Travels in the Homeland

There are always new things for me to take note of when I land in Sofia. En route from the airport to my house me and my parents are bound to have our customary conversation about all the new buildings on either side of the main road that takes us into the city. This time it was no different - there are new shopping malls (one of them being the biggest on the Balkans), five star hotels and glitzy office buildings. Sofia is even acquiring its own subway system, which, once it becomes extensive enough, will make the traffic a lot more manageable. In some ways the city is developing the kind of physical infrastructure requisite for any modern city.

But it is not the exterior that bothers me. When I was growing up it was the exterior that made our lives miserable - the empty shelves in the shops, the creaky buses, the potholes on the streets, the derelict buildings in the city center etc. Now the city and by extension we as a people have moved beyond that.

What bothers me now is the disentagrating internal moral fabric of our society. In the 1990's it paid off to be more pushy and to cut corners. It was survival of the fittest in the workplace, on the street and on the job. In post-transition Bulgaria 2010 all of that has been taken to a new level. It's perfectly okay to be corrupt and immoral. Some of the most corrupt figures in public life are constantly glorified in the media and have the audacity to freely promote themselves in the public space. It's accepted to be vulgar on TV. That is what gets you commercial success. Of course, the people that watch the vulgar shows on TV are the same people that are vulgar to each other on the street. The institutions that are supposed to provide moral guidance such as the Bulgarian Orthodox Church are themselves internally rotten. I could go on and on with more layers of that general societal malaise. Its symptoms are evident in many aspects of public life in Bulgaria - from our politics through our media to our relationships with each other.

The scariest aspect of all of this is that this malaise may be permanent and no longer transitory as we all thought it would be when it started to manifest itself in the 1990s.

To be continued...

Davidson and what it means to me

I've always considered myself someone who misses people more than particular places. Indeed, I always associate my time back home in Bulgaria, London, Berlin or Wuerzburg with the people that I was fortunate enough to cross paths with more than anything else. My sentiment towards Davidson College had always been the same after graduation. During my time in London, when the return to Davidson was nothing but a distant possibility, I always thought it would somehow never be the same without my close friends and without us spending countless hours in Commons, hanging out in the Union or having a party in our senior apartment.

We love Commons!

Yet during my return to campus for our 5th year reunion last weekend I started realizing that throughout all these years my understanding of the uniqueness of this place had always been incomplete. It is true - Davidson is wherever we, those fortunate souls who have had the chance to walk the halls of Chambers, may be. Nonetheless, there is something more to the spirit of our school, something that shapes Davidson even more so than the people who have studied there. It is something that I still can't define but could only observe on a number of occasions last weekend.

The oldest building on campus

It is the feeling of tranquility that I got when I arrived on campus and saw that everything was just the way it was and that students still leave their book bags all over campus knowing that they would find them there even in a week.

It is the understanding that the world is never black and white that Dr. Chris Alexander was able to instill in us during his lecture on globalization.

It is the vibrancy of the atmosphere in the Student Union twenty-four hours a day.

The Alvarez College Union

It is the taste of the chicken quesadillas in the Outpost.

It is the appreciation of those in whose classroom you've sat and whose offices were always open for you.




A reunion with Political Science Professor and former advisor Dr. Lou Ortmayer


It is the mixed feeling of nostalgia and joy that Greg Harris, Nick Lehman, Peter Simov and I felt when we walked in our old apartment Ryburn 302 only to see our old coffee table still there and still going strong despite the fact that we used it more for dancing rather than drinking coffee.

It is the belief that the world is an oyster and that the solutions to its problems are firmly within our grasp that oozes from the pages of The Davidsonian.

It is the conviction that once you've lived in Richardson your freshman year and you've been able to get along with your roommate life will be smooth sailing after that.

It is the sense of belonging to a place when in the space of 2 mins walking from Sentelle to Chambers you've said hello to ten people at the very least.

Chambers

But above for me, and I dare say for us Davidson alums in general, this feeling whose precise definition escapes me is a feeling of longing; a longing to return and to always be part of that place that we called home for four years. My longing is mixed with the hope that my brother will have the chance to have my Davidson experience when he starts college in two years. That way I can keep returning even more often to my alma mater.

In Search of the Old Berlin

Tacheles (Kunsthaus Tacheles) is one of the earliest art colonies that were established in East Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Now more a tourist attraction frequented by droves of American or Japanese tourists who had just gotten their passports stamped at Checkpoint Charlie, it has long ago lost its edginess. And yet the news that Tacheles (The NY Times on Tacheles) will be demolished and replaced by a set of apartment buildings makes me sad. It is yet another sign that Berlin is becoming normal and that the city is slowly losing the kind of vibrancy and distinctive Bohemian atmosphere that have made it the most unusual capital in Western Europe.
The Berlin of the 1990's and early 2000's with its small theaters, techno clubs in abandoned factories, groups of percussionists jamming away at 5 AM outside of Warschauer Strasse station, Doener stands where you can get a kebab for less than 2 euros and of course the ubiquitous remnants of the Wall at random places - that is all fading away. It is being replaced by all the hallmarks of a modern city and just as Germany  has become more confident as a unified nation as the years have passed by so has Berlin grown into its role as the capital of unified Germany. So it should be perhaps and yet I think I will always have a certain sense of longing for the city as it was before. I am glad that I will be going back in December in search of what still  remains of that other Berlin.

