Bulgarian Life

Who has the best beggars ?

Lithuania Vs Bulgaria.

Bristol in 1994 might have won a prize for the most beggary town in Europe if such an award had been on offer that year. It was full of grubby, grungy, smelly hippies with dogs on strings. Reading in Berkshire has its denizens too. There's a black guy there, a Rasta man who dresses in black, who often asks if he can borrow a £1. One day I'll ask him to give mine back. I never lent him one but perhaps he'll be fooled. The point is that whilst there are beggars all over the place they're not all the same. Different towns and cities have different types of beggars and some of these are local personalities. Therefore in places as diverse as Lithuania and Bulgaria, there should be a good variety of beggars.

To begin with I'll consider good old Bulgaria; Sofia in particular. Sofia is full of beggars. Broadly speaking these can be divided into two categories. Gypsies (I know its racist) and cripples (now I'm being crippleist).

                                                                                             

The Bulgarians are marvellously racist. They haven't the faintest idea that racism is a bad thing and freely bad mouth gypsies whenever the opportunity arises. However the problem with too many people of a certain ethnic group doing something disreputable, i.e. begging, is that they tar all of their kind with same brush. I like to be broad minded; yes really, but I quickly learned to dislike gypsies as the majority of the Gypsies I met bothered me for money rather than doing anything useful. Yet I feel obliged to say that there were several others doing useful work, sweeping the streets and recycling the rubbish that they would collect in their pony drawn carts. Never the less this was not enough to compensate for the irritation caused by those nasty little women and snotty kids that would collect at the bottom of  Marie Louisa Boulevard to hassle me on a daily basis.

Ignoring them was not an option. They would run over to you beg and hang on to your arm as you walked. They really did beg too. "Please Mr a few stotinki" they would repeat over and over in whiny pitiful voices. I didn't mind being touched by the prostitutes at the other end of the street, but this lot really made me cringe. (What about Gypsy prostitutes I hear you cry?) I had enough sense to keep my cash safe because you never know where they might try to slip their grubby little fingers.

Children were pressed into service very early. Rather than going to school so that they might possibly turn into derivative traders or post men they learned to be annoying little scroungers instead; hardly fair on the kids. One child, who I guess was being exploited, had his leg in plaster every time I ever saw him, but he always had his begging bowl in front of him. Other kids used to walk up and down Vitosha Boulevard bothering people, especially those sitting outside cafes. They would even come in and bother you inside and occasionally scrap with staff who it appeared had orders to chuck them out if they dared to come in; which they did.

                                     

I suppose the cripples are begging because they have no chance of working for a living and I doubt there's much of a welfare system in Bulgaria. Perhaps begging is more lucrative than working. Certainly individuals seemed to have acquired rights to locate themselves in certain parts of the city. A big burly man with no legs sits in his wheelchair at a specific spot on Vitosha Boulevard almost on a daily basis, whilst around the corner on Salounska a weedy little man also in a wheelchair, would take up his regular post. I used to give the big bloke a wide berth. He looked mean and I guessed he could probably crush bones with his bare hands should he feel inclined to do so. It amused me that whilst they were collecting cash they were spending most of it by chain smoking and at the same time perhaps making saving for a pension unnecessary.

 

One particularly irritating beggar on the opposite side of Vitosha used to prop himself up on a crutch and lean forward so that when he was holding out his begging box in front of him, he could span almost the entire width of the pavement, making him almost impossible to ignore.  There was also the disturbing spectacle of a man who couldn't walk, who would crawl down Vitosha on his hands and knees pushing his begging tray in front of him.

Burgas too appeared to have its regulars. A pair of brothers used to work the sea side park. The fit one would wheel his legless brother to a busy spot, lift him out and pop him on the ground for a begging session and take wheel chair off a discreet distance, sit in it himself and smoke a few fags.

There is, allegedly a pretend cripple working here in Vilnius. After a good session he packs up the foldable wheelchair he’s been sitting in and walks home. That’s what I’ve heard. Personally I think it’s very unlikely that anyone would be so devious.

