The comfort of strangers
"Life is full of little things" ran a popular UK advert some years ago. And it’s true that our abiding memories of a country often include quirky chance encounters.
If asked for my recollections of early 21st century Bulgaria 30 years from now, for example, I’m sure I wouldn’t bore my listener with my opinion of the TV debate between Stanishev and Borissov circa 2009. But I might reflect on the time when we were at our "country estate" (a slight euphemism) in Velingrad when my wife’s distant relatives paid us an unannounced visit, carrying homemade rakiya that almost blew away my nostrils.
Or the time when, travelling from London alone, my late night flight was diverted to Plovdiv from a fog-bound Sofia on a savagely cold winter morning. Without a phone, lost in Mladost at 4am and unable to find our block, I was forced to seek shelter in a local all-night supermarket, comforted by staff with a glass of red wine.
Randall Baker’s Bulgariana* is in the same vein, an affectionate anecdotal 400-page series of reminiscences about Bulgaria written like a blog. Distinguished Professor Baker – now a teacher of International Relations at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia – has written numerous academic treatises. But this is no dry appraisal of Bulgaria’s problems; it’s the minor delights and inconveniences that are recorded here with relish.
Banitsa and other stories
Like so many expatriates, a chance encounter brought him to Bulgaria in 1990. He ended up helping to found the New Bulgarian University, then based in two rooms, but now home to 14 000 students.
Welsh-born Randall, who lived and taught in Indiana for many years but now lives permanently in Sofia, has peppered his book with these anecdotes that will put wry smiles on expats’ faces: his reflections on problematic Bulgarian lifts, letters getting lost en route to addressees in communal blocks, Bulgarian commuters’ attitude to bus tickets – "I bought it so if I want to give it away to someone else I can" – or one of his favourite stories, the time when a friend insisted on coming to his house and cooking home-made banitsa.
Randall had warned the visitor about a mouse in the oven but she ignored this, thinking it was a joke. Can you guess the rest? Well, you would not guess who ended up eating the banitsa...
Randall is a young 65-year-old with a vivacious twinkle in his eye. "The nice thing about Bulgaria is that you can spot the criminals early on. In no other country are they so obvious," he says, recalling the words of an American visitor in his book. But Bulgariana brings out the endearing side of life here: the spontaneity of the people, the leisure opportunities that have evaporated in the rat race of the West.
Randall’s capacity for friendship must account for the turnout at the book launch in Sofia’s Military Club. Among the audience were some of his university students, two ambassadors, his translators – "I use the same translators for every book (this is his fourth) so that they catch all my nuances" – and longstanding friends from the UK (including one who met Randall back in 1963), various landlords (Randall has divested himself of property, believing that ownership tends to diminish the holder) and sundry others.
Optimism
Recent books about Bulgaria – Kapka Kassabova’s memoir, for example, was an affectionate but slightly acerbic read – have been slightly forbidding. Randall has a different take. What we are witnessing, he says, is a country still in the birth pangs of capitalism. "A decade years ago all my students wanted to emigrate abroad. Now, that’s no longer the case. One of Bulgaria’s problems was a possible brain drain of talent. Two million left, people who could have made a difference, hence there’s no middle class," he says, citing derisory salaries.
Randall rates his students brighter and more intellectually curious than their American counterparts. He thinks Bulgaria could be cosseted from the worst of the global downturn simply because the reckless granting of loans, a conspicuous cause of recession in the West, was absent here. He’s struck by the dichotomy between supposed poverty and the fact that you can seldom get a seat in a restaurant.
So why the relentless bad press and doom and gloom? "Perhaps it started with 500 years of Ottoman rule. If you expressed happiness you were somehow validating your oppression by an alien power. Bulgaria always picked the losing side in every conflict, then endured 50 years under communism, so maybe the gloom is only natural," he says.
He believes that people in the West are congenitally depressed despite their wealth and that Bulgarians are actually better off than they realise. "I read an article in the Washington Post that said that most Americans only have two friends. Nobody has any time for socialising; they’re too busy working. That would be unthinkable here." (At the book launch Randall asked people with only two friends to raise their hands and nobody did). "I love the fact that people will call on you unannounced, it’s like the America of the 1960s or Wales when I was growing up."
No doubt, many readers will know exactly what he means.
*Although Bulgariana is only available in Bulgarian, published by Ciela, Randall hopes to interest a publisher in an English-language edition, citing 28 000 people in Bulgaria with little English-language material about Bulgaria to read. Meanwhile, we all have a new incentive to learn Bulgarian...
