Bog Standards in Bulgaria

Bog standards in Bulgaria are quite a revealing subject. The toilet and sewerage systems are dated and seemingly have no real master plan from the town planners who deal with such matters. If it ain’t broke don’t fix is the policy here and who can blame them putting money ‘down the drain’ for something that works in essence.

What it really boils down to is each individual household to deal with such problems and repair and a municipal service to patch up other areas outside private and business household jurisdictions.

It is so noticeable that 1 in 4 houses we pass have tell tale sign of sewerage work being down or recently having been done. The remnants of sand/cement left behind or the mismatched cement repairs that replace uniform pavements are testimony to work having been done recently. It is no surprise then that Galia’s house next. It had been put off far too long purely on insufficient financial grounds.

Living just out of the centre of Yambol most of the time with Galia and her family, it has over time become apparent the same ideals of not fixing things until they cease to work. This applies to everything! The toilet and sewerage system are no exception.

While Galia and ~I were in England there was a major problem, raw sewerage was spilling up from the drains and flooding the yard. Something had to be done in our absence. Luckily we had left some emergency funds with Baba Mama to cover such events.

Who do you call to fix such a messy, smelly and unhygienic predicament? Well Dynarod doesn’t exist here and no Bulgarian would want to tackle such a job so it is the Gypsies who get all the work.

The message was that 25 lev was paid and the system was cleared using a Gypsy and a metal rod. Baba’s stress levels went down and we were relieved 2000 miles away that the problem had subsided. The Gypsies (two of them) were only there for ten minutes, who says they don’t get paid much Galia comments. Maybe taking advantage of an old woman more like while we were away!

We got back and nothing unusual was found in the toilet and connecting systems. There had always been a smell of human waste inside and outside of the house but you get used to that living there. It becomes normal but obtrusive and foul to non-Bulgarian visitors. But this is Bulgarian and we live within this the Bulgarian way, I accepted this as normal.

After a week or so the sewerage rose from the depths and flooded the yard again, Baba was up in arms with the thought that the 25 lev she paid was for nothing. We had to agree, the job of clearing the pipes wasn’t done all they did was get rid of the overflow but not cure the blockage.

We called the Gypsy back again and he again did the run with the metal rod but this time trying to run it further up the piping. He came to a dead end, the piping beyond two metre to running to the neighbours house was blocked solid. Nothing could shift it. Because Baba was on her own before this wasn’t ventured with the Gypsies, we were there now and questions were asked and seemingly answers now given.

The system was old in fact we worked out that the sewerage hadn’t been looked at, cleaned out or serviced since 1985 under the communist rule where things actually got done and the citizens in the town were looked after by the state! Nothing like this happens now under the banner of ‘freedom’!

It was a big job as we agreed to the Gypsy workers to get on and repair and replace whatever was needed. In the meantime it meant that until they had finished the job we couldn’t run any water and obviously had no toilet facilities until the final cementing had dried. This was at least two days worth of roughing it but we are all used to this, this is Bulgaria after all.

The Gypsies have no problem with working in such conditions. The leader of the duo, as I watched had his arm up to his shoulder in raw sewerage trying to source the pipe! No protective clothing, just a pair of sandals, short and a t-shirt, all of which was soiled from the work. The smell was enough to make you sick but they were un-swayed with the working conditions they found themselves in.

Having now waded in the crap barefooted to get to the drainage point, the still couldn’t get a way through the big clay pipes and had to resort to digging even deeper and smashing them up to remove them. Only then did we see that the clay pipes originally some 25 cm in diameter had been reduced to 2 cm due to the build up of human waste and residue. Effectively the crap had set to form a concrete type seal within the system over the last thirty years or so. The complete system had to be ripped out and replaced.

My services were required, as the Gypsy workers didn’t have any transport. So it was taxing them to find some cement and tools. We went to an area called Benkovski. It’s place well know as a Gypsy encampment and Gypsies rule there. It is basically a no go area for Bulgarians and police. I had travelled through the back streets there once before with some English friends, it scared the shit out of them with what they saw and the poverty before them. It is a threatening place to be in, almost exactly like being in an Indian town.

We got to his house and tools taken then we visited at least five different shops throughout Yambol to find some piping that was the right diameter. I had to fork out 15 lev for that, as I was the only one with money. Added to this more money was paid out for a bag of cement (6 lev). Back to the work place and they finished at 8:30 that evening and due here again in the morning. They wanted 120 leva to complete the job so I gave them half now and promised the other half on completion. Normal ways of doing things here and they got a lift home as part of the deal.

God are these men messy, they leave everything where they leave it as it is the job of the women to clean up behind the men. Even great chunks of concrete, solidified crap and bricks have to be gathered and disposed of by the females of Bulgaria. Baba and Galia think nothing of it and total acceptance of having to do this. If I try and help they tell me off!

