Learning to Let Go and Dance in Bulgaria
Article and photos by Ariel
Bloomer
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Sunrise over
my home for 10 months in Smolyan, Bulgaria.
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Four months after my college graduation,
I was holding hands with Kalinka (Bulgarian for ladybug)
as she led me into the cultural-community center in the
small center of Smolyan, a city of 30,000 in the Rhodope
Mountains of Bulgaria. She was an older woman, a geography
teacher at the foreign language high school where I had
been placed, and she brought me each week to her folk dance
lessons. We were soon joined by other middle-aged women
who arrived still clothed in their work outfits and uniforms,
which were soon abandoned for tennis shoes and yoga pants.
Hand-in-hand with the women, I tried to keep up. Kalinka,
speaking very limited English, counted out the steps for
me in English as the instructor counted them out in Bulgarian.
The feeling of “trying to keep up” stuck with
me those few months in Bulgaria, where every moment was
a new, sometimes startling experience. Such is the trauma
and blessing of moving to a country off the beaten track.
Bulgaria brings few associations beyond Quidditch star Viktor
Krum in the American imagination, so in many ways I felt
I was learning about this country from scratch.
Bulgaria
in Context: 2,500 years of history
Bulgaria is a verdant country of seven million people, bordered
by Turkey and Greece to the south, Macedonia and Serbia
to the west, Romania to the north, and the Black Sea to
the east. The name of this European country may not ring
any bells for most Americans, but its history is interwoven
with the world history we know it, often under other names.
In antiquity, the area we now know as
Bulgaria was called Thrace. An increase in archeology across
Bulgaria has uncovered unique relics from the early Roman
and Thracian inhabitants. Evidence of this classical past
is seen in the Roman amphitheater still used for concerts
in Plovdiv and in the ancient chariots found in graves,
still pulled by the skeletons of their entombed horses.
The Rhodope Mountains of southern Bulgaria are the mythical
birthplace of Orpheus, and statues across the small city
of Smolyan celebrate the legendary musician and his tragic
lost love, Eurydice. Local legend has it that the cave where
he descended into the underworld to bargain with Hades for
the return of his love is also located in the Rhodopes,
in Trigrad Gorge. Tours of Dyavolsko Garlo, or Devil’s
Throat cave, are available to the tourists who come to the
gorge for hiking, cave exploration, four wheeling, and zip
lining.
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Roman theater
in Plovdiv.
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An influx of Slavs and Bulgars led to
a Bulgarian empire distinct from its Byzantine neighbors.
This is when Eastern Orthodox Christianity gained favor,
and it is still the majority religion in Bulgaria today,
eleven centuries later. Over the next several centuries,
control was wrested from the Bulgarian nobles by the Byzantine
Emperor Basil II, and then re-gained by the Asen dynasty
who founded the Second Bulgarian Empire with their capital
at Tarnovo, now known as Veliko Tarnovo, a beautiful city
whose fortress ruins overlook miles of the river below.
By the end of the 14th century, the
Ottoman Empire had subsumed Bulgaria, and would remain in
control of the population for half a millennium. I could
still feel the bitterness of this injustice of sovereignty
in my southern city, one of the last places liberated from
Ottoman rule. It was present in the tone of voice used to
discuss modern day Turkey, in the place names that referred
to tales of death and woe at the hands of Ottomans, in the
vehement celebrations of Bulgarian victory and independence.
The narrative of Bulgarian independence won from the mighty
empire felt omnipresent, and eclipsed the more recent historical
drama of communism. Bulgaria feels less a “state in
transition” as time passes, but it is clear that capitalism
has not cured all socio-economic ills in the country. Often,
the older Bulgarians with whom I spoke shared nostalgia
for life under communism: “we weren’t allowed
to think, but at least we could eat.” Portraits of
Lenin still hang in rural auto shops. To a co-teacher I
commented on how cute all the small fruit and vegetable
gardens were outside homes and on apartment balconies. People
need them to eat, she told me. The unemployment rate in
our district was 19%, and had been as high as 40% in the
past 15 years. I blushed out of foolishness.
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Inside Buzludzha,
the abandoned monument and meeting place of the
Bulgarian Communist Party, mosaics glorifying socialism
have fallen into decay. In this mural, the face
of Todor Zhivkov, Communist head of state from
1954-1989, has been removed by vandals.
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Tradition and Identity Today
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Cathedral of
Saint Vissarion of Smolyan, an Eastern Orthodox
church that opened in 2006.
