not?!”)
The other American artists who had stayed at the foundations’ residency house in Polkovnik Serafimovo all returned home with smiles on their faces, so we suspected that we, too, would have a great experience. But there was no way our colleagues could have conveyed to us how truly extraordinary it would be.
Lyubomir picked us up at our hotel in Sofia to drive us to the village. The fetid mid-June heat, the narrow, potholed roads that wound around the mountains without a guard-rail in sight, and the (fortunately not literally) crash-course in Bulgarian driving protocol made the journey seem much longer than its four hours. But as the roads became worse, the air became better. The land was thickening with trees and rising up around us. We passed many villages on our way, and we wondered what ours would be like.
Our residency house was a three-storey building in the final stages of being refurbished and had the thick stone walls and the red clay tiled roof typical of village architecture. Stepping out of the sun into the dark, cool interior, we were grateful for its natural air-conditioning. Entering this place, with its low ceilings, rough-hewn beams and deep windows, was like taking a trip back in time.
We settled in and then began exploring the neighbourhood. There were houses in every condition from spotless to ramshackle. In between them, narrow dirt paths worn in the grass led to fields, to other houses, up into the forest or down to the village square. The air was marvellously still and quiet. No car alarms. No power tools. Occasionally we heard the crow of a rooster or the distant tink-tink-tink of a hammer striking metal. We saw people cutting tall grass to make hay for their livestock. The swish of their scythes sounded like water. We felt out of place yet somehow at home.
The nature was incredible. We discovered many trails through the aromatic pine forest on the north end of town. A twilight cow-path foray took us by a house full of people singing at the top of their lungs, accompanied by a gaida (bagpipe).
The scenery wasn’t always perfect. The remnants of consumer culture – soda bottles, water bottles, plastic bags – were strewn along some of the footpaths.
Polkovnik Serafimovo had more than 2000 inhabitants at its peak, and it was certainly evident to us that it had once been a thriving place with a larger population than its current 180. Near the village square was a forlorn old municipal building that was once a school; it was closed many years ago because there were no longer enough children living in the village to keep it open. On the other side of town, we found an abandoned factory with some of the old machinery still inside. All over the village there were houses in various states of ruin, some no more than crumbled foundations.
In a village this small, it’s obvious when strangers arrive. Our first on-the-street encounters ranged from curious stares to a tirade from an old woman who accosted us in the middle of the road. (After I learned more Bulgarian, I realised that she had simply been complaining about a big hole in her house.) We soon learned the standard practice of exchanging greetings with everyone you meet on the street (a far cry from the city!).
Almost no one spoke English, which of course inspired us to learn more Bulgarian. We ate lunch and dinner almost every day at a charming restaurant called Lovna Sreshta (Hunters’ Meeting); Tsonka, the woman who ran the place, was not only an excellent cook who prepared us Rhodopian specialities, but also made a real effort to communicate with us. At the end of most of our meals, she came out with her dictionary even as we were reaching for ours.
People handed me flowers over their garden fences and stopped by our house to give us vegetables or yoghurt. Someone brought my husband palachinki (crepes) while he was out painting one morning.
Our neighbours across the street, Lenka and Blago, looked after us in innumerable ways. Lenka belonged to the women’s singing group in the village. She invited me to a rehearsal, and I literally had a front-row seat to some very impressive music. During their performance in the village square two days later, the women, dressed in their traditional Rhodopian finery, treated me as one of their own, insisting that I stand with them as part of their group while they sang. And then there were the holy day celebrations, when young and old alike climbed steep paths to a tiny chapel hidden in the woods for prayers and blessings, followed by a picnic feast on the lawn. On one particular holy day, we and about 20 villagers squeezed into the back of a big, ancient lorry and crept up a muddy, bumpy forest road to a small mountaintop chapel as we chatted, laughed, ducked to avoid the low-hanging branches, and wondered if we were going to make it back down before an impending thunderstorm hit.
There is no way to completely replicate in words the depth of our experience in Polkovnik Serafimovo. The best way to understand it is to imagine how you would feel to have family waiting for you in a distant, beautiful place – family that you just couldn't wait to see again.
