Orthodox Priests in Bulgaria

Weirdly enough, all of the Orthodox priests I saw in Bulgaria were extremely tall and handsome. I don't think it was just because they were wearing all black, but the height and the length of their robes striding around the monasteries was quite an elegant thing to watch.

Heat Wave

It was January, and there was no snow on the ground. The ski chalets, bought up quickly by British families, looked sad and bare on the black, muddy landscape.

After the huge car accident, the translator was called in by the police. She was a middle-aged woman with dark circles under her eyes; thin, chic, and tough. The police were very worried about doing everything correctly, even though their German was eerily perfect (I can only imagine how many German tourists crash on the highway here in the summer). Bulgaria is feverish about its entry into the European Union, and less than a month had past, so they wanted to handle everything as best as they possibly could.

We went over the papers and the details. There were reenactments with the cars getting crushed behind a giant semi-truck. The translator repeated everything for us in English, she was excellent, a true intellectual lady in this dusty car repair shop in the center of the country.

We talked to her a little, and although she was guarded, I learned that she loved French more than English and that it was her true passion. She dreamed of going to Paris and had even been there once. At that moment that was the only time her eyes lit up. She got a few calls from British friends, mostly people buying their summer houses in Bulgaria, and oh yes, she really loved Paris. She had been to East Germany before the wall came down; that was in the eighties. There were several other details, but I knew that she really wanted to be in Paris more than anything.

"There is a problem with the weather, yes," she said. My friend set out his jar of honey on the table and asked her what kind it was. "That's homemade. And... the weather is so warm this year, the warmest it has been in almost a hundred years, that the bees are coming out of their hibernation and looking for flowers that aren't there."

For a few hours we chatted until we couldn't pretend to be interested to her anymore. There were more papers to be filled. The car repairman came to us in his blue working uniform and spoke to us in perfect German also. I could see the countryside invaded with British and German tourists in the summer, all of them packed on the Black Sea, drinking and eating and revelling in the cheap prices and warm weather. It's like Cancun but in Europe.

The prices were embarrassing: 3 euro for a bottle of good wine, almost nothing for a gigantic dinner of fresh salad greens and meat and fruit. The economy collapsed in the nineties and many people, especially in the countryside, fled the cities and went back to subsistence farming. There were old grannies trudging along the highway with bundles of sticks, but then at the same time, puzzlingly gorgeous brunettes with knee-high boots stomping around in designer clothing. And oh, so so many expensive luxury cars. Not only did most of the service people speak German, they loved German products: Mercedes Benz and BMW automobiles sped along the roads next to us. And at the same time, the bearded men in worn-out tracksuits riding wagons pulled by horses, the wagons almost quaint until your eye caught the rubber truck tires nailed to the hubs.

We waved goodbye and rode to the coast with a young man who couldn't stop telling us that he really, really loves Germany. He spoke for an hour or two about his experiences dancing at the big theater shows there, and how he came from Sofia but was working on the coast because that's where all the jobs were. His German was impeccable. He'd rather live there than anywhere else! in the whole world! He loved how clean and logical western Europe was. And oh, how he loved dancing... Wherever you go there are always people who want to be somewhere else. It's very human.

It made me a little sad though. It reminded me of visiting the Philippines and how everyone wore anything from Europe or America ("the States") because it must be better. The red-eye flight to Manila from Berlin on Christmas Eve was crammed with Filipino overseas workers worn down from working 3 or 4 jobs in France, Italy and Saudi Arabia to return home triumphant with designer clothings and electronics. Landing in Hong Kong it became even more intense. Maids and long-haired pretty party girls swayed back and forth with enormous bags full of gifts.

All over Bulgaria I saw Western Union billboards everywhere. I had no idea they were even in this part of the world; it was like stumbling on the gigantic German grocery store chain Kaufland in the middle of Rijeka, Croatia. There were very graphic, easy-to-understand images of overseas Bulgarians wiring money home so that their daughters and sons could buy bicycles.

The enthusiastic car rental agent dropped us off at the Black Sea coast airport. He was so excited to speak a foreign language that he gave us even more details and information than the woman did at the auto repair shop. This was where all the jobs were, there was a housing boom because the Russians and British were buying summer homes and ski chalets all over for pennies, and things were looking up for Bulgaria. I saw advertisements everywhere in almost perfect English, offering farms and cottages for the price of a used automobile.

