Even by Balkan standards, Bulgaria is overexposed to both post-socialist and neoliberal influences that combine to create a unique and strange architectural collage. The intersection nearest my apartment was anchored by the Telus Tower on one end, owned by a Canadian telecom company, and directly across the street was a communist-era administrative building still engraved with the Soviet-style emblem of the ГУП (The General Management of Roads Agency). Here’s a closer look at the logo, which fell into disuse after the dissolution of the People’s Republic.
Telus hires a lot of Bulgarians to work their call centers. It was the top employer of Bulgarians among those I met in Sofia. They pay about 1,000 EUR a month to pick up the phone and answer support tickets in English. Bulgaria, being an E.U. member state, is unique among the regional ex-communist states. After spending weeks in several countries in which there wasn’t as much as a McDonald’s, or any Western brand to speak of, seeing the Telus logo illuminated above my street was a pleasant reminder that I wasn’t too far from familiarity.
Every day I’d cross this intersection, dodging the streetcars rolling diagonally through the center, and at the same time cross a microcosm of the Balkans itself. Socialism and capitalism at spitting distance of one another; the old utopia staring down the new one. Together they gave off a unique, seemingly-dystopian feeling to the surroundings that for me doubled as living history. Even after 1,340 years of continual Bulgarian nationhood, this country is still figuring itself out, and still finding its identity shaped by the ideological and architectural motivations from one era to the next.
In Plovdiv, to the east, there is a cinder block building with roll-down gates instead of doors that leak the scents of fluorocarbons. Inside, workmen paint autobodies. Next to it is a stone church. On the other side is an apartment complex under construction, but there’s no work being done on a weekday afternoon. Everything has the half-built appearance of transition from one thing to something else, where its past and future seem in constant dialogue.