Tacheles at Night

Отново на български

От много време се каня да прекрача мисловната бариера, която ме възпираше досега да започна да пиша отново на български. Трудно ми е да избегна усещането, че съм изгубил чувството си към родния език и, че той се е превърнал в средство за пасивно общуване с една среда, към която аз принадлежа само частично. Аз съм част от нея когато говоря със семейството си на Скайп или когато чета Дневник в интернет, но тези докосвания до българската действителност са епизодични и твърде непълни. Този вид пасивно общуване е може би донякъде неизбежен и със сигурност е нещо, с което много други българи, които живеят извън България трябва да се сблъскват.
Истинската принадлежност обаче според мен е активна по своята същност. Тя е свързана с осъзнаването, че аз трябва сам да протегна ръка и да се докосна до българската действителност по начин, който е подходящ за мен. Разбира се протегната ръка е въпрос на избор за всеки българин, който живее в чужбина. Аз отдавна съм направил своя и ще трябва по-често да пиша на български. Денят на Съединението е добър повод за едно ново начало в тази насока.

Soulmateship

What is the best way to say thank you when someone very close to you has been helpful to you? Should I buy them a gift? Should I perhaps send flowers? Maybe. I am sure that a gesture like that will touch them. And yet I feel that expressing gratitude to someone who's very close to my heart, who has always been there for me and who I am certain will continue to be there for me is not just about gestures - above all it is about deeds. It's about all I have done for that person and more importantly all that I will do. It's about all the advice that I have given them and more importantly all the advice that I will give them. It's about striving to become a better person and helping them to achieve the same. And it's about continuing to complement them as they complement me. This is what 'soulmateship' is all about, pure and simple.

My Personal Social Responsiblity Strategy – A Letter to Myself

Dear Mario,

I hope you are swell. Since I know that when you open this letter you will be ten years older and the year will be 2020, I will dispense my advice succinctly because I know that your bedtime is 10 PM and the attention span of men in their late 30’s tends to be much shorter than when you were pulling all-nighters in college.

I can see that you’ve made it. You have a wonderful family to which you are totally devoted. Your mom gets along with your wife and it is quite fortunate that the two of them don’t share a common language. Your father is still buzzing with pride because you named your firstborn son, Georgi, after him as it should be according to Bulgarian tradition. Nice house you got there as well, and that in Mayfair – the one neighbourhood in London where everyone speaks with the poshest of British accents. I know you miss New York, Berlin and Buenos Aires but think about how lucky you’ve been to be able to live in all those places. And let’s not forget the best one of them – Chapel Hill.

Indeed it is great to see that you’ve accomplished so many of the goals that you set for yourself when you decided to go $100 000 in debt when you came to business school, a number that I am sure still haunts you when you look at your monthly bank statements. However, let me take a step further and analyze the kind of personal qualities that enabled you to get there. No, you were never a finance genius as all members of your study group can recall, you were never a case study superstar and when you thought you had drawn your best picture in art class as a kid you had to settle for a stellar C-. But if people needed someone to bring different disciplines together and to connect the dots between economics, politics, history and business then you’d be the one to talk to. In addition to that your ability to thrive in diverse team environments has allowed you to navigate the treacherous currents of many professional environments. And then, of course, there is your adaptability. No matter where you go and no matter what you do you adapt. You had to learn it the hard way ever since that one August morning in 2001 when you entered your college dorm room with nothing but your two suitcases and realized that you’d be spending an entire year in the same room with a complete stranger from the Garden State of New Jersey.

However, it is fair to say that during the heady days of your youth you were not always able to link those qualities to the things you did that impacted the world around you. Let me refresh your memory – International Business Association at UNC, The Net Impact Greening Committee, Habitat, volunteering through the Bulgarian Business Club in London, the Davidson College Student Government, teaching basic German to K12 kids in Davidson and the list goes on and on. I hope you’ve been true to your promise to change that.

You have always been a firm believer in ‘equality of opportunity’ especially when it comes to helping people who never had the kind of fortunate start in life that you enjoyed and I am convinced that you’ve been able to use your personal qualities to make a difference. For example, I imagine you doing that by advising the Bulgarian government on ways to provide better and more practical education for children from the Roma minority using your background in economics and business but also appreciating the historical sensitivities related to that group of people. Or I could see you successfully implementing World Bank projects in Asia and Africa. I also want to remind you of the promise to spend a week each year teaching basic business skills in developing countries. Most importantly, don’t forget your commitment to pass on the belief that equal opportunities for all make our society a better one to your kids as this is the one tangible long-term outcome of all your efforts that you’ve always thought you could at least strive for. And, of course, I hope you’ve been sending checks to Davidson College and UNC on a regular basis!



Sincerely,

Your younger, less cynical self

The Pursuit of HappYness

In the movie 'The Pursuit of HappYness' Will Smith's character often refers to the famous lines from the Declaration of Independence and talks about how it is the pursuit that matters more rather than happiness itself, however we all we define it. To me the question is not whether this is true or not but why it is so. Is it because we spend our lives pursuing things rather than enjoying the fruits of our labor? Or perhaps because all too often the long-desired happiness doesn't turn out to be happiness after all? In many ways both of these statements are true. But for me the heart of the matter lies elsewhere. The pursuit matters more because the way we set out to achieve happiness individually ends up defining us as personalities and, viewed collectively, shapes our society. Indeed a lot can be said about a man's character by the way he accomplishes his dreams and I know for a fact that I've learned a lot about myself that way. Nonetheless, I also know that I need to be asking myself a lot more frequently the question how my pursuit shapes the society I live in and how it can affect it positively. We all need to ask ourselves that question, even Will Smith's character who goes through hell to achieve his own version of happYness.