Everywhere were bumper stickers with small ribbons (banded with the colors of the Bulgarian flag) and the phrase "We are not alone." in English and Bulgarian. It was a little weird, almost like an X-Files slogan. I guess it summed up the bewilderment and dismay that many Bulgarians feel about being a country that very few people have an opinion of (either positive or negative). Maybe that's not such a bad thing?

orthodoxy in Bulgaria

In Bulgaria relatives put up announcements of the death of loved ones on certain anniversaries. The numbers are very symbolic; someone told me that you have to do it three or four times in the first month, then every few months, then every few years. I have lost the notes that tell me what the numbers are.

Until I knew this I kept thinking that there were an awful lot of people dying all the time. But for a limited number of the dead there are many remembrances; these include a heartfelt message and a photograph. Sometimes in some towns we saw many notices of young peoples' deaths, and we guessed that it was due to car accidents.

The photographs were chosen by the family. If I had a death notice, I wonder which photograph of myself my family would choose? I do not consider myself an extremely photogenic person, but I would hope that my photograph would represent me, my essence, something that none of the photographs I possess seem to do. In the photographs all of the people looked happy. For some of the older dead, a photograph from youth was in place, grainy and distant.

They posters were also very public, like wedding announcements. But in death, there seemed to be a deeper revelation. There was nothing about how much money the person had made or what career they had had. They were identified not really by age so much as by their relationship to the living. Here was this woman, she was our beloved daughter. I could make that out somehow with my Sesame Street Russian.



There was a standard design to all of the death notices, something very elegant and simple and black and white with a color photograph and maybe a fringe of flowers at the corner. Also, printed on a standard size. Who wants to choose the details of a death announcement? It looks so stressful, although I know someone somewhere out there has. It's like the morbidly cheerful funeral homes on the street by my apartment: picking out a coffin for the corpse of your loved one six feet under style, what could be more depressing and difficult to market?

After going by the posters the bereaved would then go into the church to pray, maybe light a candle. We stepped into a church and bought candles by mistake, because we thought that we had to pay admission for the church's upkeep. There were icons on the walls everywhere, candle holders, and little boxes of sand to hold up the candles.

A little old lady approached me at one church and through sign language and later through an interpreter asked me where I came from, and somehow illustrated the difference between the Catholic sign of the cross and the orthodox sign of the cross. I am not an especially religious person but remain one fascinated by religion.

My friend said that Catholics make the sign with an open hand and orthodox christians have a very specific way of holding their pointer fingers against their palms, and the order is also different. top, bottom, left right and switched around for the other religion. Apparently this is a huge source of conflict. Well maybe not today, but before it was.

The old lady was genuinely curious. She wore glasses almost as large as mine, and she touched me and gestured for me not to be afraid of going up to icons and looking at them. I must have looked a little intimidated; everyone else had a sense of purpose and went up and kissed the walls.



At one church we found a most sacred holy icon of the black virgin mary. Black and made in one of the holiest sites in Greece where no women dare to enter, remote and guarded by a bevy of monks and priests. The icon saved the town from death and destruction many times in the past. People shivered in its presence.

"You see," a friend told me once, an extremely wild and educated woman. "You don't understand. With these icons, they are windows to god. It's not idolatry. It's a mystical experience."

"I am not arguing against you," I said. But I couldn't understand it. I think I can understand it more now after I have been to such churches, especially when there are only two or three people from the town coming in during their lunch break. I can feel their belief and emotions, and see the symbolism of their steps and prayers.

The priests come in, intimidating with their long black robes and beards, looking like something from another millenium. Their costumes are from a time when Europe was centered further east. Somehow with the shift of power and time, Europe changed. The priests are sometimes solemn, but sometimes they are like familiar uncles and hug and hold the workmen close and talk to them about very intimate issues.



On our last day we dropped in on a service in a Russian orthodox church. The scents and chanting were every bit as mysterious as our first times inside a mosque. We stood there awkwardly next to people in their best clothing, not understanding anything but enchanted by the art and light and music. When I stepped out, I felt sheepish, barging in on something I didn't fully understand, overvaluing myself, but the service continued without me. I was just a sideways incident, barely notice or remembered, and the people were staring into the face of the universe through the eyes of the icons.

bulgaria road trip