ERSATZ EASTERN SPIRITUALITY AS DECOR

THAT MAN STU: STILL AT WORK

a thought occurred a little while ago: WHY NO WORD FROM STU BAGS? but who STU? well, until the spring of this year, it was my good fortune to be working in an office very close to where Camden-based street artist STU BAGS keeps obsessively returning to the same chunk of wallspace. this blog has explored his work there on-and-off since May 2011, when his mysterious use of the phrase THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE first came to my notice.

now, more than two years later and using some very clever trickery, STU revisits that phrase:

UPDATE 26/8/2017 - VIDEO GONE! NAUGHTY STU! LINKROT!!

Bulgaria: ignore the guidebooks?

Consider this quote from a guidebook which accompanied me on my recent holiday: "Exclusive, fashionable and upmarket, Albena is as well equipped and efficient as Bulgarian resorts come." 

The small volume concerned, (Bulgaria Black Sea Resorts: Thomas Cook Pocket Guide - first written in 2007 and updated as recently as 2011) was authored by someone (a certain Debbie Stowe) who has surely never visited the place described in the passage above. Or possibly Ms Stowe attaches unconventional meanings to the words "exclusive", "fashionable" and "upmarket".

There is nothing wrong with Albena. The beach is long, wide and sandy, lapped by warm and shallow waters. The roads and paths connecting the various hotels, restaurants and other structures are tree-lined and pleasantly shady. But exclusive? Fashionable? Upmarket?

To visit Albena is to rub shoulders with working-class folk from around Central and Eastern Europe. Decent enough people to be sure. But nothing about the sunbathers and swimmers of Albena screams exclusivity. Quite the reverse, in fact. Presumably, the genuinely poor of Bulgaria and other CEE counties cannot afford a week or two in this Balkan sun trap. But Albena has a kind of Butlins vibe to it - a regimented factory system providing budget holiday opportunities to people of relatively modest means. The hotels are large and numerous. The place seems to be divided up into different zones, with groups of different nationalities having booked accommodation in different hotels. One place we pass seems to be occupied entirely by Romanians. Poles seem to predominate in a hotel complex a few hundred yards further on. Then we stumble across what appears to be a Slovak enclave. This is mass production applied to the business of taking a break from work.

Albena: signs in Romanian

OK, so it's not exclusive. Is Albena fashionable, then? Something or somewhere can easily be fashionable without being exclusive, right? So is Albena fashionable? Perhaps it is. But only if pot-bellied Russian dads working the too-small banana-hammock swimwear look have become arbiters of European fashion. Only if matronly mums (with big perms dyed extraordinary shades of burgundy or tomato soup) are achingly hip these days. OK, so it's not exclusive or fashionable, but has Albena somehow achieved upmarket status? Again, the answer must be no.

Our one proper exploration of Albena ended with a stop in something billed as a supermarket. But it was nothing of the sort. Instead, I was reminded of the stated-owned (or cooperative) shops in which I used to buy my groceries in Poland in the early 1990s. A hangover from the pre-1989 centrally planned economy. I remember them well. The goods were kept behind counters staffed by variously indifferent or slightly hostile ladies. Choices were limited and, at busy times, queues grew restless and impatient. It was a very good way to accelerate my learning of basic vocabulary and transactional language. I was briefly transported back in time to those long-ago shopping experiences on entering Albena's so-called supermarket, so similar was the appearance and atmosphere of the shop. Nothing upmarket about it.

Nowhere in Albena, in fact, did the eye rest on anything one might reasonably describe as upmarket. I wandered into a hotel lobby to use the ATM there. The place looked clean and reasonably well-kept. But upmarket? No.

The budget look and feel of everything was pervasive - from the slightly run-down condition of pavements, fences, benches and the like to the extreme shabbiness of a small Luna Park area offering tired-looking dodgems, roundabouts and fairground games.

Albena: cracked and weedy

It was in search of such kid-friendly stimulation that we had wandered into Albena in the first place. The junior member of the family is currently in the throes of an absolute mania for thrill rides and the like. So much so, in fact, that as we explored the area around our temporary bolt hole in south-east Europe, we were incessantly reminded of how much more exciting the planned post-holiday trip to Chessington World of Adventures was going to be.

