Bulgarian thoughts from abroad

Author Archive

  1. Bulgarian thoughts from abroad

    October 30, 2008 by Christopher Buxton

    Being away from Bulgaria is a bit like coming off cocaine.

    UK is gripped by financial crisis and a febrile debate on whether to publicly decapitate two highly paid TV/Radio presenters – but it all seems incredibly boring. I trudge through piles of leaves, the days are alternately crisp and then soggy, the daily drama is just not there.

    My fingers stray across the keyboard to access Bulgarian sites – somehow to recapture that daily confrontation with excessive melodrama. I see that “suicide” has taken the place of street assassination in Bulgaria’s continuing soap opera of corruption in high places. A crucial Bulgarian question is whether a right handed man can shoot a revolver into the left side of his brain. Don’t experiment with this at home unless you’re sure the gun is unloaded and you have nothing to do with Ahmed Dogan.

    Previous episodes of “It was suicide wasn’t it?” feature businessmen who were able to shoot two bullets into their heads. Police seem to be baffled. I personally knew a fine young woman whose tragic shooting in a firing range was described as suicide in the papers the next morning even before the police had been able to produce an inadequate report. It was fortuitous that the papers got her name wrong as everybody who knew her found the suicide allegation ridiculous. However the ex-DS owners of the firing range had access to important journalists – the kind that don’t ask questions, don’t get beaten up,don’t have their stories spiked.

    Meanwhile western journalists see their articles on Bulgarian corruption driven to obscure pages by coverage of breast jobs, Madonna’s marriage, the banking crisis, celebrity bonking and the American election. Its good that Bulgaria still has those fearless fighters in Baties Boyko and Voden (Ha ha) Tout le meme chose – tout le meme shit.

    Still no progress on A Bulgarian Story! Petrol continue to avoid contact with Milka, in spite of a promised meeting with Mitko (above me there is only God) Subev. The Town Hall too will not provide adequate explanation as to why a perfectly sound building must be pulled down. Implementation of the Subev doctrine that every building which is built before 1996 should be deemed unsafe would leave Burgas looking like Dresden after the air raid.

    So while Milka sits in a raft without a paddle in the middle of the fast moving stream, Mitko Subev and the Town Hall watch from the bank. Now only just round the bend are the cascades, rapids and waterfall that will smash her raft to splinters and pitch a defenseless old woman into the rocks.

  2. Memorial for Monica Stewart

    October 24, 2008 by Christopher Buxton

    Dad opened the memorial exhibition on his birthday – 21st of October in the Mercury Theatre Digby Gallery. Dad and I were overwhelmed by the number of friends who made the journey – most from London but some from further afield.

    Charmian Eyre came from Birmingham, Ronnie Cunliffe came from Newcastle. John Keenan came from Ulster. Other former colleagues included Celestine Randall, Pam Ruddock, Eve Shickle, Peter Yapp, John Harward, Barry McCarthy, Sarah Thomas, Melvyn Hastings, Peter Laird, Giles Phibbs, Mary Gillingham Ian Granville Bell, Adrian Hutson, Romy Alison, Lorelei Lynn, Miranda Bell and Liz Mansfield rushing up from preparing for her superb performance as Marie Lloyd at the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. Former Theatre manager David Forder gave a lovely appreciative speech remembering David and Monica’s contribution to the success of the theatre in Colchester.

    A big thank you to Chris Snow for the preparing and hanging the photos and Chris Holden and Clare Birks for designing the whole thing.

    The photographs reflected the sheer variety of Mum’s work in the theatre from unpaid ASM in Perth, through Summer season at Cromer, on to Oxford, the West End, Birmingham, Colchester, leess, York, Milford Haven, Harrogate and Ipswich.

    The exhibition goes on till the 1st November.

  3. A Bulgarian Story – Petrol turns the screw

    October 5, 2008 by Christopher Buxton


    There have been some shocking developments in this story and it is time to unmask the main players.

