Issue 116

Later on, unless you go on to become a member of a nationalist party, you don't feel any particular need to remind yourself of "I am a Bulgarian." Such a statement, despite its straightforwardness, could invoke a measure of uncertainty, like the invisible steps on the front cover of this book. It is not because you could be something else than a Bulgarian, but because the affirmation presupposes a previous agreement between yourself and your compatriots about what it is that makes you Bulgarian and what makes Bulgarians a community.

Like so many Poles, who used to make their holidays at the Bulgarian Black Sea coast in the 1970s and 1980s, this is not Krzysztof Krajewski's first visit to this country. The current Polish ambassador spent five years in Varna, between 1998 and 2003, acting as a consul. In addition to the title of Honorary Citizen of Varna and the ability to speak almost unaccented Bulgarian that sojourn brought to him a lasting sentiment for Bulgaria which, during our chat at the Polish Embassy in Sofia, he found hard to do away with.

One thing your Bulgarian instructor will probably not be telling you, possibly because many Bulgarians will be at a loss themselves, is the sometimes intricate details and innuendoes of this country's new Newspeak.

Our sin? We had not lit candles when we entered the church. He, however, did not see any contradiction in the fact that the veneration of "healing" springs is a tradition that Eastern Orthodoxy in Bulgaria has inherited from paganism.

The year we became minimalists was the same year we gave up meat. You decided these things were for one another, and so this is what we did. Some years previous, when we had decided to be two women in love, we were incredible disasters. I had sloppily painted the walls a burnt orange and draped silk scarves atop the lamps, rather than replacing their spent bulbs.