Generally things here in Vilnius are quite different from Sofia. The majority of beggars are old women. There's about half a dozen of them in Vilnius and they generally sit quietly in doorways with a hand out. A few, conversely walk the streets politely asking for money. They seem quite successful particularly with the English teachers I’ve been with. On feast days these same old ladies and a couple of others relocate themselves to the bigger churches to take advantage of the Christian tradition of charity. There is one old lady in particular who has become something of a local celebrity. She looks like a cross between Dickens’s Miss Havisham and the wicked witch of the West. She likes to drape herself in frilly clothes and it appears that she uses a spoon to apply her make up which is both heavy and vibrant. She has an enormous capacity to scare small children and perhaps frightens tourists into handing their money over. I once saw her sitting in one of the street café’s with a friend enjoying a break and a cup of coffee after a couple of hours of hard begging. Allegedly she’s a commuter and is probably doing quite nicely in her chosen profession.

Vilnius's other famous beggar is a Russian. Well, he says he’s a Russian. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him a number of times. I remember him, but he never seems to remember me. He’s a tall gangly youth with a well developed technique. After a brief introduction in which he confirms that you’re not a local he start his spiel. His English is quite good and his story goes something like this. “I have no home, I live in the bus station, I have no food, no body will help me I’m Russian so the Lithuanians won’t help me, they’re bad people, they don’t like me because I’m Russian, my mother can’t help me, my sister can’t help me”. By this stage he has run out of things to say but that doesn’t stop him.

As you can imagine I wasn’t standing around to listen to this miserable tale, I was walking purposefully away, but he was walking with me. During his recital his voice was slowly becoming desperate but towards the end he adopted an extra desperate tone and recited the whole lot over again and again as necessary and eventually he actually started crying. Whilst listening to all this drivel I had turned off Gedimino Prospektas, the main drag, and was nearly home. Before too long this guy would be bleating away in my kitchen if I didn’t manage to shake him off. Not only did I not want him in my kitchen, I didn’t really want him to know which building I lived in.

At this point I decided upon a cunning plan. I would walk round and round an adjacent building to see how many laps he was prepared to do. This was a complete success. He smelt a rat and stopped abruptly in the middle of the first lap. “You are a bad man.” He said; and walked off. So, whilst he failed to extract any money from me he did give me a reason to re evaluate my whole life. Am I really a bad man? I’m useless I will confess, although not as useless as he is. But bad?

In my final analysis I think there are two winners. Firstly, those gangs of grotty looking Gypsy women and kids that operate in Sofia deserve a prize for being unavoidable, persistent and particularly irritating. Therefore the team prize goes to Bulgaria. However the individual first prize goes to lithuania and specifically to the gangly Russian. I’m not sure what he deserves more, an Oscar for his acting or a punch in the face for being such a pain. I suspect he gets a few of the latter from time to time. It probably goes with the territory.

It's a scandal

I n October 2006 HRH QEII visited Lithuania and therefore inevitably the President’s Palace. Needless to say, that HRH should be provided with facilities of appropriate quality was considered essential. Hence to avoid a national embarrassment, the rather ordinary toilet where HRH might want to relieve herself, was replaced with a toilet of quality. A toilet by Versace was installed. (I thought they did shirts.) This toilet suite, comprising a WC and wash hand basin cost 250,000Lt (that’s £50K to you and me); plenty by anyone’s standards.

Let’s consider the likely circumstances. The Lithuanians would probably have served HRH with some of their best quality food. This would probably have been a zeppelini, minced meat encased in a potato dumpling and fried. As a side dish she might have been served a blyni, a fried potato pancake and perhaps various other dishes of a potato type. The short term result would inevitably have been short term constipation and it appears that this was in fact the case. HRH never did see that ludicrously expensive Versace toilet.

The people were up I arms. If we have just spent that much money on a toilet for HRH the least she could do was to have a shit. The British Ambassador explained that HRH didn’t need to go until she got to Latvia. This argument was apparently not good enough and the Lithuanian Chancellor who had refused to sign the plumber’s bills resigned amongst the controversy.

On a more serious note; Lithuanian schools are very short of acceptable toilets. An acceptable toilet is one which isn’t in an outbuilding with a tendency to freeze solid during the winter months. That 250,000 Lt could have bought a lot of good basic new toilets. However the Lithuanians should console themselves with the thought that, whilst HRH might have cost them 250,000 Lts that day, she costs the British that much every day of the year.

