1st February

This is the Day of Remembrance and Respect to Victims of the Communist Regime. It’s not a public holiday, but it’s observed every year with ceremonies and wreath laying and, as the name suggests, it commemorates those who were killed or wrongfully imprisoned during the communist years between 1944 and 1989. It’s the 1st February due to the date in 1945 when the new regime consolidated their power by purging their political and ideological rivals (as well as anyone else who was inconvenient) by executing cabinet ministers, members of parliament, generals, colonels, and bankers after trial at a ‘People’s Court’.

Translating

There’s an interesting phenomenon with bi-lingual people - a kind of switch that triggers in the brain when they’re translating so that it becomes automatic. This can lead to confusion when you start picking up the language and trying to use it. For example, if a waiter asks me something in Bulgarian that I understand and I reply in Bulgarian, my wife will translate what I’ve said into English for them. This inevitably leads to embarrassment as speaking English is usually seen as being pretentious. I definitely won’t be exploiting this quirk or using it as motivation for learning more Bulgarian.

Commentator

My wife and I were the only people in the small store that we always go to for our Christmas Big Shop. Inevitably, we had The Conversation - even though the woman behind the counter was quite young. While we were filling up our baskets with non-perishable items, the woman provided a running commentary: ‘ah, you’re shopping really well. Reeaally well.’ She wasn’t complimenting our choices, she was complimenting our spending. ‘Oh, great shopping, great shopping.’ I suppose it’s possible that she didn’t realise she was speaking out loud but the effect was like being on an episode of Supermarket Sweep.

The Conversation

This happens about once a fortnight. It’s usually started by elderly shop assistants and filtered through my poor, perpetually translating wife:

Assistant (in Bulgarian): ‘Where is he from?’
Wife (in Bulgarian): ‘England.’
Assistant (in Bulgarian): 'Ask him if he likes Bulgaria.'
Wife (in English): 'Do you like Bulgaria?'
Me (in English): 'No, I hate it. That’s why I married a Bulgarian and I’ve lived here for five years.’
Wife (in Bulgarian): 'He says he loves it.'
Assistant (in Bulgarian): ‘Yes, we have beautiful nature.'

It’s generally ‘beautiful nature’ but sometimes it’s ‘fresh vegetables’. It's never ‘efficient bureaucracy’ or ‘reliable infrastructure’. 

Birthdays

Although the birthday song is exactly the same - and sung in English, interestingly - if it’s your birthday and you go out for a meal, you’re the one who’ll be paying. Similarly, instead of your work colleagues getting you a cake, you will have to bring in treats for them. Shops are well-equipped with boxes of individually wrapped small chocolates exactly for this purpose: Ferrero Roche or Toffifee or Lindor or, most commonly, Merci. You ceremoniously present this small chocolate to someone and they will respond by giving you a wish which will be something that includes health, happiness and success.

Zapoviadete (заповядайте)

For foreigners, it can feel very rude and disdainful to hand over money or put cash down on a table without saying anything in acknowledgement. The natural way to cover this is to say ‘thank you’ as you’re doing it - blagodaria or the more easily pronounced merci. This leads to difficulties if you’re expecting to receive change, however, as saying thank you is a signal that the transaction is now finished and you’re including the additional money as a tip. Zapoviadete is a replacement courtesy word to use instead of thank you and translates as something like ‘here you go’.

Soleti

Crisps aren’t such a big part of everyday life in Bulgaria as they are in Britain. You can only get them in ‘grab-bag’ size and there isn’t anywhere near as much shelf space given over to them in newsagents or supermarkets. They’re not called crisps either. Like the Americans, Bulgarians call them chips (which has frequently resulted in somewhat disappointing experiences in restaurants). The go-to unhealthy snack of choice is instead Soleti. These are long, thin sticks of a pretzel-like substance that come in different flavours and are sold in vending-machinable bags about the size of a regular crisp packet.

Flicking the Vs

The most frustrating thing about not knowing the language is the inability to protest or argue. You may be able to pick up that you’re being insulted, but you can’t respond in kind. This is why flicking the Vs is so valuable. Bulgarians aren’t familiar with the gesture and will most likely think that you’re suggesting they do something twice. Showing the middle-finger will provoke an instant frenzy of rage, but the Vs will cause confusion while satisfying your own sense of outrage. They may be able to pick up that they’re being insulted, but they can’t respond in kind.

Kovachevitsa

8km deeper into the Rhodopes than Leshten and slightly larger with several shops, restaurants and art galleries. The buildings here are older and very picturesque but keep the traditional style of the region with their distinctive stone plated roofs. The streets are paved with rocks and weave up the hill and down the valley as tributaries from the main road which you shouldn’t drive on unless you’re a local - the side streets are way too narrow for cars anyway. Supposedly the houses were built so close together so that rebels could escape over the rooftops in case of Ottoman raids.

Leshten

Built into the hillside around the road that weaves up through the Rhodope mountains, the village faces the Pirin mountain range so there are views of dramatic peaks and valleys everywhere around it. There’s a shop, a mehana, a sweet little art gallery, two churches, several hotels, and many summer homes. While everything looks quite new, the buildings have all been renovated in the traditional Bulgarian style: the lower halves in rough stone, the upper halves in wood. The most distinctive feature of Leshten - and this region in general - are the roofs which are tiled with thick, flat, stone plates.

