[size=85:1t2l6kb6]Sofia echo 26 June 2010

A life in the day of an expat



On Saturdays I wake up late. Often my daughter's is the first face I see, hovering over our bed. Children don't want to know about tiredness. They expect you to be up and running. I like to kiss her cheeks. The next face I see is that of my wife. She's an English teacher in Sofia.

My wife and I, and our daughter, live with my mother-in-law, in Mladost. She's a devoted, utterly self-sacrificing baba (grandmother). Her life has not been easy but she has withstood this without complaint. Cultural differences meant I used to make faux pas. For example, she gets embarrassed by compliments or gratitude (I'll make sure she doesn't read this!). To her it's just duty and she never understood why I used to thank her for good deeds done. My English sense of social etiquette and perceived over-politeness are funny to them. In the "
West"
(an expression I loathe but in this context unavoidable) we have a different way of speaking to each other – or perhaps it's just in our family. My mother used to ask my mother-in-law questions deemed normal for Brits, such as "
Do you like living in Mladost?"
as if a communist housewife living on a pittance had any choice where she lived.

I always look forward to our weekend breakfasts. Baba comes up with something delicious. For the uninitiated I shall elaborate. Sometimes we have mekitsi (fried doughnut-like creations), banitsa (a multi-layered crunchy dough that comes with cheese or pumpkin filling), palachinki (pancakes), pitki (little bready-like loafs full of cheese), buterki (little croissants made from special croissant dough bought from the supermarket with apple or cheese filling) and also French toast (toasted bread dipped in egg mixture and then fried).

The sun streams in through the bay window and breakfast is a leisurely affair but, to be honest, I think I've slowed down anyway since moving to Bulgaria in 2007. Most appointments seem to be movable feasts. Portugal, where I lived for five years, was not exactly time-conscious either, but Bulgaria seems even more relaxed.

Conscience pricks



I always ring my mother on the weekend after breakfast. I feel a tinge of guilt because she still lives in Portugal, but I left when opportunities dried up. Unfortunately, Portugal is incredibly inaccessible (and expensive) from Bulgaria, particularly since Bulgaria Air cancelled their weekly direct route to Lisbon. I have to fly to Munich or Frankfurt, then get another connection to Lisbon, and then down to Albufeira in the Algarve by bus.

If there's a sadness it's that my mother doesn't get to see her granddaughter as much as any of us would like – not since last summer, in fact. I know my mother finds it hard. She was in fine fettle until she was beaten up by a drunken English yob in 2003 and since then she's been unable to travel. Sometimes I ask her how she is and there's a melodramatic pause on the other end of the phone. It's tough for her and she's growing old (79), so I try to be understanding.

I've lived away from the UK since 2001 and feel happier for it. The UK has deteriorated dramatically – at least on a social level – over the past 30 years or so. If I had to pinpoint one malaise, it's the decline of family values. Present and future governments will have to be ruthless about cutting back on welfare. The state simply can't substitute the family and shouldn't try. It should be up to parents to support their own children. The UK has the highest proportion of single mothers in Europe, mostly subsidised by other taxpayers, and these fatherless children are often – although not always – tomorrow's criminals. The UK also spends a higher percentage of its GDP on welfare than it does on health or education. Ludicrous!

I don't miss living in the UK although, culturally, I admit I'm a middle class Brit at heart and I get homesick. I sometimes ache to have a walk in Richmond Park, to see an English-language play, to go to a Hampstead pub, to see the lovely red-brick buildings and smooth pavements of Chelsea, or have an authentic Ploughman's Lunch.

I don't hear much from people in the UK these days. It seems to me it's the law of ever-diminishing returns. When I first left London I had four friends, then three, then two, then one, but nearly a decade down the line I'm now lucky to get an email from anyone in the UK. Some people are real hot air merchants – their pledges to keep in touch notwithstanding – and just can't get over the fact that you've moved. Perhaps they regard it as a subtle betrayal of some kind and simply don't like it that you've escaped from the rat race. Others are simply so parochial that their world begins and ends in their little corner of South-East London.