The picture above isn't actually HRH QEII but I wish it was.

Meanwhile Back in Bulgaria

I visited Bulgaria during the summer to see if they had got round to fixing anything. Absolutely not. It’s still just as broken as it was the last time I was there. This was my first visit to Burgas on the Black Sea Coast. The airport is a short bus journey from the city centre and my first port of call, an accommodation agency, should have been a short walk from the bus station, on Czar Samuel Street.

I had a guide book which included a basic map with the main streets named on it including the name of my destination. So why couldn’t I find it? I went straight to where it should have been but the name of the street I found was clearly marked and it didn’t say Czar Samuel. I retraced my steps, but arrived back at the same place, i.e. the wrong street. So I accepted my incompetence and decided to just walk around and hoped that I might stumble upon it. I knew I was near. But it was a hot day and I had a full rucksack and I had been on a plane and had not had any sleep, most of the streets were un named and I wasn’t in the mood. I would have to ask for directions.

The first person I asked turned out to be very helpful. That is in terms of his willing to help not that he was able to. He was an elderly gentleman who spoke no English, had apparently not heard of Czar Samuel Street, but was still keen to give directions and to tag along with me; talking. We bumped into a middle aged woman on the corner of the very same street. Fortunately I didn’t need to ask her for directions because my new friend did it for me. And, to my surprise she spoke English. (a little) And she said that is

Czar Samuel street, pointing around the corner to the first place I had stopped.

No it isn’t, I protested and pointed to the sign on the street which quite clearly stated the name of another street. Oh don’t worry about that, she said that’s an old sign. What do mean exactly? Are you suggesting that due to its age the paint on the old sign has, not only got a bit flaky but has actually rearranged itself into some completely different words? It’s an old sign. She said again. I’m not bothered by the age of the sign, I continued, if this is the right street it’s the wrong sign. It’s old she said and waddled off with her shopping and indeed my erstwhile mate who seemed to prefer her company.

Anyway, she was right, the street was the right one, the agency was there and all was well. However the wrong street sign, an old one, on the corner of the street, just illustrates what you have to expect Bulgaria. Bearing in mind most of the streets in that area had no signs on them at all, it would have been a bonus if this street also had no sign. But it did, the wrong one. Its thirty years after a buffoon had fixed the wrong shiny new street sign on the corner of the wrong street and its still there to confuse the public.

Nostalgicus Germanicus

These pictures from Northern Germany depict a bygone age of post war optimism. They illustrate a young family in summer and winter. Note the way fashion and style collide in the shape of the woman’s dress, the baby’s pram and the young man’s car. C1957.

A trip to the Sea Side

My students had all left me. There were all sorts of reasons why, but the fact was I suddenly found I had a week off. (Not a wee cough; that cleared up a couple of weeks ago. A week off.) So I rented a car, had a look at a map, turned the engine on and set off; remembering to drive on the left, to avoid crashing.

After reading my Lonely Planet guide book, I decided to go to Kolka on the Livonian coast of where the Baltic Sea spills into the Gulf of Riga. It was a daft idea really. Its bloody miles away from Vilnius but I set off anyway. The book makes the place sound rather special and romantic. Dip your toes in the Gulf of Riga, it says and savour the white sandy beaches and explore fishing villages and spectacular dunes and forests.

I stopped for the night at a town called Kuldiga which gets ten out of ten for being cute and pretty and set off for the coast the next day. I was getting quite exited (for me) trundling north along a pitted road parallel to the coast through dense pine forests looking for a sign to turn left, to a pretty village on the coast, with a beach and a light house. Perhaps I would buy myself an ice cream and go for a stroll.

What a disappointment! There was no village. There were about ten timber houses or sheds scattered among the trees, but nothing with any shape or form and no shops, churches or streets. The light house was a bit concretey and rather a long way from the coast. Never mind, I’ll walk to the beach and buy an ice cream. But alas, there was no one selling ice cream on the beach. In fact there was no one selling anything on the beach. Actually there was no one on the beach. The beach went on for miles to both the left and right. There was no point going for a walk here the view wasn’t going to change, so I got in the car and set off for the next village.

