NW Bulgaria Trip Part I - The Birds, the Bees, … and the Snakes

We had a four-day weekend for Orthodox Easter and we decided to explore Bulgaria’s Northwest, a part of the country none of us (including me) had seen before. Bulgaria’s Northwest is known for its natural beauty but also as the poorest part of the country. After the fall of communism, a lot of the formerly government-owned enterprises folded and there has not been much to replace them, so the area lags economically compared to the rest of the country. People have been leaving smaller towns and villages for larger cities in Bulgaria and overseas in search of work and education opportunities and few have gone back. This, coupled with the low average birth rates is causing serious demographic concerns for the whole country and beyond, which is sad because there is so much to see and do here.

But back to our Easter trip. We started in Sofia and traveled North to Chiprovtzi, Belogradchik, Vidin and Vratsa over four days. I'll be adding separate posts about each of our stops in the next few days.

Today we were driving down a country road when we saw what looked like a snake in the road. On closer inspection, it turned out to be not one but two vipers (пепелянки) and they seemed to be making baby snakes. We slowed down to make sure we didn’t make ex-snakes out of them and I took a few pictures.

Max: “They’re doing it!”

Me: “Wait! What?!!!”

Since when does my 8-year-old know what that even means?!!!

On Being a Decent Human Being

I am at a Religious Freedom training in Budapest. Normally, I don’t talk much about my work here but indulge me for a moment, will you?

Religious Freedom is one of the things I cover in Bulgaria. It is an important part of U.S. history and a key tenet of U.S. policy. Now, if you know me, you know that I am not exactly a religious person. But I don’t have to be because religious freedom is about protecting the rights of people to practice any religion or no religion at all.

I have had moments over the years when I have studied various faiths and I find many of them interesting but for whatever reason, no one religion has resonated with me in a big way. Perhaps it has to do with growing up under communism, the political system that beat religion out of many of us. Religion has made a comeback in Bulgaria and different faiths resonate with people.

I work with various religious groups and do my best to help them in their efforts to achieve religious freedom. Occasionally, I hear comments about “the infidels” as these “evil” people. I generally ignore those comments but they don’t sit right with me. Just because someone doesn’t follow a particular faith doesn’t automatically make them a bad person any more than going to a house of worship makes one automatically a good person. Also, just because I don’t believe in an organized religion doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t believe in anything. While I don’t think of myself as religious, I do see myself as spiritual and believe in being a decent human being. To some this may seem simplistic but it’s enough for me. My moral compass is in me, it’s part of me and I personally don’t need to go to a house of worship to feel connected with that fundamental belief (I like visiting temples but it’s mostly for their aesthetic, cultural and historical value). I don’t need someone else to tell me to be a good person. I have felt this way for a long time but today I heard someone else say something along those lines and it really resonated.

As part of our training, my colleagues and I met with Eva Fahidi. She was born in 1925 in Debrecen. Her family was deported to Auschvitz in 1944. Ms. Fahidi was 18 at the time and together with 1,000 other women was transferred from Auschvitz to a forced labor camp in Germany to work in a munitions factory. When she returned to Hungary after WWII, Ms. Fahidi realized that 49 of her relatives were killed in Auschvitz. She was the only person in her family to survive the Holocaust. Just digesting those facts was hard for me. She lived through all that but somehow found the strength to move on after the horrors of the Holocaust. If this doesn’t tell you something about the power of the human spirit, I don’t know what would.

Ms. Fahidi appealed to us to watch the news with open hearts and minds and then follow our hearts and minds. She said she is concerned about the rise of the Right in Germany and worried about the future. “Why can’t people understand they are so similar?!” she wondered, adding that some people in Hungary “get anti-Semitism through their mother’s milk.” She said one of her best friends was Roma. Her message to us was, “Try to be human. Decide to be a good person. Nothing else. It’s difficult but try. In the end it will be worth it.”

Ms. Fahidi has written two memoirs, which don’t seem to be available on amazon but hopefully soon. There are a lot of stories about her in various publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post but the most recent I could find was this piece from Deutche Welle, which talks about Ms. Fahidi’s love of dance and dancing in her 90s as a way to tell her story and promote Holocaust remembrance.