Along with roller coasters and their ilk, our son maintains a special place in his affections for mini-golf and crazy golf. So we sampled both courses on offer in Albena. Not to put too fine a point on it, both of them were shit. The first one we tried was comically bad. The greens were made of thin pieces of metal and were almost all unplayable. Very weird indeed. On the upside, I really enjoyed the Balkan folk music booming from the little hut where the clubs were handed out. I do dig that kind of thing. 

Mini-golf, Albena

None of this is meant as a piss-take. I'm not sure that every west European visitor to a place like Albena would see it for what it is - a pretty decent holiday option for the people to whom it caters. But that's what I saw in Albena and it pleased me to see it. Because I can draw on memories of being in places most of whose residents would surely appreciate what this Bulgarian resort has to offer.

Almost twenty years ago, I spent ten months living on the edge of Osiedle Świętokrzyskie, a vast housing estate on the north-eastern fringe of Kielce, a middle-sized Polish city. While I know that conditions there have improved for many people in the years since I last saw the place, I understand that the standard of living for many more of my former neighbours remains well below what we are used to here in the UK. As I walked around Albena in the sunshine, I found myself thinking that the place would seem like a very attractive holiday destination for many of Kielce's residents. No sooner had that thought popped into my head than I saw evidence of Kielce folk having visited - a sticker bearing the name of Kielce's main professional football club. I also thought a little about Lovech, the seemingly waning Bulgarian city which we had visited on our way from Sofia to the Black Sea coast. Lovech, too, I thought, must be home to many people for whom a week or fortnight in Albena must seem like a very welcome prospect.

No complaints, then, about Albena. It is what it is. Long may it continue to offer what it does to those who enjoy the place. But that Thomas Cook guidebook? That really is a piece of crap. Its description of Albena is so inaccurate as to beg the question of how the hell it was written. My money is on a copy and paste job from something issued by Bulgaria's state tourism authorities. Given that our Thomas Cook pocket-sized Sofia city guide also contained some strikingly poor descriptions of major sights in the capital, I would urge all readers to treat that company's guidebooks with extreme scepticism.

Korona pany!

Feeling happy?

Remember Happy Eater? Presumably inspired by America's roadside diners, these dismal boxes of bad food were littered around Britain's motorways and A-roads between 1973 and 1997, when they were gobbled up by the corpulent and equally nasty Little Chef. The Happy Eater logo, you may recall, resembled a bulimic Pac-Man, managing to grin gamely while attempting to purge the ersatz "Real American" hamburgers that been dropped onto the kitchen floor in order to separate them from the frozen multi-patty clumps in which they were stored before being "griddled to order". Eating on the road in the UK is now stupidly expensive, but the recent emergence of mini-supermarkets at motorway service stations and the evolution of the pre-packed sandwich are moving the experience towards tolerability. But in their heyday, Britain's  two major highway dining chains exerted a baleful influence. If hunger struck, there were often only two choices: massively extend your journey time by leaving the motorway to seek decent fare in some town centre, or endure the entirely depressing ambiance of the Little Chef or Happy Eater.

But why would memories of Happy Eater come to mind while holidaying in Bulgaria? The answer comes in the form of this country's very own burgeoning chain of "casual" restaurants. As well as having a go at livening up the dining scene in the downtown areas and new retail parks of Bulgaria's larger cities, this expanding food empire (they're getting into franchising soon and are looking to grow across the Balkans and even into Russia and Ukraine) owns outlets arranged along the country's highways. As we were drawing closer to the Black Sea coast on Saturday afternoon, we stopped at one by the side of the E772 and close to the village of Kyosevtsi.  Hunger had definitely struck, thirst was also an issue, and we hadn't seen anywhere else to grab a bite for quite a few miles. Having spotted other branches along the often narrow and often bumpy roads which pass for major routes in Bulgaria, I wasn't really keen. The chain rejoices in the name Happy Bar & Grill, which, along with its presence by the country's main roads, was what evoked memories of the late, unlamented Happy Eater chain.

As we clambered out of the car on a sweltering afternoon, I asked myself why anyone ever risks including the word "happy" when naming a consumer brand. Surely a case of setting the bar too high when it comes to customer satisfaction? Happy Eater must be the definitive case in point.