The next village was like the first, i.e. no village and miles and miles of big empty beach backed up by miles and miles of pine trees. I decided to skip a few villages and hoped for a change of scene further up the coast. If I was lucky there might be killer whales launching themselves up the beach in pursuit of seals, or maybe some dolphins frolicking in surf. Perhaps that was a bit optimistic but there might be a boulder or two for the sea to splash against. But no, just more bloody sand; miles and miles of it.

Back in the USSR

Belarus Actually.

It is well know that the Soviet Union disintegrated some years ago. Its former republics went their own ways. Some are now stable democracies and members of NATO and the EU. Others have veered off in other directions, being a little Islamic or a bit dictatorial, whilst some descended into anarchy and civil war.  In fact, all but one, have made a move in one direction or another. Belarus however remains unchanged. No one has told them it’s over.

Its currency, the rouble has a little bit of a credibility problem. There are approximately three thousand five hundred to the pound so you need to be mentally alert if you want to make quick decisions about costs and prices. The ten rouble note is worth a little less than 0.3 pence, so it doesn’t take long to accumulate a huge wodge of notes.

They are not much use for buying things but they are not completely useless. I have found them just the thing for draft proofing an ill fitting window back at my flat and folded, they can be used to prevent a chair from rocking.

One particular incident did rather spoil my visit. They are still very fond of Lenin in Belarus. So am I in fact. I wanted to take a photograph of the big statue of Lenin which stands outside some government buildings lecturing the people, on the main drag. Lenin would have approved. He wanted to spread the revolution across the world and I was going to help him, posthumously. He’s dead; I’m not, just to make that clear. However there was a military officer standing a few yards from Lenin, who came over to me as soon as he saw my camera coming out of the bag and told me to put it away.

Actually what he said was “Oi you put that phucking camera back in your bag and phuck off back to where you came from, you nancy Western tosser.” He was speaking Russian so I might not have translated his words exactly, but you get the gist of it. I politely explained that it’s what Lenin would have wanted. He politely suggested that if I wanted to take a picture I should point my camera in the opposite direction. But if I do that, I said, Lenin wouldn’t be in it would he. I would have a picture of an empty concrete square with some traffic in the distance which wasn’t quite what I was hoping to achieve. “Your problem, tosser,” he replied, “now phuck off.” Needless to say I didn’t come all the way to Minsk to be spoken to like that; so I left.

What is a foreigner?

I was in the staff room, talking with one of the Lithuanian English teachers and she twice referred to me as a foreigner. I let it go the first time, but the second time I had to straighten things out. I explained to her that there are two types of people; there are the British and then there are all the others and these people are known as foreigners. I think she understood.

Icicles

It was roasting today; well by Lithuanian standards it was; it reached a ripping 16 degrees. They had even set up street café’s. A few days before, whilst walking into town I was wondering where all the snow had gone. There were great heaps of it along the main streets in the city centre only a couple of days ago. Sure it was melting and it was being helped to melt by the army of municipal workers who would break up the piles of snow and spread it around a bit, but I still couldn’t understand how so much could disappear so quickly. However, I did discover the secret of the disappearing snow. There are such things in this country as snow removal men. I saw a team including a mini excavator, digging up the snow and loading it onto the back of a lorry, which took it away. I read somewhere that they clean it and export it to Switzerland, where they get very worried when their snow melts.

The ice and snow management industry in this city is quite comprehensive. There is a pavement sized snow plough which hurtles up and down Gedimino Prospektas as soon as the stuff settles. It has a plough at the front and rotating brushes at the rear. The driver means business too. If you don’t get out of the way, you get your legs broken. This similar attitude is adopted by the battalions of street cleaners who do battle with the ice and snow on a daily basis. There are three jobs to be done. Breaking, scraping and gritting. The snow that gets compacted by the people and cars forms hard crusts and dense pockets that needs breaking up with iron bars before it can be swept aside. Elsewhere, beyond the reach of the little snow plough, the snow is scraped away by; why am I telling you all this; anyway old folks with attitude do this work and if you get in the way you’re likely to get your ankles broken.

They are organised enough too, to cordon off parts of the street where dangerous icicles hang off the buildings and over the street. The icicles are then smashed to pieces and swept up before the barriers are taken down and the pavements are returned to the people.

