Originally posted September 18, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woodsThe physical scars of communism are visible across Eastern Europe, Bulgaria being no exception. The most readily apparent are the hulking concrete apartment blocks that litter every town in this country with more than, say, 2,000 people. The blocks that ring the major cities are truly astounding in size, some of the ones in Sofia can rise to 20 stories with more than a dozen vertical rows of apartments - that's 240 individual units, and if four people live in each one, that would mean nearly 1,000 people in a single residential building. The majority of Bulgarians live in these buildings, as do nearly all Peace Corps volunteers (as I did in Svishtov).
In the bigger and more prosperous cities, some blocks closer towards the city center are being renovated into fairly decent looking facilities. A good coat of paint can go a long ways to restoring respectability. The vast majority of the buildings, unfortunately, appear to be on the verge of collapse. The invisible scars of communism (existing in the minds of the people) are slowly being cleaned up, and everyone hopes that within a generation the horrors of the past will be reconciled...but these physical reminders will stand for years to come.
I took this picture on the outskirts of Dupnitsa, and to me, it's the classic dichotomy of the Bulgarian landscape - beautiful mountains juxtaposed against unsightly mounds of concrete, housing thousands of people, and a vacant junk-strewn field in the foreground.
