Greetings!
Holy Land is finally over and there’s only a few more sleeps
until Christmas and the New Year and so, rather than launch into another lengthy
travelogue, I’ll keep you entertained with a few more musings from my year in
Bulgaria, entirely apt since my old friend Mike is over there at the moment
doing, well, the same job that I once did. Lucky bugger.
Also, apologies for the late arrival this week; I've been having problems with the programme that I use to write my blogs and they aren't resolved fully yet. However, from now on things should at least be arriving on time.
And for those interested, here's another story of mine on Cultured Vultures. Please read and share 'Crown of Creation', inspired in part by my favourite rock band.
Also, apologies for the late arrival this week; I've been having problems with the programme that I use to write my blogs and they aren't resolved fully yet. However, from now on things should at least be arriving on time.
And for those interested, here's another story of mine on Cultured Vultures. Please read and share 'Crown of Creation', inspired in part by my favourite rock band.
And so finally, to kick things off, here’s a short piece on that most
important of topics: the philosophy of road repairs.
Keep travelling!
Uncle Travelling Matt
I: In the Beginning…
II: Shumen
III: Nazdravei!
IV: Razgrad and Isperikh
and remember, you can also read about my 2011 travels around Bulgaria!
LIVE FOR THE MOMENT
During my first month or two of living in Bulgaria, I was constantly aware of the pavements.[1] Now pavements are not normally something that occupy my mind a great deal. They are generally grey, paved and, erm… that’s about all. I usually walk along them without paying them much attention. But that was the problem you see. Walk along them and ignore them was not something that I could do in Bulgaria, for if I did, I would fall over. Frequently. The fact is you see, that Bulgarian pavements are uneven. Very uneven in fact. By and large they are not tarmacked[2] like those in Britain and Japan, but instead constructed out of concrete slabs, about fifty square centimetres in size. And these slabs, being rather light, soon end up not as flat as they perhaps should be.
‘Why the hell don’t they repair the bloody pavements a bit more
often!’ I chuntered to myself on more than one occasion. Time spent in the
country however, showed to me that in fact, they do. Regularly. Forever are
pavements being pulled up and re-laid. Far more so than in England actually.
The question remains therefore, as to why are the pavements so
bad? The answer is easy to find; it’s the way that they’re laid. Now I’m no
expert on pavement laying, but even I know that if you lay some fifty
centimetres square paving slabs simply on a bed of sand and then cement the
cracks between those slabs, then yes, whilst the cement dries that pavement will
look pretty damn good, but six months down the road, cracks and bumps will start
to appear, and in a year or two the whole thing will need relaying. It is a
short-term solution only. Even a paving ignoramus like me knows that. The
Bulgarian paving crews however, it seems do not.
And so of course, I got to wondering as to why the Bulgarians,
(who are a highly-educated people), keep adhering to this incredibly bad system.
Of course, it is partially to do with economy. Spreading sand is certainly
cheaper than laying concrete, but to be honest, I don’t believe that that is it.
After all, would it not be cheaper to just lay down tarmac, (as most Third World
countries do), rather than paying for fancy paving slabs? No, the answer lay
somewhere else.
This all got me thinking and then reminded me of an incident
that occurred some years back. A Bulgarian friend of mine was getting married to
someone whom no one believed she would have a long-term future with. She herself
was far from sure too. “Why?” I asked.
“It seems right now,” she replied. “I don’t know what the
situation will be like in three years time.”
This reply perplexed me. How could one say anything so flippant
about such an important decision as getting married? It took another Bulgarian
friend to explain. “You think differently in England,” said she. “In Bulgaria we
live for the moment, think for now, not about the future. We dare not plan ahead
as we don’t know what is going to happen. In Bulgaria we have no security you
see. Look at my parents. They were told to save, that they would be looked after
in their old age. Then what happened? The regime fell and the currency became
worthless. All those years of saving were wasted. In everything in life, we
Bulgarians only live for the moment, enjoy ourselves now, and don’t think about
what will happen tomorrow. That way we can survive and not be overwhelmed by
what is happening.”
And thinking about it, she was right. From spending not saving,
to laying dodgy pavements that look good for a month or two, spending their last
leva on fashionable clothes and coffee to rushing into ill-matched
unions, many Bulgarians, (though not all of course), do live primarily for the
moment and not the future. And sadly, when the cracks start to appear and the
surface starts to get uneven, they then have to start again, right from Square
One.
Copyright © 2003, Matthew E. Pointon
Written in Druzhba, Bulgaria, June 2003
[1] Are you American? If so, what I’m talking about are ‘sidewalks’.
[2] That means ‘covered with asphalt’ my brethren from across the pond.
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