Suspicious Minds

My laptop has decided it does not like Veliko Turnovo, for it has not started in two days. I am not giving up hope, as it has done this before, and I'm hoping a couple of days' rest will leave it refreshed and ready to work again. Besides, the weather has been so beautiful I wouldn't want to spend the day in front of the computer!

I've been writing the old fashioned way - with pen and paper, which is actually what I prefer to do. I hate the typing part of it. Maybe someday if I've become a successful writer, I can hire an assistant to do all of my typing for me.

This city is my Left Bank. It has all of the charm and history to qualify, as my gut told me in September when I first conceived the notion of this trip. The view from where I am staying is incredible. I could write a whole novel from the balcony. I've been wandering the winding, narrow streets, thrilled with each discovery of a new stairway leading to new things I've not yet seen. I've no real destination and am free to take every new twist and turn I come across.

A slow moving mass with swollen ankles and an oppressive slouch shuffled along a narrow stone street. The only part of the woman that did not suffer from the staleness of aging was a shiny green jacket, probably a gift from her children whose best years of life had not withered away under soulless communism. A string worn around her ankle looked as if it were meant to tie her foot to the rest of her leg. Somehow, though, she managed to shuffle out of sight, those aged legs still serving their purpose.

The deep blue October sky and the warmth of the day provided a spotlight for an ancient city to shine. Cafes with outside terraces moved with the kinetic force of urban prosperity. A younger, much luckier generation sat at tables covered with umbrellas that proclaimed capitalism's triumph: Coca Cola, Lavazza, and now, Kamenitza. Western pop music played loudly from Japanese speakers as if it always had. Laughter, smiles, and conversation flowed freely. The old woman was a relic from a much unhappier time.

What it must have been like then, and the youth don't even know it. Now they carry mobile phones and drink lattes and never get tricked into telling on their parents. To an American who grew up associating the Cyrillic alphabet with nuclear weapons and believing the gateway to Hell was located in Moscow, being in an ex-Soviet satellite with no visible reminders of that time is a bit strange. We had such an impression of life under communism that I couldn't envision anyone not sitting around in overcrowded apartments when even in July it was cold and damp and gray and miserable. There is such color here, such life, and I have been struck with a permanent and unsatisfiable curiosity about how it was back then. That is a good thing.

The old are suspicious. They will stare at you as you approach from a distance, and you can feel their eyes on you until you disappear from their weak sight. They frown at you even as you try to compliment their gardens in broken Bulgarian, even as you smile to try to prove you are not out to get their meager possessions. Maybe their bitter faces are the result of hearts hardened by years under communism. Maybe they are simply lamenting the invasion of the corporate mentality, where materialism reigns supreme. The pace of change is so rapid that one can feel today is more hectic than yesterday. It must be difficult for someone who has been used to a slower, even more boring, pace of life.

Or maybe it is simply the aging process - you know, the "kids these days" mentality that is a natural reaction to change and aging.