Buying Bulgarian

I have complained about my consumer habits elsewhere, but nontheless I today had the pleasure to go shopping for a suitcase. For years I was pleased with my black back pack. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis, maybe something else - I had decided that now was the right time to buy one. In the end I settled for a suitcase that seemed reliable, was fashionable green and was made in Bulgaria.

By Frizabela [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

People in Bulgaria have often advised me to buy Bulgarian products, absolutely not Turkish or Chinese. I have often followed their advice to show my good manners, but I regarded their opinion as just another national prejudice on the balkans. Of course Bulgarians will think that Bulgarian T-shirts or suitcases are better than Turkish ones, just like Serbs will think that their goods are the best. So will Romanians and Turks.

There is no denial that people in the Balkans host strong and largely irrelevant prejudices agaist each other. But when I talk to Bulgarians about this issue, most people have a list of personal examples where Bulgarian goods were in deed much better produced than Turkish or Chinese ones.

So I have I. I have bought a number of clothes, bags and similar things produced in Bulgaria, often at a much better quality than the price first indicated. As a rule of thumb it is actually a good advice to buy Bulgarian stuff in Bulgaria. You know what you get, and it is usually a good product at a good price. This can not be said about everything that is sold in Bulgaria.

But how can this be? If one compares China and Bulgaria, one could easily get away with cultural differences, but I do not believe in that. But what cultural differences could explain the differences in quality between Turkish and Bulgarian goods, sold in Bulgaria?

After all, Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire almost 500 years. After the world wars, when Bulgaria was directing its production to Soviet tastes and needs, and profoundly ignored the quality of its industry output, Turkey struggled vehemently to adapt European culture and values.

Mayde the simple truth is that the best Turkish goods are unlikely to end up in stores in Bulgaria. Those that go for export probably go to markets with wealthier customers. The same goes for China. A lot of high quality products are manufactured in China, but what is sold on Bulgarian markets is generally crap.

Bulgarian manufacturers probably have some difficulties to reach out to markets abroad. And with the die hard competition from very cheap chinese and turkish products, they have a chance to nice themselves as high quality providers. Which is why much of the best Bulgaria has to offer is sold here. Tashev, for example, is a great market for bags and outdoor gear, but I have never seen the brand abroad.

Still, that hardly explains half the question. How can Bulgarian producers meet a higher standard than (some) Turkish ones? Turkey is currently one of the world's most dynamic countries, and it's economic statistics look every bit as good as the Bulgarian one's. Shouldn't he country produce better stuff?

Maybe Turkish industry can, but simpy won't, because it doesn't pay off. Whereas Bulgaria is just another East European country, Turkey and China have become the sweatshops of the West. Go into any clothes store in Sweden and you will find hundreds of garments made in Turkey, plenty made in China, but hardly any made in Bulgaria.

What Turkey and China have that Bulgaria is not is a globalized industry with big producing units. Which generates cheap products and economic development at the expense of quality.

What Bulgarian producers do have at the moment is small producing units with reputations - any Bulgarian into mountaneering knows what Tashev is and where its factory is located, just like the vendor who sold my suitcase knew which factory it was made in. Only if the consumers know this, can a free market reward high quality producers.

There are probably many people in Bulgaria who would like to see its industry move towards larger profits and larger producing units. That would be risky. It is so much easier to make things right on a small scale. And the fact that the producers are more or less known by the consumers is probably the only reason that many, like me, feel a confidence in Bulgarian products

---

P.s. Small is beautiful, not only when it comes to the garment industry. We live in a time were food production is taken over by agribusinesses, with horrible consequenses for everyone involved. That the landscape gets dominated by west european agribusinesses is probably an imminent danger in Bulgaria, with so fertile lands, innefficient agriculture and economically weak landholders.

A pleasant crisis

Everywhere you go these days in Bulgaria you hear about the crisis. People avoid celebrating the holidays in restaurants and they make jokes about how santa claus is coping with the crisis. In the weekly Kapital writers take a glance at 2011. An optimist argues that the bottom is reached, while a pessimist argue that the crisis will continue throughout an unknown future.

True enough, Bulgaria has been affected by the international financial turmoil. Unemployment have risen, and remains uncomfortably high even after the country returned to GDP growth earlier this year. Bulgarian companies are cautious about investing, and many Bulgarians are forced to cut down expenses. But I am still a little curious about the strong feeling of crisis.



Data from Eurostat

There are hardly any Bulgarian now who does not remember times that were rougher than this. Much rougher. After all, the current unemplyment levels are hardly higher than they were in 2006, when the country was booming. The crisis in Bulgaria is nothing compared to its neighbours Romania and Greece, or even in the Irish tiger economy. Wouldn't the correct emotional response be "thanks god we live in Bulgaria and not in Greece or Ireland"?