Putting these thoughts to one side, we went inside. Definitely a case of that wannabe US dining experience, I thought. Another contribution to the blanding and homogenisation of life under globalisation: sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly ironing out the millions of local differences that make it interesting to travel around the world. But the simple fare (local variations on the burger and chicken nugget themes, really) was edible and served up with the swiftness you'd like when wanting not to take too long a break from your journey. However, while the beer (my other half was driving) was nicely cold, I can't say the food or anything else about the place made me happy. Happiness is elusive, isn't it? I'm not sure we all agree on what it is. Is it found in those short bursts of joy which brighten the day and remain in the memory? Or is it more to do with long stretches of contentment about one's lot in life? Or is it both? Or do the answers to these questions vary enormously across cultures and personality types? Fucked if I know. But I feel sure that eating an inexpensive burger in a nicely air-conditioned building with free WiFi, while alright in itself, is not an experience from which genuine happiness can be derived.

I was also struck by the demeanour of the efficient waitresses working there. Simply put, these girls did not look happy. Nothing like happy. Perhaps not actually completely miserable. But not happy. Bright eyes and dazzling smiles were definitely not in evidence. I don't know if the wages are bad or if tips are generally not forthcoming (I tipped, by the way), but every face spoke of some lack of joy. If I were to guess at the source of melancholy among the waiting staff at the Kyosevtsi branch of Happy Bar & Grill, the uniforms would be my hunch. I think it's pretty rough on those girls that they are asked to wear what can't even really be described as miniskirts. Pelmet would be more like it. It must be reasonably unnerving to think that bending for a dropped fork would involve showing your underwear to a roomful of diners. Maybe it gives some customers a little thrill, but is it really cool in a place most of whose patrons (in the summer, at least) seem to be folks with their kids on the way to the seaside? Sort it out, Happy Bar & Grill. The little skirts might be contributing to the gap between the implicit claims in your brand name and the looks on the faces of your perfectly efficient and polite staff. It was better than the fucking Happy Eater, though.

A pause for thought in Lovech

Having explored the monuments and other sights of Sofia, and having been surprised by the omnipresent street art and graffiti in the Bulgarian capital (all while being fairly clueless about the anti-government protests rumbling on during our brief stay), on Friday morning it was time to begin a gently paced journey to the villa which we've rented on the Black Sea coast.

Why take a holiday in Bulgaria of all places?
The broad Central and Eastern Europe region (take that to mean the former communist states of Europe) has been close to my heart for almost twenty years now. So I was keen to find time not only to laze around a swimming pool but also to explore a bit of Bulgaria, one the CEE countries that I'd not previously managed to visit.

My interest in the region began quite by chance when I was presented with a wholly unexpected employment opportunity that took me to a Polish city of which I had never heard prior to accepting a job there in September 1993. I expected to stay in Poland for just one year. But the people were hospitable, I made wonderful friends (some of whom I still see occasionally all these years later) and it was genuinely fascinating to get to know another country better than it is possible to do on a short holiday or business trip. So that one-year stay ended up being a four-year stay.

Since returning to the UK from my stint in Poland, I have sometimes managed to find ways of making a living from my interest in the CEE region. Simply put, my time in Poland, as well as equipping me with some understanding of opportunities presented by the ways in which the region's economies were developing, had imbued me with an ability to be perceived as somehow more than averagely simpatico when speaking with people from that part of Europe. In a couple of different jobs, I would often find I was in a race with one or more competitor based, like me, in London and seeking to take advantage of the same CEE region opportunity I was working on. In every case, I appeared to find it a bit easier to open the right doors. I remain convinced that the key factor at play was the feel for life in the region which I had gained from living right at its heart. This is not meant to imply that I believe the region to be culturally homogeneous. Far from it, in fact. Rather, while the peoples of these countries do have some shared memories of living with communist systems, I have found the differences between them as interesting as the things they have in common. 