I wasn’t in Bulgaria long enough to see any evidence of this kind of warfare on icicles. In fact there was an inaccessible monster of about two and a half feet, hanging off my balcony when I left the country. I did wonder if I had any responsibility for it. Was it my icicle? If it fell (from the sixth floor) it probably would have killed someone if it scored a direct hit. To tell the truth that’s why I left the country; it had nothing to do with visas.

One of these big and dangerous icicles did indeed fall and score a direct hit on a man in Sofia . Nothing to do with me of course. The twenty four inch icicle struck him on the back of the head, knocked him to the ground, and furthermore drove itself through his skull and into a crack between the paving stones. It basically fixed him to the ground. Witnesses were quick to call an ambulance, but they were unable to help him up themselves. They couldn’t move him because of the way he had been bolted face down, into the pavement.

When the ambulance did arrive, the crew were confronted by that typical Bulgarian problem. The combination of cars parked haphazardly across the street and pavements, together with piles of snow pushed up along the side of the road prevented the ambulance from getting into the street to help the stricken man. They had no choice but to about turn and go back to the station. People who lived near by put blankets over the man to keep him warm, but unfortunately for him he had no choice, but to stay where he was until the whether improved and the icicle melted. After four days and nights of being pinned to the pavement by the icicle, it eventually melted and he was released. Fortunately he walked away none the worse for wear.

Spring at last.

It s spring at last.

About a month ago I visited Kaziukas fair. What’s it all about? I asked one old lady. It’s to celebrate the beginning of spring. While she said this, all I could see of her, was a little pink nose poking out from between her big fur hat and her thick fur coat, which she was wearing to insulate herself from the cold. The steam from her breath swirled around as she spoke. Flurries of snow spiralled down and settled on any thing that wasn’t moving. Are you sure its Spring I asked. Of course it is, Its St Casimir’s day she replied. And that was that.

Well it’s certainly spring now. I know this because the rooks in Lukiskiu Square are collecting twigs and rebuilding their nests. There’s no ice on the river, but there are a few ducks. The crust of hard snow has melted away from the parks and gardens to reveal expanses of brown sludge. But already there is a mad dash by grass and weeds to turn everything green. The big piles of snow along the roadsides are ninety percent gone and there’s not an icicle to be seen.

Is it too soon to reminisce about winter? Everywhere looked so pretty especially the little houses with their eaves decorated with glistening icicles. A friend of mine thought they looked so beautiful he snapped one off and put it in his rucksack. He said he was going to take it back to Ireland as a souvenir. Every morning I would be woken up by the sound of scraping as the care taker of the school next door cleaned the snow off the paths. In fact there would be an army of workers out on the streets of the city, sweeping away the snow, breaking up the ice and sprinkling grit on the streets. Great heaps of snow and ice had been piled up, so, when the thaw had truly commenced the same group of workers would go out and break up the piles of snow and spread it around a bit to help it melt.

There were a couple of amusing little bye products of this activity. Every dogs mess deposited on the street during the last month and every discarded fag end, would have been swept up into these piles of snow and hence kept fresh until the thaw. Now, in place of the big heaps of snow, there are little piles of pooh, with accompanying fag ends. What do all the workers do when there’s no ice and snow to clear up?

What's wrong with the Lithuanians.

I could write something about how beautiful Lithuanian women are, or how witty the men are, or just word or two about how friendly everyone has been since I’ve been here. But that would be boring so I’ve written about the ‘other’ Lithuanians instead.

I was in Trakai on Sunday afternoon. I was expecting to meet friends at the bus station at two thirty and, having arrived there before them, I went for short walk before going back to meet them. I stopped short of the bus station because there were a couple of big blokes brawling on the ground. There were three others standing a yard or two away, hands in pockets, just watching. I paused assuming someone would step in to break things up. But no one did. So I stayed where I was and watched too, while I waited for my friends to arrive, still assuming someone would intervene or the police would arrive and cart them off.