Such a response would probably demand a massive mental change in a country that by and large sees itself as a poor corner of Europe. But the sense of crisis probably is probably well founded. One reason is that unemployment in Bulgaria is still a very diferent reality in than what it is in the west.Another is the massive mistrust against politicians. When the world is shaking, Bulgarians wisely enough do not trust their own politicians to do what not even Obama has been able to do - turn the economy around. The statistics might look promising now, but they can be replaced with bad surprises any day. In the Kapital article mentioned above, the pessimist first of all mentioned the risk that misdirected populism causes havoc in the Bulgarian economy with increased spenditure, taxes and borrowing. Few will object against that.

Maybe more striking than fear of the future in this article was the pride with wich Kapitals economical writers discussed this subject. They have always loved to discuss fundamental economical issues rather than business news (which makes the paper readable), and it is as if they enjoy having found a topic both worthy of discussion and relevant for Bulgarian everyday life.

This crisis is not the kind of crisis that empty people's stomachs, but it is historical news. For the first time in a very long time, Bulgaria is so integrated in the western hemisphere, that her economical development is more dependent on what happens in Brussels and New York, than on decicions by maverick Balkan politicians. The fact that Bulgaria is in a moderate state of crisis like all other European countries hint at something that many Bulgarians have been waiting for: she is finally becoming just a normal country.

(Which by the way, The Economist realized before me... )

The rift

The day before christmas I watched a news clip about a charity, where Bulgarian kids collected money for other Bulgarian kids. Completely normal and laudable of course, but there is still someething significant about it - not so long ago Swedish kids collected money for Bulgarian kids, and the thought that Bulgarian kids had money over for charity was utopian.

By Edal Anton Lefterov (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons.These Bulgarian children have nothing to do with this post

Still, the number of ragged roma children who approach you for stotinki* in the train stations is not visibly lower than any time since 2007 when I started to regularly visit Bulgaria. This charity campaign, and numerous other good initiatives indicate that there are still thousand of Bulgarian children in need of help from somewhere. What has changed is that there are now Bulgarians rich enough, and good hearted enough, to give them a hand.

More people have money for consumer vanity as the incredible number of shopping malls show. The metro in Sofia is slowly growing, and roads are rebuilt. In a small city like Pleven, there are new park benches to sit on and brand new second hand city buses. Sitting on these benches an buses you can see the same poor retired workers as always. To them, development must seem like a joke.

Where development feels real is not on these benches or buses, but in the cafés of Sofia. My personal favourites are Onda and Pop Art in Sofia. What is most heartening is how cheap the coffee still is. The pricing shows that the target group is neither an impoverished intelligentia, filhty rich mafioti and their girlfriends or west european businessmen. These cafés, that are the best places in Sofia, take aim at the group of people that are said to be absolutely crucial for a positive development in any country: the local middle class.

A such class clearly exists today, and most Bulgarians I know belong to it. It is a highly educated class that can thank Foreign Direct Investments for their relative wealth. Without western multinational companies in Bulgaria most of my friends would have much lower wages, and they would not be able to support the blooming varitey of cafés and artistic shops that is the true pearl of Bulgaria.

For these Bulgarians, and many, life gets a little better every day. But next to them, or rather below them, there is a huge mass of people who are not part of this development. The rift betweens those whose life develop those whose life does not growns bigger each year. Which it is normal. Every development has its winners and losers. But ther is still a tragedy in it, and social inequalities raise a host of new problems that do not exist in a country where everyone is poor. (Was there ever a country where everyone was rich) Schools must try to diffuse the differences beween individuals. City planners must try to avoid ethnical and ecomical segregation. All public instituions must redefine their work, from simply existing to become the fabric that binds society together.

Slavenka Drakulic writes in Café Europa (I think!) about Bulgarians and the notion of social equality. After the fall of communism they where keen to enjoy the freedoms of capitalism, but abhorred by its injustices, according to Drakulic. 20 years later, I think many have accepted certain injustices as necessities and moved on. Charity campaigns where Bulgarian children help other Bulgarian childrens show both an acceptance of economical differences between Bulgarians, and a wish to deal with this new social reality.

---

As most often, the thoughts in this post originally came from my girlfriend.

*Stotinki is the smalles Bulgarian coins, like cents, ören or kopeks.
s

A hundred years of solitude

21.00 18/12 2010

I am at a gathering with the Bulgarian diaspora in Lund, Sweden. During the next week must of us will be travelling to Bulgaria to celebrate christmas and new years eve, so this is a kind of good bye meeting. Since the community in Lund is mainly made up of students, the participants in our gathering change form semester to semester. I couldn't claim that I know everyone present very well,some people I have met only a few times, but none the less it is a cordial meeting. All speakers refer to "we" and "us" in a way that makes it sound that we have always been together.