End of day one and the routine of toilet going had to change. We couldn’t go in the street until dark in the evening, again this is normal! And we used a big paint tin for washing and watered the garden with it afterwards. – Well what do you expect here?

The following morning was more difficult as going for a wee was easy enough but the other end is slightly more difficult. How the women coped I don’t know but it was plastic bags in the bucket and out to the bin on wheels in the street for me. God know what the Gypsies that rummage the bins every hour will think when they find a opaque plastic bag tied up with a warm package inside!!

Part of the fees we paid was for sand and the hire of a horse and cart and low behold, 8:30 the next morning the clip clop sound of hoofs on Yambol cobblestones filled the air as we peered to see the horse and cart arrive laden with sand. The horse had a fowl astride only one week old. Again this was quite normal to see in Yambol but I took a picture in any case.

But other materials were needed this very morning with my Lada being called up to be the delivery vehicle. Three different shops and the home in Benkovski were driven two. Four bags of sand bought of one of his neighbours for 7 lev, divide that by four, it doesn’t go so I think that was a rip off but I was on Gypsy territory and felt threatened so paid. Next stop another neighbour deep in the heart of the Gypsy threshold. The tracks between the built up illegal housing was just dirt and stained with open sewerage, how did this Gypsy therefore know about sewerage systems with this in place here.

The amount of children, barefooted, children here are indescribable even more so when the school was open and filled with school aged children. They were like swarming ants running everywhere and parents shouting form the confines of their shacks. I stranger in their midst and the swarms took to me like iron filings to a magnet, a rare occasion of a white man in Gypsy territory meant interest abound. I waited for a delivery of bricks, not new but recycled - they still had old cement straddled around them. I spoke to some of the children but they were stunned into a silence pause, as my Bulgarian didn’t seem to be understood. This was due to their Roma language being spoken solely prior to schooling age.

Twenty-two second hand brick were placed in the car boot and the charge? 5 leva, again my suspicious mind told me that part of someone’s shack/house had been partly taken down for a quick profit!! Joking aside, bet I’m not too far off the mark either.

Relieved to get out of the Gypsy village it was off to get another sack of cement and have to pay another 6 lev from a conventional shop albeit Gypsy owners taking the money. We run straight back to the house and I get on with my writing and the Gypsy gets on with his work.

By 2:00 that lunchtime the job is complete, time for the remaining balance of 60 lev owed to be paid over. The total cost of repairs including materials and previous prodding was 160 lev. The place looked like a bomb had hit is as the women again took it upon themselves to clear all the mess left. 30 minutes later there was a clean swept yard with fresh laid cement sealing the new sewerage system.

And outside, a pavement only showing the sign that there was sand been mixed there at some point and another house that gives away work having been done on the sewerage system. How many other households have gone through the same process? More to the point, how many households still put off what needs to be done due to being unable to afford it? Without fund brought over from the UK the cost of this is two months pension from Baba. That just puts things into perspective.

Well, there were many showers and toilet flushes that next morning and the foul smell from the toilet and drainage points that I thought was normal, has totally disappeared. We can now have food and drink outside but is has cost money to get to this stage.

Sofia - A Typical Saturday Night

We have touched down on Bulgarian soil at 1:20 in the morning, the train to Yambol due to depart the station at 6:30. We’ll spend 5 hours drinking coffee in a café in the station said Galia as we made out way there.

Still before 2:00 on Sunday morning after a Saturday night in Sofia and the taxi dropped us off to a very still and clam train station. There were lights on in the distance as we rolled our noisy cases across the common broken concrete pavements to disturb the silence that lay before us.

We struggled to one station café and found five police officers sitting around drinking coffee only to find that this café was only open to the police and that no cafes were open until 6:00 that morning. We found ourselves out on the street for over 4 hours laden with luggage with a mixture of cab drivers touting fro business, roaming Gypsies and beggars and young male drunks still full of vodka and rakia from the previous Saturday night out.

We parked ourselves by the main glass entrance, within sight and earshot of the coffee-drinking police as insurance. It was a thought that these policemen and one policewoman were getting paid for drinking coffee all night as the minutes ticked away very slowly. Later I was to realise this was not the case.

Facing the taxi rank, every 10 or fifteen minutes a taxi would pull up get out of the vehicle and walk towards us and every time we knew what for. The question like a series of parrots came out, ‘Where are you going?’

The answer always was, ‘Yambol’ of course.

A figure was always given for the ride to Yambol, which varied from 300 BGL to 450 BGL depending on the cheekiness of the cab driver. The argument always being that we could be home by the time the train arrives. We would put to the driver the cost fo the train fare at 16 lv and ask them whether they would pay and extra 300 lv for a couple of hours wait? They usually walked away at that point in deep thought.

