Marlboro Bags

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

This post is part of the series about communist Bulgaria between 1979 and 1989. I already posted about my cat, ice cream, TV, and elections.

My kids go to school with backpacks. Their backpacks tend to be large and capable capable of carrying over 10kg of weight. The modern education system in Bulgaria relies on thick, glossy textbooks and lots of printed material, which makes them heavy. I also go everywhere with a large backpack, full of necessary items.

Back in the 80s, as true commies, we had another solution to the problem of how to bring all of our items to school, apart from not having much to carry. We used nylon bags like the one below (found for sale on a local marketplace site). The more colorful it was, the better. I had the exact same as the screenshot, and I’m pretty sure it lasted almost a year. Changed many while in school, and wasn’t picky.

Of course, they couldn’t carry 10 kg like modern backpacks, but they didn’t need to. We had far fewer schoolbooks and used light textbooks. We also didn’t need to carry everything to class. Books were usually only needed at home, for the brave ones who ever opened them. I don’t think many of my classmates did.

As for the images on the bags, foreign cigarette brands were the most popular. The more colorful and unfamiliar, the better. These bags were worth serious money and could be purchased from the flea market “Bitaka”. Getting a new one was a big event. I just don’t see any dopamine high in modern kids’ lives that’s similar to this experience, perhaps getting an iPhone.

Speaking of cigarette brands and why Marlboro of all things. We grew up with access to smoking. My classmates smoked since a very young age, probably under 10. However, the cigarettes available were local, and everyone wanted the foreign, which weren’t officially available anywhere. So, Marlboro, Camel, JPS and such were primarily imported by tourists, truck drivers, and visitors from the West. Even if you could get your hands on an empty pack, it still had value. I found 10-ish such packs thrown in the wild as trash and kept them in a glass display cabinet. You could trade them with other kids. And the packs were pretty, unlike the ugly things from the modern times, covered with photos of injuries and dying people.

So the true “socialist look” of the 80s was cheap, fake jeans top to bottom, white local leather sneakers, and a Marlboro bag in hand.

Ice

~ Veselin ~ 23 Comments

The five snowflakes that fell over the city yesterday quickly turned into a thin layer of ice. This is the second most unpleasant regular event in the city, only dwarfed by the annual snow melting. Unfortunately, when the snow is not much, people tend to not clean it.

And to celebrate the snow, here’s a song that doesn’t sound like metal but if you listen carefully, has harsh vocals. The artist is Lustre, and the track is The First Snow.

Embrace this innocent beginning
To a chapter of woe and wonder
A night all dressed in white
The first snow – a token of curiosity.

The Underpass

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

The St. Anna underpass had no lights today. Hordes of people were walking in the dark one way, like in a scene from Pluribus. I was embarrassed to take the photo and only clicked once.

My First Elections

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments

This post is part of the series about communist Bulgaria between 1979 and 1989. I already posted about my cat, ice cream, and TV channel switching.

It is the final years of the communism. I’m about 7-8 years old, already 2nd grade in school, around 1987. One weekend, there would be elections. All adults had to go to my school on a Saturday and vote. The political system was such that the country was lead by an unchangeable elderly first man and his buddies. The eletions were for some local authority, like district mayors. The old guy got reelected by an invite-only party, with a 99.9% majority.

So, as a curious kid, I went to vote with my mom. All the options were communist party aging dudes. Someone prepared a poster with their e and Leninist accomplishments. One studied in Moscow, another lead a factory. Mom picked a guy who lead the postal office. We didn’t have a phone line. Applied for one but the waiting time was 10+ years. She hoped that the postal dude will speed things up and we’ll have a phone.

She voted and we went back home. Dad didn’t want to go because it was a waste of time. By noon, someone showed up at the door and rang the bell.

“You’re the last one who didn’t vote, what are you waiting for? We don’t want to report you, we just want to go home. Come or we’ll call the police.”

We never learned who won. The communism fell 3-4 years later. 7 years later we moved to a new place. We never got a landline on that first apartment, the new apartment already had one.

Photo Credit: Petko Yotov, CC BY-SA 3.0. From this view, the neighborhood looks almost unchanged compared to 1986-1989. Won’t be surprised if it’s 20+ years old, especially with the filter.

More Kukeri

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

This Saturday, we had a chance to see the actual main event for the Kukeri in Blagoevgrad. They were thousands. The video and the photos can’t describe the sensory shock of getting close to these people. I’m glad to have had the chance to experience it, we normally leave Blagoevgrad earlier and miss it.

One can only imagine how terrifying the national event in Pernik called Surva is.