'How's everything on the West Bank?'



I'm glad I'm not in the UK right now for another reason. I'm half-Jewish but I was raised in a non-Jewish home. Nevertheless, during moments of tension between Israel and the Palestinians (virtually all the time!) people tend to assume I'm an expert on the Middle East and chastise me for whatever Israel has done as if I'm a representative/spokesperson/apologist for Benjamin Netanyahu. Next time I go back to the UK I'll tell friends if they mention Gaza - "
Look, I've been living in Bulgaria for three years – ask me about life in Sofia."
One "
friend"
never tired of asking me: "
How's everything on the West Bank?"


The Israeli issue is a stick to beat you with. It's what I call "
de-individualisation"
because you lose your sense of being a human being in their eyes and just become "
a Jew"
and part of a collective group with what they perceive to be certain characteristics. The recent incident over the Gaza aid convoy is a case in point. We routinely have to get rid of anti-Semitic comments on The Sofia Echo forum. What's the difference between an anti-Zionist and an anti-Semite? It's sometimes difficult to spot but, like an elephant, you know one when you meet one.

I'm always amazed that Brits I meet in London have no interest in Bulgaria whatsoever. It's just a blot in Eastern Europe to them. Or, if they are curious, it's always property-related, basically making a quick killing. Also, I get irate about criticism of Bulgarian "
crime"
in the British tabloids – and the usual condescending/sneering comments – because the UK is far worse.

After breakfast I log on to the internet to read the British press, usually the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph because I find the others bland. I always log onto The Sofia Echo site after breakfast, just to check comments, particularly racist ones. I have a certain vanity, I suppose, in that I like to see comments. At the beginning I was mildly irked when someone posted a disparaging comment to an opinion column I'd done. Now it only pricks me momentarily. Excuse the grandiose comparison but I'm reminded of a story Anthony Hopkins once related about advice given to him by Laurence Olivier: "
If you want to do something (on stage), do it to the 'nth' degree – the critics will shoot you down anyway whatever you do."
It's good advice to anyone in any walk of life to say what you believe. Columnists, for example, should go with their gut instinct. Of British columnists, I like Peter Hitchens, Simon Heffer and Richard Littlejohn. Some may say that marks me out as a right-winger. I'm not really, but I believe if the UK is to be saved it will have to make drastic and unpopular choices.

Pits or paradise?



We go out for a long walk after breakfast, although sometimes on a bad day I like to stay in and watch Larry King. He's a good interviewer. Critics who say he's anodyne miss the point. The problem with the UK is that some talk show hosts are more interested in themselves and their own vacuous witticisms than they are in their guests.

When we leave home, we often find a little impromptu party outside our "
socialist"
(as they call it) block, with residents sharing coffees, smoking and chatting, while children play on the swings. Mladost is a strange place. Once I wrote an article about Mladost, complete with pictures by a professional photographer that were obviously taken on a particularly muddy, grubby January day. My mother saw the article and was appalled to find I was living in such a place. Yes, it's dirty, run-down and derelict, with overflowing bins and litter-strewn communal areas. Yet I quite like it. It's much safer – particularly for children – and quieter than anywhere I've lived in London or Lisbon – and I've stayed in posh and downmarket areas. Perhaps it's safer partly because people tend to be less socially mobile than in the UK, so they stay in the same place for longer and get to know each other. For example, my wife's family and her neighbours have lived side by side for 35 years.

I like Bulgarians very much. The French have an expression "
c'est un question de peau"
– "
it's all about skin"
. And I have to admit that Bulgarian women are startlingly attractive, with their fleecy raven hair, high cheekbones and immaculate figures. Sometimes I see some tall giraffe-like creature parading through Sofia streets and I almost bump into a lamppost. You could go from Land's End to John O'Groats in the UK and never see a woman with such a figure.

My favourite part of Sofia is Iztok. The pavements are a bit better than in Mladost and we like wandering through Borissova Gradina park. We don't drive here. To be honest it scares the hell out of me. I've never seen so many psychos on the roads. So we go everywhere by public transport or taxi. Travelling on the 76 bus, in particular, is certainly "
atmospheric"
in the extreme.

