On Thursday I went to Svilengrad, Bulgaria. I am usually a glass half-full type of person, I enjoy seeing new places, I am reading a good book.
I was dropped off on the highway, the only thing I could see was an abadoned post-Soviet factory, and a cat that had been run over by an 18-wheeler, or else several cars. I was so panicked I started to laugh. I walked 5 km into the town to find people with no teeth, no English, bad hair, past starving donkeys, piles of scrap metal, waste, deranged cows. The supermarket didn't take my credit card, the people laughed at me when I asked where and when the bus back to Istanbul was (hehehe, nyet, nyet). I found a pizza place and placed my order by drawing on a piece of scrap paper (above, bacon and mushroom). A bottle of beer (Tuborg) at the pizza place was 2 Bulgarian whatevers, which is less than 2 ytl. This was good.
I walked back the 5km past the starving cows, flattened cat, rubbish piles and saw a bus going by on the highway with Turkish on the side. I started running, flailing my arms, screaming "Don't leave me in Svilengrad!!!!" The bus let me on, though they asked if I was a gypsy.
Svilengrad is how I picture what Romania was like when my brother went there in 1989. I could have been in Chechnya, possibly. Actually, I want to go back there, out of some perverse desire to get photograpic evidence of Svilengrad (I had forgotten my camera). It was so badly run down, things were almost contrived-- old women with bizarrely drawn on eyebrows, orange hair, few teeth, indescribable clothes (maybe of the variety that could be purchased at the Tarlabasi Bazaar). I think Svilengrad must be like Brigadoon, a disappearing town stuck in time. Unlike in the musical, I did not fall in love, unless you count the pork section of the supermarket, where I indulged when I finally managed to find a working cash machine.
On the way home the bus past a new development, maybe 30 miles outside Istanbul called "Florida Sunshine Village." It was probably the most surreal day I've had, ever.