How the west sees the east?
I recoil a bit, then, whenever I hear anyone from western Europe or North America generalising about "East Europeans" - especially when the generalisations are by way of making some uncomplimentary point. I am thinking here about certain observations which can be made when some British people discuss recent immigration to the UK. But that is by no means the worst of it. For example, I have occasionally overheard British or American men referring to the young women of either some particular CEE country or of the region as a whole, sketching a crude characterisation of disadvantaged and therefore easily exploitable objects for the lust of anyone shopping for sex. For anybody who thinks in those terms and especially for anyone capable of seeing something funny in this kind of idea, I would recommend a viewing of Lilya 4-ever, a harrowing film directed by Lukas Moodyson which examines the issues of human trafficking and sexual slavery, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl from an unnamed former Soviet republic. If this movie failed to disabuse our imagined viewer of his squalid ideas, I would draw a very unfavourable inference about his capacity for human decency. What, then, of anyone who found Moodyson's film in any way titillating? Well, I don't want to meet that person.

I have no idea to what extent the notion of the exploitable East European is a widely held view in western Europe or how many people think it acceptable to try to take advantage of it. But I know that this idea is not only about a cheap leg-over on a stag weekend or the supposed availability of young brides for middle-aged men from more affluent parts of the world. As I write this, I am reminded of a particularly unpleasant remark that was once made in my presence in the kitchen of a large, comfortable house in London to which my wife and I were invited for lunch. Our hostess that day was the person who made the remark I am thinking about now. Before having children she had pursued a fairly lucrative career in financial services. Her partner continues to work in that field. In common with many of London's richer residents, she uses the services of full-time helpers whose role involves performing many of the more menial and demanding tasks that most parents do for themselves when bringing up kids. She was comparing the merits of employing British versus East European women in this context. "I always prefer to have an East European girl," our hostess opined. "They're cheaper, more grateful for the job and easier to get rid of if things don't work out."

I am not interested in disputing the truth of this comment. Sadly, it's almost certainly factually accurate. But I was struck by the lack of feeling for a fellow human being that seemed to be exemplified by our hostess's words. Not only was she unashamedly open about seeing people primarily as a commodities, but she had also constructed a hierarchy of exploitability, with the degrees to which we can take advantage of another person's neediness arranged along an east-to-west cline.

Going off the beaten track
In the years that followed my return from Kraków, my work-related travels have taken me not only back to Poland (numerous times) but also to Russia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Romania. As well as making these various trips, I am certain I have met at least one person from each of the other countries of the region, as well as from all of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. While all of this was going on, I started to pick out further CEE countries as holiday destinations. So as well as coming over here to Bulgaria, I've also enjoyed breaks in Croatia and Montenegro. Every time, I've managed to see a bit more than the area immediately around my sun lounger. I know many people love to do nothing more than sunbathe, swim and take some refreshments on board and I don't mean to imply here that those kinds of holidays are in any way inferior to the ones I enjoy. Different people like different things, that's all. But I would get terribly restless were I to go no further than the beach or pool. I simply always get the urge to see a few old buildings, walk a few back streets, drive on a few back roads and attempt to get a feel for something beyond the usual tourist experience. It's extremely fortunate that my other half feels the same way about holidays.

The plan here, then, was to spend a couple of days getting to know the capital city and then to drive across the country, making an overnight stop along the way. Those previous trips to Montenegro and to Croatia's northernmost and southernmost regions have taught us that driving conditions can be a bit unpredictable. In the same country, it's possible to find both areas in which the roads are wide, well-kept and adequately signposted and areas in which the way ahead is narrow, bumpy and hard to navigate. With this in mind, we opted not to set ourselves an ambitious task on the first day of getting used to driving in Bulgaria. So, selecting a place to stay mainly on the basis of being rather less than halfway between Sofia and our eventual destination, we ended up booking a hotel in Lovech. Of this small city, we knew almost nothing. The sum total of my knowledge of Lovech was the existence of its football team, whose exploits in European competitions were something of which I was vaguely aware.

Lovech, the guidebooks tell us, has a long and eventful history behind it. Inhabited by Thracians around six thousand years ago, the town has since seen the arrival of Roman soldiers, the twelfth century signing of an important treaty between the Byzantine and Bulgarian empires and the fifteenth century occupation of Ottoman Turks. The most prominent figure in the Bulgaria's later struggle against Ottoman rule was Vasil Levski. Lovech was the centre of operations for the resistance movement led by Levski in the nineteen century. During that time, it seems, the town was among the wealthiest and busiest centres of trade in Bulgaria. But the impression we gained during our very short stay in Lovech was of somewhere whose prominence and prosperity seems to be on the wane.

