The Hristo Botev Stand Up

The strangest thing with Bulgaria, as with any other country, is not that it is strange. It is that everything is more or less like everywhere else, but then, suddenly, some things appear that seem to come from a different world... And the next moment everything is back to normal.

Some weeks ago we had a fortunate occurance, 1st of may, the national holiday 3rd of May (Liberation from the Turks) and Easter appeared at more or less the same time. More or less... one Tuesday and one friday were not red days. Of course people don't want to work then, and quite logically, everyone get free days. Instead the two next Saturdays were working days!

Bulgarians tend to interpret my surpise as indignation, please get me right -it's absolutely wonderful that the needs of mankind for once come before the needs of a capitalist streamlined society. It is as wonderful as it is unthinkable in sweden, not to say USA where office hours are supposed to be predictable. You're either open on Saturdays or not.

I guess that as always when human beings are concerned, there is also an aspect of power to this. It's a strong signal about what is more important. The Bulgarian system says: what is important is my work and that I eventually do my hours, not on which day I do them. The Western system says: what is important is not you or your work but that business proceeds as usual, no matter sacral or other holidays.

Yesterday another surprise greeted me. For three minutes the sirens were sounding, and everyone in my high-tech, highly educated, fluent in english, very international office stood up, absolutely silent to memorate Hristo Botev, a freedom hero from 19th century that died yesterday 132 years ago. Noone came short of explaining to me, by chat, who he was and why he is important. Of course I grabbed the occasion to tell that I in Moldova lived on Hristo Botev street and read two line of his national revolutionary poetry waiting for the trolleybus. For sure you needed some blood'n'fire lyrics to get enough power to enter that one...

The Swedish habit of celebrating without knowing what we celebrate is a stark contrast to this... Soon or national day is coming along. I guess most of us have a weak notion that it has something with Gustav Vasa to do, but who could seriously explain what we celebrate in a clear and consistent way? Even worse is Midsummer two weeks later. It's a hell of a party, but what do we celebrate? The middle of the summer? That sounds more than vague to me...