    Step forward Mitko Subev the popular football boss and chief of Petrol. Mr Subev states that above him is only God and since he is the son of a general and a protege of Dobri Zhurov (Communist Minister of Defence), he feels he has little to fear even from the creator of the universe.

    Mr Subev who co-owns half the building on Vuzrazhdane 4, wants to pull it down and replace it with a modern office block. He would like to have total control if not total ownership of the resulting building.

    Milka Vulkanova has the misfortune to be co-owner of Vuzrazhdene 4. She is 84 and physically disabled. The daughter of a hard working self made man, she had to suffer considerable discrimination following 1944. All her father’s properties were confiscated and she was unable to work for many years. Thus she has a very little pension. Following restitution, her sole source of income came from rents from her half of Vuzrazhdene 4. She needs this money to pay for the full time 24 hour care she needs in a country where provision for the elderly is minimal.

    Mr Subev has used his financial power to have the house on Vuzrazhdene 4 condemned by the council. An order has gone out ordering its demolition. This was a tortuous process during which his company deliberately did not communicate to Milka what they were up to.

    Following an unannounced commission from the town hall that could find nothing wrong with the building, Mr Subev then paid 36,000 leva to buy his own experts. The resulting glossy report features emotive drawings of residents being crushed in a possible earthquake, almost managed to disguise the fact that even the expensive professors could not find any evidence that the building in its current state was unsafe. Burgas is not in an earthquake danger zone. Most of the older buildings in Burgas are not only in a much worse state of repair than Vuzrazhdene 4 but equally do not answer to the new building regulations. We await Mr Subev’s proposals for the demolition of three quarters of Burgas with interest.

    In spite of her disability and relative poverty, Milka has been conscientious in her relationships with her tenants. Thus she has paid for repairs to the roof and last year spent a considerable sum underpinning the ground floor, repairing damage caused by a chronic leak from the floor owned by Petrol.

    An unholy alliance

    Mitko Subev has not talked to Milka ever since she dared to quibble over his first and “final” offer a year ago. However he has courted her tenants assiduously in the hopes that they will leave and so cut off her only source of income. He has used the computer graphics report to try to scare them out of the building.

    He appears to have succeeded with only one of the tenants, the Austrian insurance firm, Grawe. Their representatives turned up at Milka’s judicial appeal against the demolition order, and appeared to be on very good terms with Petrol. The fear is that they will feel encouraged to sue Milka for lost income if they are “forced” to leave the building before their agreed five year term.

    (Incidentally, despite their expressed fears, Grawe have not withdrawn their staff from the building.)

    In this way Mitko Subev may hope to increase the financial threat hanging over Milka’s head – so she will agree to sell her half of the building for very little money. He has already sent a bill to Milka for half the expensive “expertise” he ordered up without consulting Milka beforehand.

    A final appeal

    Mitko, you know that in principle, Milka is not against your rebuilding plans. She understands economic realities, but your avoidance of meetings and your secretive plotting have done little to increase her confidence in you as a partner. This case is in serious danger of becoming notorious as an example of corporate bullying of a defenseless old woman. All she seeks is a fair settlement which guarantees her the appropriate support to which she is entitled. based on a continued income from the building plot her father bought all those years ago.

    Don’t be a leather-face! You may go down in history as such – and even God might not forgive you.

  4. Warning -Sofia bus tickets – or why sometimes it’s best to pretend you don’t understand Bulgarian

    September 9, 2008 by Christopher Buxton

    Bulgaria will always surprise you – no matter how much you think you know.

    I have developed the dangerous smugness of an old Bulgaria-hand. I know how to use a bus. You need a ticket for each journey and you need to perforate it one of the unobtrusive perforating machines that line the inside of the bus. Then for the length of the journey, you must resist the temptation to screw the ticket up and use it to clean your ears. There is always a possibility that a ticket inspector will appear and demand to see your ticket and check its unique perforation.

    Visitors arriving at Sofia Central Station will find no notices in the main foreign languages beside the central bus stops to help them. They may assume (wrongly) that tickets will be sold on the bus.