That said, one fairly major employer does provide what I imagine to be, in the local context at least, reasonably well-paid jobs. The town is home to a vehicle assembly plant operated by Litex, a partner of the Chinese auto manufacturer Great Wall Motors. If, like me, you're a football fan and had heard of Lovech's professional team, you will recall that the word "Litex" forms part of its name. The club, founded in 1921 and originally known as Hisarya, has changed names many times during its history, adopting its present incarnation in 1996 when Litex supremo Grisha Ganchev took it over. Although now active in auto assembly, Ganchev's company started life in fuel importing and trading. On our travels this week, we have already filled the car once at a Litex petrol station. In Lovech, the Litex brand is pretty prominent. A mural depicting the vehicles to whose manufacture it contributes was one of the first things we saw on entering the town.

Lovech: strangely familiar

As we pressed on into the town centre, I felt an odd sense of familiarity. Because while Lovech is surrounded by a very different landscape and is laid out somewhat differently, I was immediately reminded of Kielce, the Polish city in which I found myself almost twenty years ago. I only spent ten months living there, going on to spend the majority of my time in Poland living in the rather livelier Kraków. But when in Kraków I had reasons to revisit Kielce on numerous occasions. So at one point I could claim to know the city fairly well. That said, my last trip there must have been some time in 1996, so I expect it has changed a great deal and I am aware that I am comparing the Lovech of today with the Kielce of about seventeen years ago. Maybe that says something about the lower base from which the Bulgarian post-communist economy has developed versus the Polish experience. But whatever the reasons, and however shaky a proper comparison might prove, the visible similarities were striking for me - a down-at-heel, sleepy town centre lacking the familiar retail brands that we know across the somewhat homogenised western European commercial landscape; a pretty extreme state of dilapidation of the infrastructure, as evidenced by terribly pitted road surfaces and run down public buildings; a ring of cramped and dilapidated public housing just outside the central business district.

In Sofia we had seen graffiti remarkable not only for its quantity but for the size, complexity and colour of many of the pieces. Work of that nature was generally not in evidence in Lovech, but the walls were smeared very liberally with marks that suggested that some of the town's younger people may exist in a state of nihilistic boredom: as well as countless simple graffiti tags, we saw white power symbols, swastikas, crudely drawn genitalia and references to football hooliganism. 

Don't take these remarks about the look and feel of Lovech to be by way of condemnation. My experience of living in Kielce started to teach me that wonderful people with interesting lives can be found in the visually unprepossessing and less well-known towns and cities of Central and Eastern Europe. If you ever visit Poland as a tourist, I'll wager that Kraków will be on your itinerary and that Kielce (or other middle-sized Polish cities like it) will not. But I had a good time in both and I suspect that the younger, more adventurous version of myself would have found a way of enjoying life in Lovech had I ended up working there instead of in Kielce.

Another similarity between the Lovech of today and the Kielce of my memories was the evidence, in both places, of decades of communist-era town planning. In addition to the preponderance of public housing blocks, parts of the town centre reminded me of parts of downtown Kielce. I think anyone who has visited a number of CEE countries and has had the opportunity to look around beyond the castles and cathedrals of their capital cities will have started to build a mental map of what public spaces looked like behind the Iron Curtain. In this respect, I found that Lovech largely conformed with the personal schema for a CEE town that I began to develop when wandering around the centre of Kielce twenty years ago.

That said, one difference did stand out. In Lovech today, kiosks selling magazines, cigarettes, confectionery and so on seem to be thin on the ground. In the 1990s, in every Polish town I visited, both large and small, such kiosks were in plentiful supply. In Kielce I learned some important basic vocabulary by shouting through the tiny grille of one particular kiosk, trying to make myself heard above the noise of trucks and buses and above the howling of the wind blowing in from the Świętokrzyskie mountains. On Monday mornings, I would buy a copy of Gazeta Wyborcza at that kiosk and scan the small print of the sports pages for QPR's score from the weekend. Living abroad in the pre-internet and pre-mobile phone age, folks. News from home was a scarce and precious commodity.