After the first few we were getting a bit fed up so we moved away from the cab rank and turned our backs on oncoming cab drivers. That seemed to do the trick.

When we first got there we were only a couple of metres from a gypsy sat on a small brick wall, he only had one leg and a crutch. He was watching us for hours and the thought was he was waiting for an opportunity to steal something. It was only later that we realised he was waiting to go to work and had no home to go to so that were he lives, sitting on the wall. We ended up talking to home and he was a nice as pie as we gave him some cigarettes to keep him going. First impressions eh?

Another figure turned up, we recognised him from before, he was on the same plane as us from Luton and had was due on the same train as us but going further on to Bourgas. Being Bulgarian we talked, how many times we talked to strangers was quite un believable unlike where we had just come from.

This chap had gone to the UK because he was told the streets are paved with gold. He didn’t have profession and went without any work permits or visa. His idea was that he would find work by word of mouth and have cash in hand. After three month and being based in Peterborough he had found a ‘cash in hand’ job where the manager was Egyptian. He was paid £100 a week for 50 hours six day a week in a factory. His digs were a 3m x 4m room with no facilities and shared kitchen and bathroom downstairs paying rent of £30 a week plus bills. Food was extra of course.

He was here now because all he had saved up for was his airfare back before the three months visa period had expired. His experience had been a reality check at the end of the day. The only money he had on him was a £10 note and we exchanged this for him at the exchange bureaus didn’t open until after 7:00, the train leaves 30 minutes before this.

An elderly but quite slim and fit man walked past us and I saw he had a baseball bat tucked away in his belt. He stopped and of course talked to us he had a story to tell and told it. A couple of hours ago there was a gunfight only 100 metres away in an underpass. A young armed drunk was eventually shot dead by the police after the shoot out. He went on to say that this was normal in the early hours of the morning. With the lack of work and money many young people try the armed hold up give us your money trick which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. This time it didn’t and he is dead. That for me is a good enough deterrent if not for others. Shoot and first ask questions later when it comes to finding someone with a gun was the Sofia was the police’s answer to crime. In any case for what other reason would someone want to be holding a gun in the early hours of the morning, there are no wolves here in Sofia city centre – He has a point!

I asked what he was doing with a baseball bat and whether he played Bulgarian Baseball, where the response was a chuckle saying that it was to defend himself against others with baseball bats. Funnily enough moments later I saw another young man walk past with another baseball bat in one hand and a woman in the other looking a bit nervous as firstly walked by the coffee-drinking policemen and then us. But they didn’t do anything, perhaps that is normal here then.

Next visitor was a drunk, he was around mid twenties, shaven head and looked more like a Russian than a Bulgarian due to his very pale complexion. Although not intimidating Galia and our friend who had been ripped of in England didn’t make any eye contact with him. I found this hard to do as I thought it might cause offence but this led to conversation. Galia’s suggestion that I didn’t know any Bulgarian was a good one as I pleaded ignorance as questions put to me. He got fed up with my ‘I don’t understand!’ replies to everything and gave up trying to talk to me in the end. He slumped down to the ground and sat the quietly for a few hours right next to us.

5:00 arrived and the café opened early as they saw some decent folk waiting outside, besides you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth with business hanging around. The drunk followed us in slumped down on a bench next to us along with our Bourgas bound and newly acquainted friend. We bough him a coffee and talked fot he next half hour. The drunk woke up and asked it I could move to let him go, I had blocked him in on the tight sitting position of the bench. He was quite shocked that I understood as I stood up to let him go. Luckily he was too pissed to realise I was taking the piss by not understanding earlier.

Toilet were non existent either on the station site or in the train station once we got in, it was too early for many as the yawning crowds began their work and journeys. Tickets, bought and a cold banitsa eaten It was old and cold but still better than anything I have eaten in the UK for six months!

We boarded the train that left dead on time and stress levels fell even further as we left the city. I hate cites generally and Sofia was no exception but I had notice there may be gang warfare, gunfight and drink and drug related crimes all due to material gain but its individualism stands out. It is not a carbon copy of the other Cities I have visited and is still distinctly Bulgarian in its manner and ways.

The train slowly gathered up a little speed then slowed down again the next station was only a few kilometres away picking up mainly gypsies form the outskirts of the city. It was noticeable that the train was spotlessly clean without any vandalism or graffiti in any part of the carriage and we were travelling the third class carriage! No advertisement posters to be seen anywhere that was a major realisation for me and again the stress levels from within resumed its downward spiral with these significant observations of Bulgaria.

