The Monkey enjoys the view from an apartment in Lyulin, one of Sofia's Communist-era housing developments. One of the Communists' greatest accomplishments was in the realm of home construction. Across the Eastern Bloc, high-rise concrete apartment blocks rose up, filling the housing gap in growing cities and replacing post-war rubble and shanty-type dwellings. Much disparaged by those who have never been in one of them, the blocks can be quite comfortable, although with the neoliberal belt-tightening of the post-Communist period many are fast drifting into disrepair. Nonetheless, millions of people across Eastern Europe got quality housing from developments such as this one. In the distance you can see Sofia's 2,300 meter Mount Vitosha.
Sofia's public transport system features a new metro, buses, and electric cable-powered buses, but the Monkey's favorite ride was always the tram, or tramvai as the locals call it. A number of tram lines wend their way through the city center and into the outlying neighborhoods. One even runs through a forested park in the city limits.
On one of Sofia's only pedestrianized streets, Ulitsa Pirotska, Maimunka stops by the headquarters of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO; BMPO in Cyrillic), now a political party and cultural group but once a highly militant secret society aimed at reacquiring large swathes of Macedonian territory that were removed from Bulgaria by the Congress of Berlin in 1878.
The story of IMRO, as well as that of Macedonia and the irredentist claims of various Balkan states on that historic region and its people, are among the most complicated topics in all of human history. For a bit more on the subject, see the Monkey's photo at Rozhen Monastery, as well as the Republic of Macedonia page.
The Monkey awaits a rendez-vous at one of Sofia's favored meeting spots, the plaza in front of the National Palace of Culture (NDK).
The Monkey enjoys the Sofian tradition of posing for a photo with the sculpture of Petko and Pencho Slaveikov in the square that bears their name. Petko and his son Pencho were poets of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, a time when Bulgaria was emerging from centuries of Ottoman occupation as a vibrant, free nation. Petko Slaveikov's poems dealt with Bulgarian folklore as a means to invigorate and give shape to the national liberation movement, while Pencho honed his craft on more metaphysical and existential themes. Both men are highly revered by Bulgarians to this day. The two scribes enjoy a year-round view of Slaveikov Square, site of Sofia's teeming open-air book market.
The Monkey poses by the window of his apartment in Sofia. A pretty but dilapidated house catches the eye in the back garden.
Maimunka sits on the epitome of what some have dubbed Communist Chic: the Trabant P-601. The little East German four-seater—nicknamed Trabbie— was a personal mode of transport that many Eastern Bloc families hoped to attain after years of work, and maybe a few well-placed acts of "loyalty" to the Party. Although Trabant could not survive the onslaught of Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen in a reunified Germany, many of these easy-to-maintain autos are still plying the roads of Eastern Europe today, though the early two-stroke models are pretty heavy polluters. Trabbies also have a cult status among auto collectors around the world.
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