Later, travelling to other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, I could see that the humble kiosk remained a staple feature of the retail scene all over the region. But perhaps even in a place as sleepy-looking as Lovech, where the independent shopkeeper does not yet seem to have been blasted out of the water by well-capitalised chain stores from Germany or France, the kiosk has had its day. The Wikipedia entry for the town refers to a steady flight from Lovech to a more favourable job market in Sofia. Maybe the conditions have just become too tough for many of the hard-working independent retail pioneers who built nice little businesses when Bulgaria began its transition away from a centrally planned economic system. Hence the abandoned, sad-looking husks of kiosks we saw dotted about the place.

If you do find yourself in Lovech... 

Should anyone responsible for the development of tourism in Lovech read this article, I guess I won't be thanked for my description of the town. So I should restate the fact that what's presented here is only drawn from a very brief visit. Those passing through but with more time to spare would doubtless find something of interest in the various museums dedicated to preserving and presenting the town's rich history, not least the period during which Levski was at large in the area. A large and appealing park with a zoological garden can  also, apparently, be found close to the town.

If, then, your travels do ever take you to Lovech, we can, without hesitation, recommend a truly excellent place to stay. The Family Hotel Varosha 2003 is real little gem. With just eleven comfortable, clean, rustically furnished rooms overlooking the River Osam, this is one of the most delightful places I've ever stayed. Everyone working there was incredibly welcoming. We splurged on a suite of two bedrooms, a kitchenette and a bathroom (with very fancy jacuzzi!) for just €70 (in advance, via a hotel booking website). Both bedrooms were air conditioned (the Bulgarian summer is stifling) and we had a neat little balcony overlooking the courtyard restaurant where you take breakfast. Do also have dinner there. The cooking was excellent and the place seems to be extremely popular with locals as well as with the handful of foreign guests staying in the hotel.

Finally, Lovech is reached by driving through very striking countryside - heavily wooded mountain ridges interspersed with welcoming-looking valleys. But do be warned: the roads leading to the town are, in places, in VERY poor condition. It's a bumpy ride and I wouldn't fancy it in bad weather.

For me, though, Lovech offered not only a gem of a family-owned hotel in which to break our journey across the country, but also pause for thought about the varying paces of change across the states formerly behind the Iron Curtain.

A strange monument to the state of Bulgaria

We are still heading east towards the Black Sea, taking it easy and working up only a pretty leisurely pace. Yesterday, having eaten and slept well only yards from Bulgaria's current round of anti-government protests, we picked up a hire car (Is it normal for a SEAT Córdoba to appear to be very badly built? Squeaking and rattling madly right from the word go?) and started out for the coast. About the journey, and about our stopover in Lovech: more later. In the meantime, a quick look back at one of Sofia's real curiosities.

On arriving in the Bulgarian capital, we were immediately surprised by the sheer quantity of graffiti and street art smothering on the city's walls and street furniture. In Europe, surely only Berlin can rival Sofia when it comes to the volume of spray can work on display.  But Sofia's graffiti writers can trump their German counterparts in one respect - the extent to which they have got away with defacing (improving?) major monuments in their home town. 