    Those blessed with a little Bulgarian willl discover that tickets can be bought at the nearby kiosk. They cost one lev each but if you buy a block of ten there is a discount, enabling you to make ten separate journeys for 7 levs 50.

    A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

    Even unsuspecting Bulgarians may not be aware of a number of small but significant rules that are printed in small Cyrilic type on the last ticket.

    First the tickets are numbered and must be used in ascending order. Passengers must be ready to show not just the perforated ticket but also the remaining unused tickets to an inspector to prove that they have not bought the ticket on the black market from an enterprising ticket tout.

    The second rule is fatal in its unpredictability. Foreign tourists are rarely single. They often come in pairs. So imagine you are a couple and you have bought a block of ten tickets – calculating that this will give you five journeys to and from the main tourist sites.

    On the third journey an inspector looms into view. Dangerously confident you hand over your tickets. The inspector has had no training in dealing with foreigners so he begins to shout. If you are unlucky enough to understand a little Bulgarian, you will realise that one of you is an unauthorized passenger and must pay an on the spot fine.

    It is absolutely your fault that you failed to read the tiny Bulgarian print on the last ticket, that informs you that the block is to be used by one passenger only. It is the duty of every citizen of the world to read the small print on the back of bus tickets.

    On this occasion I made the fatal mistake of revealing that i understood Bulgarian. Retelling this story I heard how someone had witnessed a similar scene recently. The Inspector had shouted at uncomprehending tourists and amazingly this had led to such a threatening revolt by the other passengers that the Inspector had to retire in confusion to get off at the next stop and immediately join the Attacka party.

    (Attacka is the extreme nationalist party. All foreigners apart from Jen Marie Le Pen are unwelcome)

    At the excellent Hotel Metropolitan I received a letter from the mayor of Sofia, Bate Boyko, welcoming me to his city. I would like to challenge him to explain the absurd public transport system in a way that every foreign visitor will understand.

  5. Registering for council tax

    September 8, 2008 by Christopher Buxton

    The DSK is not the only institution where satirical remarks are banned. A short narrow corridor on the second floor of a council building is filled with a crowd of patient folk. No-one is even sure who is the last in line.

    Everyone is here to register ownership of land, house or apartment so that they can pay the local Amenities tax. There are just two chairs, a table to fill out the seven page form and a closed door to the office where behind just two of the nine available windows council workers serve the public.

    Everyone is amazingly patient, swopping stories of queues they have known. The only grudging note of complaint is that given they are taking money off us we might have expected a slightly better environment. An available toilet might help given the long wait – but the door to the Staff toilet is locked.

    The form poses interesting questions about our flat including details about the way it was built – was it panel, brick or the alarmingly named pulzyasht kofrage that in my dictionary translates as crawling falsework. An hour passes and we are at last admitted to the inner sanctum.

    At window number 1 a woman checks our form and of course spots much to criticise. Corrections made we are directed to next available window.

    Window number 6 has a notice informing us that the window does not work with clients. This is just as well because behind the window there is nobody. Behind Window number 7 a woman is sitting, avoiding eye contact. We take our form to her. She is angry – and rightly so! – she hasn’t invited us to her window and she is busy!

    Woman number 1 points us to the untenanted window number 2. I wonder out loud whether I should offer to move the notice about not working with clients from window number 6 to window number 7. I am worried that the paper shortage in Bulgaria has resulted in there being insufficient notices for the non operative windows.

    At this point woman number 1 sharply calls for silence. My comments are inconducive to the smooth working of the office. A new woman appears complaing loudly that some member of the public has managed to enter the staff toilets. Her comments pass without any reaction from woman number 1. They clearly fall into the category of constructive criticism.

    Woman number 2 at last appears. She is used to dealing with imbeciles and patiently explains all the mistakes we have made in filling out the form. Finally we are registered to pay tax.

    I take my hat off to the Bulgarian education system. Very few English people could have coped with a form of such detailed complexity. In the UK even a two page passport form requires posters, information campaigns and help from specially trained Post Office counsellors.

Older Entries
Newer Entries