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Years of fluctuating borders and sovereignty
has made the development of a specifically Bulgarian identity
an important national project. Folk music, dance, costumes,
and festivals are still popular parts of life, in a way
that may appear to conflict with the striving for modernity,
yet do not. Archeological finds of the roman city of Serdika
are on display inside Sofia’s metro. High school students
learn to play the kaba gaida, a Bulgarian style
bagpipe, in lessons after school, the way American students
may learn the fiddle. The first day of school each year
is a celebration ornamented with national costume dance
and music, and at my school, a ritualistic bite of bread
flavored with salt and honey consecrates steps across the
threshold into the building. The 20th century stress on
Balkanization created an environment where distilling and
distinguishing national culture was of great importance.
It is important for travelers to realize the ways that this
process is continuing, as Bulgaria continues to define itself
as distinct from Turkey, Greece, and the former Yugoslav
republics. Comparison across Balkan states is not taken
lightly, and disparagement of any aspect of traditional
culture is often taken at great offense.
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Participants
in the annual Surva festival in Pernik. Kukeri
are traditional mummers that scare away evil spirits
in festivals around the country between Christmas
and Lent.
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Bulgarian Language
With that said, Bulgarian language
shares much in common with the languages of other Balkan
states. Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene
are often mutually intelligible, though they use different
dialects and in some cases different alphabets. They are
all South Slavic languages, and their immense similarities
make traveling between the countries much easier. However,
learning the languages in the first place is a bit of a
beast.
As an out of the way location, there
are few language learning materials for English speakers
to learn Bulgarian. Most I initially found were geared towards
teaching tourists key travel-related phrases. Only a couple
of resources taught grammar and sentence structure, and
for some of these it was most helpful to have some background
in Russian language. Bulgarian language is obscure enough
that it is not available as a course through Rosetta Stone,
or through Duolingo (though crowd-sourcing language lessons
may help change this in the near future). The closely related
South Slavic languages go unrepresented in these programs
as well.
One of the most important things to do before moving to
Bulgaria is to learn Bulgarian Cyrillic, particularly if
you plan to live outside one of the urban centers. One great
way to pick up the language simply involves making your
own flash cards in order to provide drills on the sounds
associated with each letter. This was my favorite part of
the process, as I rediscovered the joy of learning to read
and sounding out letters to form words for the first time.
Teaching English in Bulgaria
English is not as common in Bulgaria
as it is in Western and Central Europe, but that is quickly
changing. In urban centers such as Sofia, Burgas, or Varna,
English-speaking tourists will fare just fine. Even in these
cities, English is primarily spoken by the younger generations,
with usage of the Russian language much more common among
the middle-aged and older. Even outside the large cities,
foreign language high schools are a popular option for high-achieving
students.
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Tradition persists
though such greeting rituals.
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The Fulbright program took me into its
fold with no teaching experience at all. My foreign language
high school in Smolyan included students ages 13-19, some
of whom traveled long distances from their home villages
to attend classes. 420 of these students were learning English,
and I had contact with each one of them. I co-taught, which
meant different things to each teacher. For some, it meant
I taught a lesson on current events or literature while
they stayed in the room to keep order. For other teachers,
it meant I facilitated activities, listening comprehension,
or dialogues from the grammar book. In the 12th grade classes,
I taught short writing assignments and CV-writing. So much
of the language-learning curriculum was directly tied to
books and geared towards the school exit exam, which I was
valued largely for the informality I brought to the classroom.
For one hour with me each week, students would be challenged
to hold conversation and discuss, think on their feet, and
translate their thoughts into words in real time. Some classes
took to this more naturally than others.
In many Bulgarian schools, a class stays together as a cohort
through all of its subjects over the five years of secondary
school. With such time and cohesion, the classes themselves
seemed like organisms, with the students as cells who knew
their place and function within the group. As a teacher
in a foreign environment with no teaching experience, it
was an intimidating dynamic. On my mid-year evaluations,
one teacher suggested I shouldn’t always be hugging
the white board, physically as far from the students as
I could possibly be. A student suggested a shot of rakia,
a Bulgarian fruit brandy, before class might make me less
nervous. My fear was showing despite my best intentions.
I was freezing up. My fear of failure, and my fear in general,
were making me tense, physically and emotionally. In teaching,
as in dance, tensing up can keep you from succeeding. In
these Bulgarian line dances, the body has to be loose, your
shoulders bouncing lightly as you match your footwork to
the dancers on either side of you. My classroom required
no shoulder bouncing, but even so, my students could tell
I was far out of step.
Struggle
and Change
Many of these students will leave their small towns to become
Bulgarian urbanites, moving to attend university and moving
back in much smaller numbers. An astounding number will
take advantage of Bulgaria’s EU membership to attend
university in the UK, Germany, Austria, or Denmark, among
others countries Many of the smaller cities and villages
around the country are witness to this wave of migration,
with a conspicuous lack of 20-somethings.