I just loved her attitude and faith in humanity despite the awful trauma she experienced at a young age.

Dealing with Loss (and the Broken Heart and Fried Brain that Go with It)

My dad lost the battle with cancer and it was incredibly sad, unsettling and scary. It’s been almost two weeks and I have been at a loss for words to describe how I feel. I posted a quick announcement on Facebook the day it happened, mostly to let people know about the funeral but so many friends responded from all over the world, people who knew my dad as well as many who did not. I was totally overwhelmed by all the heartfelt and thoughtful notes. They meant a lot - thank you from the bottom of our broken hearts!

My dad had been unwell for a while and deteriorating rapidly, so his passing was not unexpected but it hit me very hard when it happened nonetheless. We all know we are going to go one day but it’s hypothetical until it actually happens. And when it does, the closest relatives are immediately thrown in organization mode – making funeral arrangements, notifying people, dealing with a myriad of things that have to be taken care of when someone dies. There is no time to think, no time to process. I see what is happening, my mind registers and I understand on some level but my brain refuses to process it. I go through the motions on autopilot, moving through a haze, hoping I would wake up and find that it has all been just a terrible nightmare and that everything is fine – my dad, my childhood hero, is young and healthy, strong and handsome, the way I remember him.

I try to hold on to the sweet childhood memories just a little bit longer but realize I am dreaming, with my eyes open. And there is a coffin in front of me holding a man, who is supposed to be my father but looks like a ghost of the man he used to be. I know my father is gone. Forever. I know I will never see him again and things will never be the same. The finality of it is like a slow bullet to the head, a huge lump in the throat, a hole in the heart. I know I will have to live with those things for the rest of my life because nothing can ever fix them. It’s all raw and it hurts but I have to learn to live with the pain somehow.

Time heals, they say. But that makes no sense to me. This pain seems different and here to stay - I can’t imagine it ever going away. I try to be strong for my mother, who is beside herself with grief, for my husband and kids but I am falling apart. I sense depression rearing its ugly head, trying to snake in. I shoo it away. I exercise and spend time in the sun trying to replenish the serotonin (happiness hormone) I so badly need right now.

I try to move on. Work is a good distraction, they say. Except, focusing seems impossible. And I keep forgetting things – not sure if it’s just temporary or I’m losing my mind. The loss and thinking about it seem to have consumed me, yet occasionally I am startled at the thought that my dad’s really gone and never coming back. 

There are too many bad memories of my dad’s illness and how desperate things got in the end. I don’t want to remember him like that. I am curating in my head the things I want to remember about him. I go through old pictures, just to prove to myself that the strong, handsome man was not an illusion. He existed and was at the center of my universe for a long time. I want to keep only the good memories, chisel off everything else and let it go.

Nothing makes us face our own mortality like the death of a loved one. So I contemplate it again and again. There is no good end – dying young and healthy or unexpectedly is no better than dying after a long illness. It’s heartbreaking no matter what. I wish I was more Zen about my dad’s passing – you know, be one of those people who honor their loved ones by celebrating their lives. There is a lot to celebrate about my dad’s life for sure: he was funny, curious, brave and adventurous; he traveled a lot, worked hard and had fun. But I am still angry about the way he died. Cancer is brutal. It sucked the life out of him and caused him so much of pain and suffering. I don’t understand why that had to happen and have a hard time moving past it to get to a point where I could celebrate his life. I hope I get there some day. But right now I am working through my anger and sadness. I am trying to figure out mourning and realize I suck at it. I find it frustrating to watch my mom going through her grief and I can tell she’s frustrated with me but everyone mourns differently and that’s OK.

Some people in Bulgaria wear black after they lose a family member. I never thought I would do that - it seemed old-fashioned, weird, and so not me because I love color. Well, I wear all black now and it feels strangely comforting and right because it matches my mood. It also lets people know I’ve lost someone who meant a lot to me. How long – I don’t know. Until the fog lifts and I feel lighter, I guess. Whenever that is…