10.24 19/12 2010

The plane to Sofia is delayed, like most other planes on European airports this day. But we need not shead tears - Cimber Sterling offers us a free lunch, and I again find myself in the midst of a cordial group of Bulgarians. One of them was present the previous day, the other I haven't seen in half a year. But nontheless , we entertain ourself so vividly that I do not once manage to pick up the book from my backpack. And just like yesterday, the language and discussion invokes the image of us as people who have known each other forever. We don't belive so, but the illusion makes us feel comfortable for the moment.

---

The wait at the airport was prolonged, and at one point I did manage to skim through the Sydsvenskan of the day. As so often on christmas, the editor's column remembered those who are alone at this holiday that most people spend with their near and dear one's. The column stated that involuntary solitude is a problem, but it also noted that there is a very high correlation between the number of single house holds and a high GDP. So is solitude the price we pay for being rich? Not necessarily, Sydsvenskan wrote. The fact that many people live alone does not prove that they are lonely. Some people like being alone, and an individualistic society lets the individual choose for him or herself which group to belong to. The column supported its opinions with research that shows that people are not more lonely in Sweden today than they were in the 80's.

I don't think the issue can be dealt with so easily. As a matter of fact, what most foreigners I know says about Sweden, and what frustrates many visitors, is the strong individualism that creates a certain alienation between people. I remember a Polish friend that had seen the film Lilja forever. What terrified her the most was not so much the criminals who forced Lilja into prostitution - such people and problems exist everywhere . but the indifferent attitude from the neighbours. No one sees what is happening, because noone feel olliged, or alowed, to know anyhting about their neighbours.

Swedish people do have friends, of course, and between friends we are probably not more individualistic than any other people. But with people we don't know at all, or with people that we don't know very well, we adopt a polite but strict 'mind your own business' attitude. For good and for bad. In many situations a person does better without the opinions of curious neighbours'. But we also overlook many wrongdoings, like neighbours who beat their children or bus passengers who threathen other passengers, simply because we don't feel that this is our problem.

Within Europe, Bulgaria is probably as far from Sweden as you get when it comes to individualism and group responsibility. With more than one Bulgarian around, a strong group feeling tends to materialize almost immediately. You might have to listen to more life stories than you ever wanted, but you will never feel alone. It is also hard to think a story like Lilja forever set in a Bulgarian city, where neighbours tend to be highly aware about who lives in each flat. It is less than 24 hours since I and my girlfriend arrived in our friend's flat in Sofia - but I think most of the house already know that we are here. Which doesn't prevent a hundred and one other problems that Bulgarians face every day. And I can not for my life imagine a Bulgarian op/ed. like Sydsvenskan saying that solitude can be a good thing and that it is a sign of a developed economy. After all, there is a difference between lonely and alone, but the noun to both adjectives is loneliness.

Arabian chicken

If I lived a slow life, closer to myself and my environment, would I then be blogging? I think no. Blogging is a here-today-gone-tomorrow-activity that celebrates the short minded society we live in. The media is the message, and the message of this media is to read, react and forget. 50 years from now, schoolkids will still be reading about the great writers of teh 19th century, not about the great blogers of th 21th..Anyway...

I have had the privilege to spend almost a week in one of the less exploited Bulgarian seaside resorts. It has been a slow life. Nothing else to do than to visit one of the three possible beaches, and ponder where to consume your lunch and dinner. That's not a rythm of life that triggers you to blog.

Anyway... the lunch today did truly deserve a blog post. We spent the morning on a beach, slowly descending into a meditative existance where your body turns into wind, salt and sea. I guess we would never have left the beach, if it wasn't for the thunderstorm. It came. We ran.

Right before the rain started faling on us, we entered a place that looked more or less open for guests.

-Is it open? My fiancee asked.

The face of the man we met int he stairs told us that he made up the answer right there and then.

-Yeah, sure. Welcome up on the terace.

We sat down on a terace with  view of the sea, with a roof but no walls. That proved crucial five minutes later when the rain was at its most intensive. We were handed menues, and skillfully picked the cheapest dishes (always go for chicken, and traditional salads).

Not that the menu was much of an advice. When the women in charge came up to us, it appeared that only a handful of the dishes in the meny were actually available. One of them was the "Arabian chicken", a kind of crepe with chicken, ham, cucumbers and mushrooms. I immediately fell for the offer and ordered an arabian chicken, whereas my grlfirend stayed with a traditional sirene po shopski.

