A Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria [Paperback]

Having done a lot of backpacking all over Europe , one month ago i finally deceided to visit Bulgaria which is practically next door to my city , Thessaloniki , Greece . What i discoved was a hidden treasure indeed , a truly different and new experience for the traveler . That trip led me to purchase " Childhood And Other Misadventures " by Mrs.Kassabova , a witty and sharp portait of her land . The writter herself has lived in Sofia till she was seventeen and then imigrated to New Zealand so her perspective is that of a native combined with that of an observer. What makes the book such a treat really is the fact that Kassabova doesn't care to please anybody at all . She won't shy away from the shortcomings of her nation , even touching some very sensitive minority subjects yet at the same time nobody can't deny her the love she displays for her homeland through this wonderful , humorous book . There is a chapter called " Macedonian Misadventures " that will infuriate greeks , bulgarians and the nice people of FYROM , each for different reasons . Furthermore , the Turkish readers won't be very pleased either with the repeated references of the Armenian genocide , still , what the writter seems to be pointing out to the Balkan readers is how overconsuming our billateral issues can be and how insignificant they indeed are , for the greater international reality .

Overall , this is a gem of travel literature that will make u want to pack your bags and visit the place immediately !

Kapka Kassabova was born in Communist Bulgaria, and emigrated from there in 1990 (to England, then to New Zealand, then back to Scotland). She does not go back to Bulgaria until mid-2006, and that visit triggers off the account of her childhood in Sofia and then her perceptions of what Bulgaria was like on the verge of joining the European Union in January 2007.

She paints a dreary picture of communist Bulgaria: of life in cramped and cheerless tenement blocks, of dilapidation everywhere, of disgusting overflowing public toilets, of a regimented life (even schoolchildren were usually called by their numbers rather than by their name), of everything in short supply, of a rickety economy becoming even worse when in 1988 the government `encouraged' many of its hard-working Turkish minority to leave Bulgaria, while those remaining had to change their Turkish into Bulgarian names. Visits to the Soviet Union showed even emptier shops there; but Macedonia (in former Yugoslavia), East Berlin, and especially Holland (where her parents, who have posts in engineering and computer technology institutes, were allowed an academic visit in 1984) were not only paradisaical experiences, but deeply upsetting ones, throwing into sharp relief the wretched conditions under which they lived.

In the midst of all this misery Kapka brings her relatives richly to life, as well as her own `thrills and torments' of adolescence.

Kapka's parents are privately scathing about the regime; her friends and contemporaries are rather bolder, ardent to listen to western popular, moody and subversive music, while the more intellectual among them drank in whatever western literature and philosophy they could get hold of (and that was, surprisingly, quite a lot.) And then the Wall came down in 1989 and `the 45-year-long theatre of the absurd' had come to an end.

Her father gets a two-year visiting fellowship in Colchester, and the family joins him there. Kapka goes to a sixth-form college and is duly bewildered by the many paradoxes she finds in England: her working-class friends have a standard of living which makes it seem `as if the revolution of the proletariat had failed in Bulgaria, but had somehow succeeded in England'. Then she finds that material possessions are no guarantee of happiness, and that her adolescent friends in England are just as moody and dissatisfied with life as she and her friends had been in Bulgaria.

When their visas expire, they return to a Bulgaria which is materially even worse off than it had been under communism. Mega-inflation, unemployment, and racketeering were rife.

After about a year in this dystopia, the family emigrated to New Zealand. Kapka tells us nothing about the fourteen years of her life away from Bulgaria except that she had travelled a lot. The second half of the book is about the country as it was when she visited it again, partly to visit ancient relatives and partly to make a number of journeys all over the country. We now have a kaleidoscope: of more memories of her family's past, of touristic descriptions of the country, of encounters with `characters' (many dour and suspicious, others generous and hospitable), of the sad history of 19th and 20th century Bulgaria and of occasional dips into remoter epochs.

There are in this half of the book some, but comparatively few, comments about the social changes that have happened while she has been away: the persecution of the Turks has stopped and many of them have returned from Turkey, though the wounds and the tensions are still there; there has been a good deal of investment, mostly by foreigners buying up property or building hotels and other glitzy buildings, monstrously so along the Black Sea coast, next to older buildings which are crumbling away; but in the remoter areas in which she travels there seems to be little change, and the roads, often through dramatic landscapes, are still potholed.

She suffers, as she says many Bulgarian emigres do, from a `fractured psyche', and her journeys evoke in her a mixture of nostalgia and nausea. Bulgaria is still in her blood, but she could not live there now. Just occasionally I think he musings are a little far-fetched, but she writes very well; her tone is witty, ironic, and compassionate.

Apart from being entirely one-sided, the book is full of inaccuracies, which diminish greatly its value. One is left with the impression that it is written to please the public and thus bring financial benefit to the publisher and the author.