If asked for my recollections of early 21st century Bulgaria 30 years from now, for example, I’m sure I wouldn’t bore my listener with my opinion of the TV debate between Stanishev and Borissov circa 2009. But I might reflect on the time when we were at our "country estate" (a slight euphemism) in Velingrad when my wife’s distant relatives paid us an unannounced visit, carrying homemade rakiya that almost blew away my nostrils.
Or the time when, travelling from London alone, my late night flight was diverted to Plovdiv from a fog-bound Sofia on a savagely cold winter morning. Without a phone, lost in Mladost at 4am and unable to find our block, I was forced to seek shelter in a local all-night supermarket, comforted by staff with a glass of red wine.
Randall Baker’s Bulgariana* is in the same vein, an affectionate anecdotal 400-page series of reminiscences about Bulgaria written like a blog. Distinguished Professor Baker – now a teacher of International Relations at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia – has written numerous academic treatises. But this is no dry appraisal of Bulgaria’s problems; it’s the minor delights and inconveniences that are recorded here with relish.
Banitsa and other stories
Like so many expatriates, a chance encounter brought him to Bulgaria in 1990. He ended up helping to found the New Bulgarian University, then based in two rooms, but now home to 14 000 students.
Welsh-born Randall, who lived and taught in Indiana for many years but now lives permanently in Sofia, has peppered his book with these anecdotes that will put wry smiles on expats’ faces: his reflections on problematic Bulgarian lifts, letters getting lost en route to addressees in communal blocks, Bulgarian commuters’ attitude to bus tickets – "I bought it so if I want to give it away to someone else I can" – or one of his favourite stories, the time when a friend insisted on coming to his house and cooking home-made banitsa.
Randall had warned the visitor about a mouse in the oven but she ignored this, thinking it was a joke. Can you guess the rest? Well, you would not guess who ended up eating the banitsa...
Randall is a young 65-year-old with a vivacious twinkle in his eye. "The nice thing about Bulgaria is that you can spot the criminals early on. In no other country are they so obvious," he says, recalling the words of an American visitor in his book. But Bulgariana brings out the endearing side of life here: the spontaneity of the people, the leisure opportunities that have evaporated in the rat race of the West.
Randall’s capacity for friendship must account for the turnout at the book launch in Sofia’s Military Club. Among the audience were some of his university students, two ambassadors, his translators – "I use the same translators for every book (this is his fourth) so that they catch all my nuances" – and longstanding friends from the UK (including one who met Randall back in 1963), various landlords (Randall has divested himself of property, believing that ownership tends to diminish the holder) and sundry others.
Optimism
Recent books about Bulgaria – Kapka Kassabova’s memoir, for example, was an affectionate but slightly acerbic read – have been slightly forbidding. Randall has a different take. What we are witnessing, he says, is a country still in the birth pangs of capitalism. "A decade years ago all my students wanted to emigrate abroad. Now, that’s no longer the case. One of Bulgaria’s problems was a possible brain drain of talent. Two million left, people who could have made a difference, hence there’s no middle class," he says, citing derisory salaries.
Randall rates his students brighter and more intellectually curious than their American counterparts. He thinks Bulgaria could be cosseted from the worst of the global downturn simply because the reckless granting of loans, a conspicuous cause of recession in the West, was absent here. He’s struck by the dichotomy between supposed poverty and the fact that you can seldom get a seat in a restaurant.
So why the relentless bad press and doom and gloom? "Perhaps it started with 500 years of Ottoman rule. If you expressed happiness you were somehow validating your oppression by an alien power. Bulgaria always picked the losing side in every conflict, then endured 50 years under communism, so maybe the gloom is only natural," he says.
He believes that people in the West are congenitally depressed despite their wealth and that Bulgarians are actually better off than they realise. "I read an article in the Washington Post that said that most Americans only have two friends. Nobody has any time for socialising; they’re too busy working. That would be unthinkable here." (At the book launch Randall asked people with only two friends to raise their hands and nobody did). "I love the fact that people will call on you unannounced, it’s like the America of the 1960s or Wales when I was growing up."
No doubt, many readers will know exactly what he means.
*Although Bulgariana is only available in Bulgarian, published by Ciela, Randall hopes to interest a publisher in an English-language edition, citing 28 000 people in Bulgaria with little English-language material about Bulgaria to read. Meanwhile, we all have a new incentive to learn Bulgarian...