This wasn’t a group of kids; these were grown men, probably in their early thirties, three of them watching a slow lethargic brawl between two others, in public without any apparent sense of shame or embarrassment. The bigger guy was lying on top of the other, punching his face, while the smaller of the two was haplessly trying to trade blows but without much success. When he had given up, the bigger man climbed off him and got up. It wasn’t over yet however. When the smaller (less big) guy tried to get up the big bloke kicked him in the head a few times and then finished the job off with a few well aimed kicks to the kidneys.

In the meantime the other men still did nothing, whilst passengers boarded an adjacent bus, occasionally looking over their shoulders to keep an eye on the proceedings. This just seemed weird. It was a Sunday afternoon. There was a police station 200m away but no one seemed at all bothered that an act of gratuitous violence was taking place so publicly.

You will be pleased to hear the victim sat up. His face was a bit red and puffy but I could see no blood. His ‘mates’ were still there but they didn’t interfere with him as he struggled to his feet and staggered off to seek the support of an adjacent post.  What was the relationship between these men? Had the victim somehow transgressed and broken some unwritten code of conduct, or was he just one of a bunch of unpleasant violent thugs.

I didn’t know it, but I was about to lose sympathy for him. After a bit of gesticulating, he staggered back to the group of men and started throwing punches at another one of them. By this time I had noticed that everything was happening in slow motion and I assumed therefore that they were all drunk. Am I going to see a lot of this I wondered to myself? I sauntered off to get a coffee.

I was beginning to realise that I had, by this time noticed a few other very drunk people staggering around during the middle of the day. Getting drunk doesn’t seem to be a night time pursuit as it is at home. I was walking home from the bus station one afternoon, down a street called Pylimo. This is a very busy street; yet lying in the snow, on the pavement was a young man with a minor head wound. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was relatively fresh. Why wasn’t anyone looking after him? For a moment I thought I would deal with the situation, but I don’t know the numbers for the police or ambulance service and I don’t speak Lithuanian, so I walked passed and hoped that soon one the locals would sort him out. He was drunk I suppose. How long can an unconscious drunk survive outside in this weather?

Watching the very drunk can be fun. Two weeks ago I was in Palanga, by the sea. I was in a restaurant, or bar, at about half past ten in the evening. It was apparently quiet and not very busy, but for a table near bye where voices were slightly raised. There was a group of six at the table, two of whom appeared to be having a bit of a lovers tiff. These people weren’t being particularly obnoxious, but when the waitress came over to take their order, one of the men reached round to feel her buttock. She took a step back so he couldn’t reach and continued taking the order as if nothing had happened. He reached out further for another feel, but this time he reached too far and lost is balance and fell of his chair. It was his complete inability to get up again that persuaded me he was completely drunk. Fortunately help was at hand. One of the girls decided to help him up. She was wearing a pair of dainty little high heeled shoes, which were not the ideal footwear for re erecting drunk men, so after tugging at him for a little while, she lost her balance and fell on top of him.

One of the other men decided to get up at this stage. Whether he was going to help or going to the toilet, I don’t know, but he pushed back his chair a bit vigorously, causing it to topple backwards so that he too hit the floor. He like his friend was evidently too drunk to get back up. Bizarrely, of the six people who were sitting at that table when I came in, three were now squirming around on the floor, tangled up in a bunch of tables and chairs.

This was in fact the second instance of waitress groping I had witnessed. In Vilnius a week or two earlier I was in a restaurant call Aukstaiciai. It’s quite a small place with little room for moving around. Nevertheless a relatively good humoured drunk bloke decided he didn’t want to sit down anymore and spent the next half hour, or more, mooching around between the tables, singing, dancing and quoting from the bible, in English! He fondled the waitress each time she passed, as well as any female customer who needed to get past, and because in that little place there was no way to avoid him, he managed to do an awful lot of fondling. When there was no one to fondle he demonstrated his head kicking skills by launching an assault on the upper part of the door frame. He was very communicative and explained that he worked for the government’s anti corruption task force. That’s worth knowing. If you get involved in corruption in Lithuania, you may not just get arrested; you might get a few kicks in the head too.

During six months in Bulgaria I didn’t seen anyone fall off a chair, not a single bit of waitress groping, no collapsed drunks in the street, nor any head kicking. There were a couple of drive by shootings, but I didn’t actually witness either of those. Why can’t the Lithuanians be more like the Bulgarians?