When I first came here the idea of anyone evading a fare would have horrified me. Now I actively sympathise with very poor Bulgarians who avoid "
punching"
tickets. My wife says that they should pay us to ride on the 76 bus and – particularly when travelling on this contraption when it's 34 Celsius outside – I think she's right. For older people, of course, every stotinka counts. A big difference between the UK and Bulgaria is that you seldom see older Bulgarians dining out. Even in Portugal, Western Europe's poorest country, you saw people eating out. Pensioner poverty is a sad feature of Bulgarian life.

Days of wine and oranges

My daughter likes the park and it's good exercise and gets her away from Jim Jam, her favourite channel. If we didn't go out she'd end up with square eyes. These programmes can be curiously addictive, I must admit. I find myself singing the theme tune to Barney and :: in strange places.

If we're at home I often have a cheese sandwich with pickle. I get the pickle on foreign trips because it's unavailable here. It's these little delicacies I miss the most. I like the new Mall on Tsarigradsko Chaussee and we've already been there several times. I love the air-conditioning in the summer and the choice of foods on offer. I hate shopping for clothes, so I find an excuse to slope off and get a surreptitious iced coffee, or something suitably unhealthy, while my wife hunts for dresses or whatever. I think most people secretly like malls;
they pretend they don't but go there anyway.

Come Saturday night and we might go out for a meal. In the winter I like Indian food, in the summer something more traditionally Bulgarian. Usually, I don't drink very much. I come from a hard-drinking family. I'm not an alcoholic – a needless disclaimer you may think – but I'm an expert on the illness, having lived close to some. As a child I got used to people having half a bag on most of the time. Particularly on weekends I'd wake up and start squeezing oranges for the first gin and oranges of the day, which usually fell around noon. I'd work furiously at the orange squeezing until my wrists ached. Not that anyone was standing over me with a whip but somehow I saw it as a mark of productivity and pride to get as much juice as possible. Even now, oranges is an instant association with gin in my mind. Following the gin, the wine flowed long into the afternoon. They'd have a nap in the afternoon before the evening drinking session began in earnest.

I'm not saying my childhood was all that unhappy, just that I know all about liquor. Mostly it's short-term gain for long-term pain. Sometimes I ponder writing a kind of memoir – perhaps many of us do. Ruminating over the title, I kind of settled on "
The Orange Squeezer"
because it seems to sum up my childhood.

I've always been an oral type, however. Brits, in general, tend to want all refreshments close at hand: coffee, tea and soft drinks, as well as booze, whereas Bulgarians tend to associate alcohol consumption with a special occasion, or as an accompaniment to a salad or meal.

Another dud?

In the evenings I try to read an English book to our daughter. Children are funny;
sometimes I think she hasn't taken in very much, then she'll say something which not only proves the exact opposite but throws you with its sophistication and delightful precociousness. For example, the other day, we were lying in bed together, leafing through books quietly, and I said something to her and she said "
please daddy, don't interrupt me, I'm concentrating"
. She will be bilingual because her grandmother speaks to her in Bulgarian and, of course, it's her mother tongue at kindergarten, but she speaks English to me.

We like to go to the movies. That's a huge advantage to having a baba;
she's indispensable when it comes to looking after our daughter and allowing us to go out on our own occasionally. We like the movies, although we sometimes argue over the merits of a film. Usually, my wife has more good to say about a film than me. Unless it has a credible storyline - one that I can relate to - I start to get edgy, not that it has to be mundane but I don't care much for endless car chases or science fiction. Avatar was a good movie but it's not really my genre. The last really first-class movie I saw was No Country For Old Men. If we watch TV at home it's always a bit disconcerting because there's a language barrier and people talk at cross purposes. In any case I don't watch as much TV as I used to in the UK and feel better for it.

I like to go to sleep reasonably early. If I dream, strangely enough it's always about the distant past. Our daughter sleeps in our room and it puts a smile on my face to hear her snoring in the background.

Ash

Oddy

Very interesting Ashley thank you its always good to get other views