Most famously, a monument honouring the Red Army in World War Two was given a colourful temporary makeover a couple of years ago, with the bronze socialist-realist figures of heroic Soviet soldiers transformed into figures from American popular culture including Superman, Captain America and Ronald McDonald. We didn't see that monument (presumably still in the condition to which it was restored once the Banksyesque references to comic books and fast food had been scrubbed clean), but we did spend some time walking around what remains of a 32 metre-high structure built in 1981 to mark the occasion of the 1300th anniversary of the foundation of the First Bulgarian Empire. Not for the first time, our slim Thomas Cook guidebook proved to be woefully short of information, simply describing this large monument in terms of being ugly. So we were not prepared for the structure's state of extreme dilapidation or for the fact that the more easily reachable sections of its crumbling surfaces are liberally covered with large, colourful pieces of graffiti. None of this appears to be of a political nature. Just the standard braggadocio of the spray can artist, as far as we could see, but shocking, nevertheless, simply for having been applied to such a prominent piece of state-sponsored sculpture, albeit one that has perhaps never been loved by the Bulgarian public. Writing for a popular architecture news website, Alison Furoto informs us that the monument was completed in a hurry, resulting in poor quality work. So much so, apparently, that marble plates covering the construction began to fall off just four years after the inauguration of the piece. This must have caused something of a safety issue because we could clearly see that the monument had been designed to encourage visitors to come very close to its intertwining structures (meant to symbolise the past, present and future, according to Furoto). The base of the now-ruined monument is set in a kind of trench, some metres below the lawns of the large park in which it is set. In its brief heyday, it would have been approached via concrete steps leading down from the paths criss-crossing the park. Furoto writes that the monument was "completely abandoned by the authorities"  by the early 1990s. A fence does surround the vast structure, but this is also in a very poor state and it is very easy to gain access to the crumbling steps and to the base of the monument. Moreover, none of the Sofia citizens snogging on benches or walking their pooches batted an eyelid when I cleared the fence, walked down the steps and got busy with the camera.

We liked Sofia. Even with protests in progress and police vehicles in abundance as a result, the city seemed to have a pleasantly laid back sort of vibe. There are also a good number of points of interest in the standard touristy sense - churches, major public buildings etc. But I don't think I'm being uncharitable when I describe the Bulgarian capital as having a rather worn appearance. The graffiti everywhere is just one part of this. You will also notice that the city's infrastructure is crumbling. Loose and missing paving stones are expertly navigated by the many chic ladies in their vertiginous high heels. But I certainly lost my footing and turned my ankle more often than I would in London. Many buildings, too, looked a bit unloved. But even in this context, nothing really prepared me for the visual effect of a huge monument in prominent location having been thoroughly vandalised and left to rot for many years. The effect, however, was one that I found strangely beautiful.

Oblivious in Bulgaria

In stifling heat, we had a better look around the streets and sights of central Sofia this morning, before adjourning for a very good lunch of delicious salads washed down with grapefruit-flavoured beer (sounds horrible but was amazingly refreshing). This is not a tourism blog so you'll find no snaps of the various churches, mosques, synagogues, monuments, public buildings etc. which caught the eye. A number of the pics seem to have been spoiled but some sort of greasy spot on the camera lens anyway. The bloody blob really stands out on any shot involving an expanse of pale colour, e.g. the sky or a whitewashed wall. But a few more graffiti and street art snaps have come out OK, with the offending mark being lost somewhere in a busy and/or darker-coloured part of the picture. Still can't get over how much wall space and street furniture has been painted on by artists and graffiti writers. In many cases, the wall of an apartment building or shop on an apparently busy street will feature a huge and complex piece that must have taken some time to do. I'm not sure how it is that the graffiti writers, particularly, manage to get away with their stuff in such public locations:

The weeks leading up to coming here were taken up with work-related bullshit of an incredibly aggravating and time-consuming nature. This is my excuse for flying into a new country with absolutely no clue about the political situation here. We were idly wondering about various low-level protests that seemed to be going on here and there around the city and were unable to decipher what was written on the placards and banners being carried about the streets. It seems, then, that predominantly educated and middle-class people have been expressing their discontent with a recently elected but already-unpopular government. Up to yesterday, apparently, weeks of protest had passed pretty peacefully. Trust me to be in town when it finally boiled over, with the Parliament building attacked and a few injuries sustained by protesters. That said, we were blissfully unaware of this, despite staying at a hotel which is very close to all the main government buildings. Full of rich food and too much wine, we had staggered back to the room and were dead to the world while it was all kicking off around the corner. Let's see what else we can manage to miss during this holiday...

повече креативност от София

An evening stroll ending with unsuitably rich food and a Bulgarian wine that seemed just a bit too musky took us past yet more walls and street furniture that had felt the attentions of the street artists and the graffiti guys:

Стени на България

This year's summer holiday is to be on the shores of the Black Sea. The journey there involves a stop in the Bulgarian capital. Prior to coming here, I had no idea that the city's walls feature graffiti and street art on an almost Berlin-like level in terms of pervasiveness. This stuff is EVERYWHERE:

BRIGHTON ROCKS AGAIN