TRAVEL
Reflections on a sojourn in Bulgaria Prue Salasky
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s the bus barreled across the Thracian plain towards Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, it followed a five-hour straight course west from my temporary home of Burgas, an ancient port on the shores of the Black Sea. Along this route, 9,000 years of civilization have etched their narratives. The armies of Alexander the Great (and his father, Philip, before him) marched this way, as did occupying Slavs and Turks, Germans and Russians, all passing the same Neolithic mounds and once treasure-filled Thracian tombs as the modern traveler. The plain and its richly layered history never failed to spark my imaginings. That day, I was further entranced by my first glimpse of storks, their spectral white figures harbingers of new life since ancient times. I had no inkling that this would likely be my last time traversing the distinctive landscape, its spring-touched fertile land rimmed by the Balkan Mountains on the horizon. After six months of a 10-month teaching assignment through the U.S. Fulbright program, I was taking a week’s personal leave, flying from Sofia to attend my daughter’s wedding in Baltimore. I was filled with anticipation at reuniting with my family to celebrate such an auspicious occasion, but also excited to continue my Balkan adventure. I had plans to visit Istanbul, Kiev, Odessa, and Israel, and every weekend promised visits from family and friends. Then, fate intervened: After my arrival in Baltimore and just one day before the March 14 wedding, Fulbright cancelled all its programs worldwide due to the novel coronavirus pandemic and sent everyone home—effective immediately. My foray into Eastern Europe was abruptly over, with no time to return for goodbyes or even to collect my belongings. Two days later, I returned home to Norfolk and started the readjustment to U.S. life in the COVID-19 era. Meanwhile, I mourned the loss of an additional four months to dig into the fascinating culture, language, and history of Bulgaria.
History and geography As a nation, Bulgaria dates to 681 CE, making it the oldest continuous civilization in Europe, but its land was inhabited centuries earlier by groups from the pre-literate, metalworking Thracians to Romans, Greeks, and Romaniote Jewish communities. There is layer upon layer of history to uncover in this intriguing and beautiful land, which also has the greatest biodiversity in Europe thanks to its location regarding glacial retreat. Imagine a place the size of Virginia bounded by half a dozen neighbors, but instead of Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina, the shared borders include shifting lines with Greece, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey. In its most recent glory days, starting in 1878 when with Russian help it reclaimed independence after 500 years of Ottoman rule (aka “the Turkish yoke”) and ending with World War I, Bulgaria stretched almost the width of the Balkan peninsula, touching the Aegean Sea in the south and the Black Sea to the east. In its heyday in the 10th century, it stretched still farther to the Ionian Sea. Today, the Balkan nation remains sandwiched between larger powers, bounded by the River Danube to the north with the Black Sea its only remaining coastline. It has a still-declining population of 7 million, almost a third of whom live in and around Sofia, down from a peak of 9 million under the Soviets in the 1980s. Initially neutral, then allied with Germany in WWII, Bulgaria and neighboring Romania changed sides in the waning years of the war, and both fell into the Soviet sphere between 1945 and 1989. Now a member of both NATO and the EU, Bulgaria is on course to adopt the Euro in 2023. Purportedly, as many as two million young Bulgarians currently live and work overseas in search of economic opportunity. Buffeted by so many influences, Bulgaria has a proud, but understated culture, one in which people reveal themselves and their connections slowly. For me, the country had multiple lures: It offered an intriguing location,
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poised at the juncture of Europe and Asia; from high school Russian studies I was familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, in actuality invented by Bulgarian clerics, which I naively thought would make language acquisition a breeze; as a student of history it offered an unparalleled opportunity to see up-close a post-Soviet society struggling to establish and maintain the institutions and mindset necessary to democracy; and professionally I had the chance to practice my language-teaching skills gained through a recent Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics. And, not least, it halved the distance between me and my family in London. It didn’t disappoint on any of those counts, but it also had an unanticipated impact: for the first time I didn’t just know about the complete and utter devastation wrought by the Holocaust across Europe, but I felt it in lives and communities lost. The ghosts were everywhere visible.
Massive brass chandelier in synagogue in Sofia
would likely have swastikas carved into them. All true, and hard to reconcile with the strikingly gentle, modest, inclusive, and caring people I met. At a U.S. Embassy presentation, I sought out the resident physician, a New Yorker married to a secular Israeli, and queried him about Jewish life in the community. He said he attended holiday services solo at Sofia’s magnificently restored 1909 synagogue, the largest in the Balkans and third largest in Europe, and that he and his wife kept a kosher home. When pressed about anti-Semitism, he also mentioned, but dismissed the Lukov March held in Sofia each February. Though no longer sanctioned by the government, the march continues to attract thousands of neo-Nazis to honor the memory of the Nazi-sympathizing Bulgarian general. “You will find that Bulgarians take
Learning the basics Our program started with a 10-day dawnto-dusk orientation in Sofia on everything from teaching and language to customs, food, and holidays. During this, I and my 30 U.S. colleagues (average age 22.5 years) learned that 85 percent of the population identify as Orthodox Christian, 10 percent as Muslim, and 5 percent as “other.” The country’s estimated 2,000 to 6,000 Jews (most sources cite the lower figure) don’t number sufficiently to even rate a mention. For me, in all our tours, talks, and outings, the very absence of any mention was striking. By contrast, there were frequent references to the Roma, a vilified and growing minority often referred to as “gypsies,” possibly 10 percent or more of the population, who were also subjected to Nazi atrocities. We were constantly warned about a lack of tolerance for diversity, to expect racism and the free use of the ‘n’ word, and that many school desks Square of Tolerance.