Slippers

Bulgarians think that British homes all have two taps - one for cold water, one for hot - that our windows always open outwards instead of inwards, and that we don’t remove our shoes when we come in from outside. All of these are considered odd, but especially the shoes. In Bulgaria you always take your shoes off when you enter someone’s home. Instead of padding around in your socks, you’ll be given slippers to wear - usually the kind you find in hotel rooms. There’ll probably be a little cupboard near the door where a supply is kept for use by guests.

Bob

Beans. More specifically, white beans which have been slowly cooked in a clay pot with vegetables and herbs. The types and quantities of vegetables and herbs will vary, everyone has their own version, but there will usually be chopped onions, peppers, carrots and tomatoes. Bob is served in the pot with spearmint on top and is eaten as a side dish, often with sausage. ‘Sausage’ in Bulgarian is nadenitsa (наденица) and ‘with’ is c, so when combined the dish is: bob c nadenitsa, pronounced ‘Bob Snadenitsa’ which sounds like a reliable yet slightly bumbling veteran policeman in a crime novel.

Potatoes

I saw somebody - British or Irish, I think - who was complaining online about restaurants in Sofia. He said that whenever he ordered a meal, the server said: ‘You know that this doesn’t come with potatoes, don’t you?’ This probably happened around Vitoshka as the restaurants there are most used to managing the expectations of tourists who might expect the inclusion of potato to be so obvious that it doesn’t warrant mentioning on the menu. The potato is more of a main event here and not eaten very frequently. The staple accompaniment to a meal is generally some kind of salad.

Stray Dogs

They used to be a big problem due to various financial crashes where people couldn’t afford to feed their pets so set them loose instead. To deal with packs of dogs prowling around deserted streets and attacking vulnerable people at night, there’s now a catch, sterilise, and release programme - you can tell which ones have been processed as they have tags on their ears. The current strays are generally quite benign but still territorial. You usually see them loping around in pairs and there’s often a makeshift kennel nearby that someone has built for them on a scrap of land.

Tarikat (тарикат)

The literal translation is ‘swindler’, but it’s a bit more than that. The nearest English equivalent might be ‘player’ or ‘geezer’. A tarikat is someone who will use shortcuts, loopholes, lies, tricks or cons to get what they want - usually money. It’s often used as a term of address between teenage boys as they’re the ones most likely to want the cash but not the work it would take to earn it. The paradox is that those who aspire to be a tarikat are the ones who are least likely to have the quick-thinking or intelligence to actually achieve it.

Cultural References

Everyone’s vernacular is littered with cultural touchpoints that are impenetrable to outsiders. Even now, I still use quotes from British comedy shows in my everyday conversations, particularly Detectorists, Partridge, Father Ted, and The Office. I don’t edit myself for three reasons:

1. The other person gets the reference and you have an instant connection with them (this never happens)

2. They don’t get the reference but find it funny and credit you with being more witty than you really are (this sometimes happens)

3. They are utterly bewildered by the reference but you’ve amused yourself anyway (this happens most often)

Cigarettes

More people smoke here than in the UK and often, inside some bars and restaurants, the staff will bring around water filled pots to use as ashtrays when it gets suitably late. There used to be a brand called Victory Cigarettes but these were re-packaged as Rothmans a few years ago. Aside from these and a couple of the bigger American names, most of the manufacturers are Greek. The biggest difference is that smoking is gendered in Bulgaria. The female cigarettes are thinner and all white and you would never see a woman smoking one of the thicker, normal brands.

Day of Wine & Roses

This is 14 February so the roses come from Valentine’s Day. While it’s always fun to see Bulgarians carrying flowers and nice that the reds on the traffic lights at the bottom of Vitoshka change into little hearts, Valentine’s is an imported festival. In Bulgaria, 14 February is traditionally about wine. This is the day when people begin trimming back last year’s vines in preparation for the coming season and, as well as being a name day for any girl called Grozdana (Grozdi is Bulgarian for grapes) it’s also the day of ‘Trifon the Pruner’, the patron saint of vineyards.

Forgiveness Day

Like Lent, this is linked to Easter (seven weeks before) so the date changes every year. The tradition is that families get together around a meal of cheese and egg and the younger members ask forgiveness from the older ones. The fact that Bulgarians need a special day to remind them to say sorry says quite a bit about their general attitude. If you’re in a village out of the city, you’ll probably also see lots of fires on this day. People leap over them for health but, more normally, they’re used as a good excuse for a social gathering. 

Martenitsi

These are bracelets made of red and white thread that you give to everyone you know on the first of March. Everyone does it as it’s a tradition that everyone can get involved with regardless of age, nationality, background or beliefs. A couple of weeks before Baba Marta, temporary stalls pop up everywhere – particularly around public transport stops or anywhere with a lot of footfall – all of them selling countless varieties of martenitsi. You wear them until the first time you see a stork when you then take them off and hang them on the branch of a blossoming tree.