So we had some gypsies on board and I know the toilet was clean, as it hadn’t been used since our journey started, 6 hours of waiting we had to go and on the visit all the toilet consisted of was a hole in the carriage floor, you could see the ground whizzing past as you look down. Well if is simple and it works well it has to be Bulgarian!! Quite a lot of fun as well as you see things happen before you very eyes.

We had our tickets inspected twice on the 4½ hours journey. The ticket inspectors are very serious and never smile, they also come in pairs, man and a woman, presumably for security reasons. Everyone has to have a ticket whether first, second or third class with a seat number on and you have to sit in that seat.

Now the ticket inspectors may well be the reason for no graffiti or damage to the train from travellers as they scare the hell out of them by their no nonsense attitude. There was a young quite hard looking Bulgarian who placed himself on a seat had his ticket checked and punched then after the inspector had travelled further up the train, decided to move to the next empty seat. The inspectors had finished their rounds and walked back some 20 minutes later and instructed the poor chap to move back to his original allocated seat. You may call this a jobs worth situation but this I feel justified to gain the discipline, respect and unmovable rules that are set in place. No too dissimilar to the police who have respect mixed with fear. It made us feel so much safer on the train in Bulgaria than ever we felt in the UK.

Yambol arrived and the city of Sofia well behind us and the train journey so much more cheaper and pleasant than a taxi run!

Food from a Bulgarian Baba

I live with Baba now during the day. Galia is out to work early ‘till late and I am writing with Baba Mama doing her busy woman about the house trick everyday.

She is 84 and doesn’t stop going back and forth from chores in the kitchen to sweeping the yard, watering the garden, putting the washing out. She starts at 7:00 in the morning and doesn’t stop until bedtime.

There is a rest at around 1:00 – 2:00 where she gets her head down for a little snooze but that’s where it ends. Even when she is sitting down her hands are busy sewing, knitting or repairing something.

What Baba can’t understand is why I don’t slow down and eat and sleep every couple of hours. She doesn’t understand that a Bulgarian man is very different to a Englishman. I always remember going back nearly tow years ago when she saw me vacuuming the front room…… she was in tears as she had never seen anything like it in her 80 odd years in Bulgaria.

I know now that every time the clock goes past midday she pokes her head around the corner of the kitchen area where I work and tell me I’m hungry. To be fair I start work at 8:00 after having given Galia a lift to work so she knows that a fair morning work has been done at this point.

The first week this routine came into play I Baba didn’t get any sleep, she was too shy and humble to tell me that her sleeping sofa was being occupied by my posterior working on the laptop. Little did I know that I was in the way of her routine until Galia found out and told me one evening. Now I move into another room for the rest of the day to give her a well earned forty-winks but not before she has prepared me food and drink whether I want it or not.

Now Baba is a tried and tested cook and there isn’t anything she prepares that isn’t home cooked and natural. Base ingredients all from the market or from my own Skalitsa farm. She is a superb cook and I cannot ever remember not liking anything she has prepared.

There is a little wariness about how long the food it kept as Baba always used the big pot to make lots – it is a question of economic cooking energy wise. There has been food, meat at that, which has been standing around for 4 or 5 days. This used to worry me immensely at first – is it my own British standards that have brainwashed me into thinking that everything has be eaten with two days or you die fo food poisoning? Yes I think it is, a ploy by global food producers to make you buy more putting the fear of God into you if you didn’t! I digress….

Baba totters along to prepare the food and she now has come to accept that a microwave we bought for her last year has its uses. It took her almost a year to the day to come to terms and understand what she can and can’t put in it and that was from experience not instruction! Now she can’t get enough of it but all she has learnt is how to cook pop corn in it! The little bottle gas stove is still used religiously as before and used for the original cooking using the big pot.

Today for the third day running and the fifth meal we had chicken, bean and potato stew and never in a million years would I get bored with that. The bones as after ever each meal is given to Alex the dog, our neighbour’s doorbell.

Each day Baba lays the table and never a day goes by where raw garlic, fresh bread and green salad is positioned next to the main meal. The most delicious combination and compliment to any meal. Drink accompaniment is Ayran made from yoghurt made in Skalitsa from my neighbour’s fresh cow milk. Baba loves Ayran along with all three generations of family living here.

Spoilt? Yes but in this day and age of fast food how lucky am I to get traditional food derved up the most respectful and experienced cook. Something now she is handing down to me so long may it continue to live on.

Baba has such a variety of cooking skills and recipes that now after a while of Bulgarian routine the sleeping habit after lunchtime meals is beginning to have an affect on me. A lie down after her fantastic food is something that just seems so natural to do. Unlike before where no break and no food was taken, a habit picked up from England now finally beginning to be laid to rest.