First night back in Bulgaria, in another grueling drive across Europe. Four days of fast/slow bum-numbing, sciatica-twingeing driving through autobahn road works and traffic jams, culminating in the Romanian experience of single track road passing through long village after long village at 40 km an hour, ended with our car, blocked by a long queue of lorries outside the Calafat Ferry port gate. But against all the odds, we were accepted on to the first ferry and so with waves of relief lapping over the rain swollen Danube, we slid inexorably toward the Vidin shore.
Just over an hour later, we were sitting at a table outside a Riverside Park restaurant, waiting for a meal of local trout and catfish. We still had another day’s drive before us, but now the tarmac and pot-holes beneath our loaded car’s tyres were Bulgarian and our dubious Bulgarian crash and break down cover would surely see us and our cargo safely back to Burgas in all eventualities.
Waiting for the fish to be prepared we quaffed a wonderful bottle of Cycle Gewurtztraminer, and still waiting for the fish I realised that through the Restaurant window I could follow the progress of a Bulgarian football match. Men in green were playing men in red. Two TV screens at either end of the dark crowded interior enabled every man to follow the action, wherever they were seated. But while they were watching with rapt attention, they were unusually silent. Annie commented on my good fortune, as my eyes turned from her towards the window. The fish still hadn’t arrived and we were in danger of finishing the bottle.
The men in green dominated the game. Quick and skilful, they flicked the ball past the men in red, whose bad temper increased in inverse proportion to the skills they were allowed to demonstrate. In dramatic close-up, a man in red went in for a tackle, lifting his studs to chest level and raking his green opponent from chin to knee, then as if suddenly aware he was on camera, he fell as if pole axed beside his writhing opponent. The crowd turned wild and the two teams’ managers squared up and had to be separated by the officials. A normal match, then. By now I’d realized that the team in red was CSKA Sofia, who in days of yore would have been 6-0 up on any team dressed in green. So who were these impudent upstarts?
At last the inevitable happened. A brilliantly executed green free kick left Sofia’s goalkeeper flapping the air as the ball hit the top corner of his net. There was a resounding silence from the restaurant interior. Who were these men in green? As the fish still hadn’t arrived, I went to conduct some research. I entered a space crowded in profound gloom. “Who’s playing?” The plump man spat out something that sounded like an oath. I had to ask again. The Greens were a team, I’d never heard of, so with a good natured grimace he spelt out its name syllable by syllable – “Lud-o-goretz!” The passing waiter confirmed that our fish had been caught and added the important information that this match was the culminating decider in the Bulgarian league championship. Whoever won, would be drawn in the qualifying stages of the Champion’s League in the summer.
“It’s a good match.” I ventured, only to realize that foreigners should not venture to comment on Bulgarian football, any more than Bulgarian politics. “It’s a terrible match!” the plump man contradicted me. “They’re playing so badly.” As if to prove this, a CSKA man was sent off, occasioning further scuffles on the sideline between the rival managers.
“I guess you’re all supporting CSKA,” I murmured. What could be more natural for the folk in Vidin to support a team from the capital 240 km away?
“Of course!” The plump man was astonished at my ignorance. “What normal person would support a team from Razgrad!?”
Ah Razgrad! Like Vidin, it was a distant provincial town, without the advantage of riverside walks or medieval castle, but with a dilapidated mosque in its centre and on its outskirts a whole ruined Roman city – in the centre of which fifty years ago, the Communists in their typical arrogance chose to build a pharmaceutical factory. Roman columns competed with brick chimneys, but in the end the brick chimneys had produced the money necessary to drive the Razgrad team from the third division to the top of the premiership.
“What team do you support?” We were now in familiar territory – a chance for the plump man to show off his encyclopedic knowledge of English football, past and present, and for me to admit a humiliating preference for my local team, Ipswich, rather than the mighty Manchester United, Arsenal or Chelsea – teams which normal people support.
The issue of which football teams normal people from provincial towns support heart and soul is one which should exercise politicians in any country. It would be wrong to assume that locals support the local team over regular champion teams. Having once sat in the Ipswich stadium in the heady days when Ipswich was still in the premiership, it was chastening to see the stadium full of local people, dressed in the colours of the opposition, Manchester United. It is a well known adage that in the UK most Manchester United supporters have little or no connection with Manchester.
