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I would like to tell you about a romantic memory I have from my youth when I met a person – I actually met the person with whom I have been sharing the days of my life for 22 years now – this is my husband. We met in Plovdiv. Common friends of ours introduced us to each other. I remember the first kiss he gave me, which happened on Dragan Tsankov Street when he was accompanying me on the way home. Later on, we started a family together and now we have a wonderful 13-year-old boy who is very loving and dynamic and we love him so much, and now we kiss him as well and we are very happy. So … I still cherish this memory because on that first date when we went out together, he gave me a traditional white-and-red lucky charm for 1st March as a gift. And just then – so very witty of him – with this gift he also gave me a kiss; I wasn’t expecting it but when I leaned and reached out my hand to take the lucky charm gift, he took advantage of the moment, and that is how it happened, and this is a very romantic memory for me. So, now we have been together for almost 22 years and we take care of our boy. We are still living in Plovdiv – it is a very romantic city – and here we were lucky to meet many pleasant and good people and they are all in love with the city of Plovdiv.
It was a long, long time ago. I was a sixth-grade student. I studied in the Old Town of Plovdiv, in the Armenian School. It was a place we used to visit with the greatest pleasure. Every day, after school, we used to walk in the old town. We were enchanted by the old Renaissance houses in Plovdiv – they are incredibly beautiful and interesting. There is a hill /tepe/, called Nebet Tepe with a lot of excavated ancient ruins; there are ruins from the 7-th century B.C. We used to sit among those ruins and talk – we talked about love, about our dreams. We were little children back then and everything was for us a big dream. So… what can I say ... there was a boy from school, a friend of mine who often beat me, and I used to beat him too, and that was how he showed me that he liked me. But it was actually bad for him because I used to beat him more often than he used to beat me. My memory is related to the stars under Nebet Tepe, to the walks in the Old Town and the dreams, the dreams more than anything else. We used to dream of how we would grow up and we wanted so badly that to happen as fast as possible, so that we are adult so that we could work and study, and travel, and have kids and families. And that time came so fast, so now … now we have only those memories …
I associate this place with the bridge over the rowing canal. There are bars on that bridge and people hang padlocks on those bars and they… they even lock their love in this manner – perhaps just like…maybe like on Ponte Vecchio or something like that may be pointed as an analogue.
We met in Plovdiv many, many years ago. I was there on an excursion and a congress. It was so interesting for me because everything was new. I met a very handsome boy. Later on he became my husband and the father of my son. We met in the Trimontium Hotel. Our first kiss was in Tsar Simeonov’s Garden – we were sitting there and it was so nice and romantic. And I will never forget those moments, which were so pleasant, so warm, and so good for me. Thank you, Plovdiv! Thank you, Bulgaria! C
MIND THE KISS
retro.pdf 1 19/04/2019 17:18:38