The demographics are changing, and so
are the politics. 2013 saw an unprecedented outburst of
protests over rising energy prices and perceived government
corruption, which led to the disbanding of Parliament and
a vote for new government officials. Even so, there was
not much optimism in the teacher’s lounge that day.
The negativity grated against my sense of American optimism,
but my supervisor explained they had been through this before
and seen so little improvement. The years of transition
following the fall of communism were characterized by hope,
she explained, but corruption persisted, the poor became
poorer, and organized crime syndicates flourished. All hope
seems like false hope, now.
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Citizens gather
for a protest in downtown Sofia.
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My students spoke with a different voice,
however. In a class discussion about career aspirations,
one girl said she wanted to be president. Others in the
class challenged her, asking why she would want to do such
a thing. The government is corrupt, it does no good. I want
to change things, she said. I will make it better. Other
students shared dreams of careers in journalism or medicine,
wanting to make things better in their own ways.
Preparing for Bulgaria
It’s hard to tell the ways in
which Bulgaria’s population, politics, and economics
will change in the coming years, but its participation in
the European Union ensures the need for foreign language
skills in the generations to come. Teachers (or novices
like myself) headed to Bulgaria will find an educational
market that values and needs native speakers. While English
language teachers are welcome, experienced Bulgarian language
teachers can be difficult to find outside the capital. As
I mentioned, few materials are available, so it’s
best to find the Bulgarian language books you want to have
online before traveling to Bulgaria, and then set up language
dates with a tutor, or lessons with a teacher if you can
find one. Teach Yourself Complete Bulgarian by
Michael Holman is a good text to bring.
Beyond language, there are other important ways for a Bulgaria-bound
expat to prepare. Learn to cook. If you live far from one
of the large supermarkets, you may not have many frozen
or prepared foods available to you. Produce in Bulgaria
is GMO-free, fresh, and often local at the abundant corner
markets. Learning to cook Bulgaria’s unique cuisine,
a gastronomic representation of their geographic crossroads
between Slavic, Turkic, and Mediterranean cultures, is one
of the best ways to augment your own experience to make
it richer and more flavorful.
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The view from
Bachkovo monastery near Asenovgrad
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Bulgaria has all four seasons, beautiful
beaches, ski resorts, and hiking trails, so clothing layers,
outdoor attire, and a very warm winter coat are must-brings.
My hiking boots, though far from fashionable, were put to
good use on the mountain trails, and in the winter, my pair
of Yaktraks, friction devices for the soles of my shoes,
were useful on the treacherous city stairs without railings
that iced over in the cold.
Finally, Bulgaria is not only a foreign
linguistic and physical environment, but a new psychological
environment as well. Reading fiction, history, and memoirs
from and about Bulgaria were useful for me to understand
yet further the nuances of a new socio-cultural milieu.
My recommendations are Solo by Rana Dasgupta, Street
Without a Name by Kapka Kassabova, East of the
West by Mirolsav Penkov, and Bury Me Standing by
Isabel Fonseca.
Before I Let [you] Go
On the last day of classes, my
school held a closing ritual much like the one I had
witnessed at the opening of the year. A student doing
well in his German lessons played the kaba gaida into
a microphone. I had run into him several times at the
cultural-community center as we went to our separate
lessons. A line of girls who had been folk dancing for
years were adorned in the red, gold, and green plaid
dresses unique to the Rhodope mountains, and led the
school, including the principal and the custodians in
a line dance on the blacktop courtyard. I still felt
like a stranger, but I knew this song, and I knew these
steps, and I knew these teenagers now. I learned to let
go of my dignity, which is perhaps just a fancy package
for shame, and risk looking silly in order to participate
in a dance and a language and a place into which I wasn’t
born. One of the Bulgarian words I heard the most was spokoino,
meaning “take it easy.” I was told so when
I tensed up about failing lesson plans, or when frantically
trying to find a bus, or when I was rigid while dancing,
or when I was stressing out about last-minute changes
to schedules. Spokoino transformed from an external
admonition to an internal mantra, and a month before
I left I had it tattooed on my foot as a personal reminder
to relax, that I cannot prepare for everything. I am
learning to be less scared of the unknown. On one of
my final evaluations, a student wrote: Ariel, I will
miss your smile.
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Students and
the principal of Smolyan's foreign language high
school dance together during the last-day ceremony
for graduating seniors.
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Ariel Bloomer taught
English in Bulgaria for a year through the Fulbright
program. She graduated from Scripps College in 2012 with
a major in creative writing and minors in European studies
and religious studies. She is now living in New York
City, where she works in residence life at the School
of American Ballet while pursuing a M.A. in Higher Education
and Student Affairs at New York University.
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