But now as a result of globalization, Manchester United supporters from not just England but across the world to Bulgaria have had to swallow a bitter pill this year. Russian and Middle Eastern oil revenues have bought the Champions League and the Premiership titles for Chelsea and Manchester city respectively. And the price of medicines produced in Razgrad has rocketed Ludogoretz from the third division to the premiership title in just a few years. What normal person would believe it?
It was time to eat our fish.
2012
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What Normal Person!
May 29, 2012 by Christopher Buxton
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Dimitur Boyadzhiev and Marseilles
May 14, 2012 by Christopher Buxton
Just one of those coincidences! I completed my sixth novel a week ago. Part of the action is set in 1920’s Marseilles where a Bulgarian ex-POW becomes so immersed in the exotic criminal hurdy-gurdy world of the notorious red-light district, that he does not want to return home to his small town nestling in the Balkan foothills.. Before starting the book, I recalled from Borsalino that Marseilles was the Chicago of Europe. I hadn’t yet realised its significance in Bulgarian history. Not only was it a staging post for emigrants to America, but a dancer from Burgas made her name on its principal stage alongside Josephine Baker and in its main street the VMRO activist Chernozemski gunned down the king of Yugoslavia in 1934.
I am indebted to my friends and fellow writers, Doicho Ivanov and Ivan Burzakov for introducing me to the poetry of Dimitur Boyadzhiev, who worked in the Marseilles consulate towards the end of his short life. Boyadzhiev stands alongside Yavarov and Debelyanov. They are the three giants of 20th century Bulgarian poetry, writers in the tradition of Baudelaire and Rimbaud.
Boyadzhiev is sadly one of the many Bulgarian poets who took their own lives, while still in the bloom of creativity. I have put in a link to my rather liberal translation of his poem: Marseilles. It shows a rather different attitude to the city than my hero experiences.
And here’s an extract from another poem:
“So many folk
I saw through, understood
and today I am choked
not by wisdom but dread…”
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Kalin Terziiski
May 10, 2012 by Christopher Buxton
A few months ago I unwisely entered into a Bulgarian fratricidal internet debate following the award of a literary prize to Kalin Terziisky. I was duly patronised for my pains. How dare I – an Englishman – pretend to know something about Bulgarian literature?
Kalin is rightly a very popular and successful writer and this has inevitably attracted anger from pretentious critics who have sought lazily to attach the fatal label of chalga to his writing shoulder. There will come a time when the use of the word chalga will undergo serious review.
I had then only read Alcohol. I was excited by the freshness of vision Now I have read Madness and find that Kalin has the startling genius required of all great art.
Click here for a translation of one of the chapters
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Job Swap 5
April 28, 2012 by Christopher Buxton
(The story so far: As part of a European work-sharing initiative, the GLB Greatest Living Bulgarian Boyko Borisov and Posh-boy David Cameron have swapped jobs. Batty Boyko is now in Downing Street and firing on all cylinders, in spite of the double dip recession and the Levinson Inquiry.
David Cameron is a little more comfortable in his Boyanna Residence, away from the UK April rain)
GLB: Ey what a week! I phoned my Agriculture Minister – next time there’s a drought in Bulgaria, don’t send for the priests; just announce a hose pipe ban. I got drenched on my morning run past Buckingham Palace. Just getting ready to wave to Baba Lizzie and the heavens opened. Everyone here is talking about a doddery old Australian, called Murdoch. I phoned up Yulian Vuichkov. Who is this guy? Only turns out to own all the media in the western world. He owns so much, he didn’t even know he owned BTV. When he found out about Slavi and Aziz, he sold it. I’ve not been getting too good headliners in the Sun – not since I had a photo of me with Balotelli. It was only because my advisor told me I was being snapped with too many white footballers. Then the next day the story about the prostitute broke. Thank God she wasn’t Bulgarian. I phoned up Roman to congratulate him on his victory in Barcelona and booked a photo session with John Terry. Anyway this Murdoch guy is suggesting that he had a back-passage relationship with the Culture secretary and all the newspapers are shouting that I should give him the boot. There is just too much back-passage stuff going on and I have to be careful pronouncing this guy’s name. Jeremy Hunt, Hunt, Hunt! I don’t see what’s the problem, but the BBC takes a deep breath very time they say it. Our Culture minister’s Turkish. We don’t have problems with his name – at least as long as Volen isn’t around. Well I did have a laugh yesterday. I’d just been bollocking George Osborne for the double dip recession and the fact I’d caught him feeding caviar to the Downing Street cat. No wonder he can’t catch any mice. What is this double dip anyway? It sounds like that water slide in Sunny Beach. Just after that I get the news that one of Dave’s MPs has called us rich posh boys that don’t know the price of milk. I haven’t laughed so much in years. Me posh? My country all thinks I’m a thick peasant. I phoned up Yulian again. He knows everything. I ask him what’s a pint. He says I’ve missed the point.
