Back from Bulgaria

I’m a bit late in writing this entry, but I’ve been busy since I returned from Bulgaria on Sunday afternoon.

To be honest, I hadn’t looked forward to going to Bulgaria. I’d checked out various websites and I’d thought I was going to a country of bandits. Well, of course, it was nothing like my expectations. Yes, it is still quite poor and parts of Sofia, the capital, are run down. The potholes in the roads are craters that the taxi drivers have to weave around to avoid destroying their cars’ suspension. The trams and buses are old. But the hotel I stayed in (the Shipka Hotel) was modern, plain and clean, and not unduly expensive - I’ve stayed in far worse hotels in the UK with far greater pretensions than the Shipka.

The people I met were friendly and incredibly well educated. Sorry if this sounds patronizing: the country may still be relatively poor by western European standards, but Bulgarians read books, listen intently at meetings and ask penetrating questions.

I went to Sofia to do a number of things. The national governing council of the Bulgarian Baha’i community had asked me to do some training with them on external relations and to speak at a couple of meetings. They had also invited me to meet various prominent people in Sofia. And I was there to attend the 12th European Public Information Management Seminar run by the Baha’i International Community Office of Public Information (Paris).

I flew to Sofia on Tuesday 28 June and spoke on ‘The Journey of the Soul’ at a public meeting in the Shipka Hotel that evening. About 35 people came. They listened intently and then asked some really quite challenging questions. If I were speaking on the same subject in the UK, I might get some fairly polite, possibly even superficial questions. But the Bulgarians I was discoursing with were interested enough to keep asking questions and making comments for a couple of hours. There were references to Jungian psychology and Lacan amongst others - and one questioner who works with children with learning difficulties wondered how such children’s souls could express themselves.

I was fortunate in my interpreter, Elena Mustakova-Possardt, a professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia in the US. Elena is a Bulgarian who is bilingual in Bulgarian and English. Because her academic and professional specialty is human development, she could answer any really difficult questions! We made a good team.

Elena translated for me again the next day when I spoke at a slightly smaller meeting in the Baha’i Centre in Sofia about interfaith dialogue and ‘One Common Faith’, the new publication from the Baha’i World Centre. This followed a day-long training session with the National Spiritual Assembly, the national governing council of the Bulgarian Baha’i community.

I started Thursday 30 June with an interview on Bulgarian national radio. I have done quite a lot of radio interviews, but this was a new experience for me. The interview was taped for a late night show with presenter Rumen Stoichkov. Rumen understood English quite well but could speak only at a fairly rudimentary level. So Elena interpreted once again, translating Rumen’s questions into English and my replies into Bulgarian. The main theme was the central Baha’i teaching of unity in diversity and the skill of the Baha’i community in bridge-building between different groups and communities.

I made this the theme of my subsequent conversations with Professor Christo Matanov, an expert in inter-religious dialogue, with Stamen Tassev, Bulgaria’s Deputy Finance Minister, and with Maxim Behar, Chief Executive of the largest PR agency in Bulgaria (and head of the Bulgarian chapter of the European Business Leaders’ Forum).

Terry Madison had set up all these meetings. She is an American Baha’i who’s lived in Bulgaria since 1991 (before that she lived in Suriname). Terry is a former professional singer and entertainer and has tremendous qualities. Although she must be in her 70s, she has great enthusiasm for life and her sense of wonder, is a dedicated Baha’i, and very warm hearted. She is a great builder of friendships.

I was fortunate enough to be able to see Angela Tidswell. Angela and Robert have been through extraordinary difficulties and challenges since they moved to Bulgaria a year or two back, but Angela is a rock; her vision is to stay in Bulgaria (near Varna) and to help strengthen the Baha’i community there. We spent time catching up.

Baha’is from 35 European countries (from Iceland to Turkey) attended the seminar in the Shipka Hotelm including many old friends.

There was a public relations reception as part of the seminar and I was very pleased to greet the Deputy Finance Minister and one or two of the others that I had met on Thursday, including Karina Todorova, the editor of a magazine called ‘One World’. The entertainment was provided by a wonderful young dance group, Zhestim, all of whose members are deaf or hearing impaired. Their dancing was immaculate and full of life, conducted by their leader who stood at the front and signed.

On Saturday night the seminar participants decamped to an ethnic Bulgarian restaurant with a resident band, two generously proportioned ladies who sang a wonderful range of songs, and an exciting and dynamic dance group (four men, four women) which did traditional dances interpreted through a series of stories or scenarios. The men started, strutting in with knives and swords and looking like the bandits I had thought inhabited Bulgaria. The women were very attractive and danced with great energy and finesse. And then the Baha’i diners took to the floor and danced in various ways (some more skilled than others) as the music got louder and louder. Finally, a chain of us were enticed into a Bulgarian circle dance.

Let me warn you against Bulgarian circle dances. They are dances to the death. The music goes on and on until only the very fittest survive. The rest limp and stagger from the floor, wondering why they were so foolish as to risk heart attacks in pursuit of a surfeit of terpsichore.

Temperatures soared to 33º or 34ºC mid-week in Sofia, but then we had some spectacular thunderstorms.