Posh Boy Dave: It’s really rather pleasant here. The weather’s bucked up and I’m playing a lot of tennis. Bit of a scare the other day. Volen turned up red in the face. He’d read some story that the Macedonian Secret service had stolen the relics of John the Baptist from a church in Sliven. He wanted me to declare war and get them back before they could prove Jesus Christ was really Macedonian. I told him to “calm down dear!” I just love it that you can be politically incorrect here. As I thought the story turned out to be a spoof – just like that supposed interview where I rubbish Bulgaria. But just to calm him down I promised I’d get a briefing on Macedonia and all problems relating to it. I checked on the map – it’s closer than the Falklands and we won’t need aircraft carriers. We just need to get our heads round the language. They speak some kind of Glasgow dialect Bulgarian and Albanian. Meanwhile I’m getting a law out to confiscate property that was bought illegally in the last fifteen years. I asked the Vice President how we would find out which stuff was bought illegally. She laughed and said we should just rely on the neighbours. She muttered something about it not mattering how badly off you were as long as someone called Vutie was worse off. It looks like there’ll be lots of Vuties. Meanwhile I must have a chat with Rashidov – just to check whether Murdoch owns anything here.
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Review of Mona Choban’s “Dosta”
April 25, 2012 by Christopher Buxton
I shall be introducing the writer Mona Choban at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute on May 8th.
Over and over again in English bookshops I am reminded of how much readers are missing in the new timorous publishing climate, where so few foreign writers are published in translation and, for those that are, a kind of lottery system operates – one year South American, the next year Turkish, last year Scandinavian.
I feel this injustice in reverse of this every time I enter a Bulgarian bookshop. New globalizing practice dictates the books on most prominent display are popular works translated into Bulgarian. Rarely does a Bulgarian writer make it on to the first display stand that greets the customer. And yet on the shelves devoted to Bulgarian writers a stack of treasure awaits the reader who can read Bulgarian.
Mona Choban is an exciting talented versatile writer whose liquid clear prose disguises a depth of moral passion and an urgent neo-feminist message for our time. Her books are short but as with Jane Austen working on her “little bit of ivory”, their impact resonates long after they are returned to the bookshelf. Her versatility is evidenced by the way she moves through genres with ease – from her earliest so-called chick lit, to her dystopian science fiction and in her latest work, magic realism.
In Dosta Mona Choban develops a theme already present in her previous writing – a subtle but strong critique of the modern Eurovision world and the fraudulent model for perfect life it offers. Her heroine, Katerina withdraws from her emigrant life in Paris to return not just to her homeland but to a mountain village at the back of beyond, inhabited like so many Bulgarian villages by an aged population, who have maintained through their isolation access to an older wisdom.
Dosta evokes a pre-modernist village world where everyone knows each other’s business and newcomers are treated with proper caution. It is a woman’s world, a world in which remedies for ills are found in the inherited magical knowledge passed down the generations. But Katerina quickly adapts to this arcane world. But all is not entirely well. As with Susan Hill’s “Woman in Black”, a restless spirit from the past haunts the village and speaks through the village educated idiot, Pabob. This adds a page turning element of suspense.
Dosta is a wonderful untranslatable title – at once the obscure antique Bulgarian name, a name perhaps given to the last child in a large family and a word meaning much or even too much. Dosta is what Pabob shouts when he is upset. But its sinister second meaning only becomes apparent as the women of the village set about laying the troubled spirit to rest. Shame and horror lurk in the past.
Mona’s fellow Bulgarian writer, Kalin Terziski, describes her as a shining light. Great literature illuminates. And for another male reader (me) she has made me see the world in a new light.