The woman went down the stairs and we took a look at the menu. Damn! Of course the Arabian chicken costed three times as much as the chicken dish I had planned to order. For a moment we contemplated to go down to the kitchen and change the order, but what the heck... you only live once, and who wat s to die without haveing tasted the Arabian chicken.

This is when Harry showed up. Harry was a she, a 46 days old boxer puppy who came to us to look for a warm place and someone to cuddle him in the cold unfriendly weather. At this time the thunder was right above us. After saying hello, he decide to take a nap, using my feet as his cushion. Sweet...

The food came. It was tasty, and the people in the restaurant did their best to become our friends, so we were prepared to forgive them the 7 EUR Arabian Chicken. Nice place, we thought, and prepared ourselves to go.

That's when the owner shows up and tells us that because we are the first clients of the season, they had decided to give us a special dish of grilled captain's fish, and half a litre of wine!

We enjoyed the fish and the wine, and Harry enjoyed our company. Pretty soon she found a place to sleep in my fiancees's knee. So there we sat  getting drunk on wine that we never had ordered, with the restaurant owner's dog sleeping in our knee. What can you do but to laugh. We agreed - this would never happen in Sweden, and that is a pity.

----------

I am not sure. Maybe this could happen in Sweden, under very specific circumstances. The thing about Bulgaria is that here it happens stuff like this all the time. Yesterday at dinner there was no dog, but well three cats hanging around in the restaurant,making the visit into something else than pure eating.

One obvious reason is that people here are not so neurotic about animals. At the dinner yesterday on cat had parked itself on a restaurant table. The bulgarian customers did not freak out, as Swedes would do, but in stead started to cuddle with it. After all, a cat has never killed anyone. Neither has a puppy.

But it is not only about anumals. The thing is that something happens once you have said hello to the restaurant owner's dog, cat, child or whatever - the professional distance between you and the restaurant owner dissapears, and you start interacting on a human level. My impression is that Bulgarians always wait for this to happen. They wait for something else to come up so that they can start behaving like friends and not customers. Not only the customers - the restaurant owners want it as well.

And as always - when all people involved in a situation want something to happen, it happens. We were treated as friends, and when we were happy to have experienced something out of the normal holiday routine. Somewhere along the line the price of the Arabian Chicken fell to about a quarter of the menu price. Sometimes it pays off to order something unexpected.

Climate, development and a little hygge

--- Poor in wealth, rich in sun ---

Why are some countries rich and others poor? Everyone who is thinking about global matters is bound to come up with some kind of answer, but most likely no answer will be final. Strolling under the Bulgarian sun, I can not help but thinking about Montesqieu's classical answer - the climate makes some countries rich, and other poor.

The theory is 300 years old, and in a way quite easy to discard. In Montesqieu's texts there is so much of the joy of system-building, that it is easy to imagine that the writer bends reality to fit into the system, where necessary.

It is also easy to see that Montesqieu wrote in a certain historical moment when northern Europe was richer than southern - and eastern Europe, and Europe as a whole was richer than the rest of the world. The fact that the world looks similar today doesn't change the basic fact - it has not always been like this. And the only conclusion we can draw from history is that it will not always be like this. Aren't the chinese taking over now, by the way?

The people in Bulgaria now live considerably poorer than their Swedish counterparts, especially if you compare lower income Bulgarians with lower income Swedes. But in the 13th century they did not, and they probably were not worse of in the 16th century either, depending on who you ask.

When Montesqieu wrote his texts Sweden was enjoying an export boom - this corner of northern Europe was the world's biggest exporter of iron at the time. Bulgaria then suffered hard from the corruption and anarchy in the decaying Ottoman empire. The scars from that hard period has not yet healed completely in the Balkans.

--- Montesqieu is dead. Long live Montesqieu! ---

And still... the idea that the climate decides what countries are rich and poor is outdated. But still there is something appealing about it. Bulgaria has had a lot of bad luck with its governments, but when it is 30 degrees outside and your garden blossoms, you might care more about the good luck to have direct access to tasty tomatoes.

Bulgarian life is filled with what the Danish call "Hygge". Swedes are very jealous of the Danish hygge, so my description is not at all objective. Moreover, there is no Swedish word for the concept, so there is a possibility that we don't know what we are talking about, but anyway.

Hygge is something like a relaxed way of doing nothing with friends. The classical form involves beer but I guess that is not necessary. There are no achievements involved, no demands, and there has to be something improvised about it. You could maybe agree with someone to meet later this week for a "hygge" situation, but you couldn't plan 2 hours of "hygge" every friday for example.

When you walk between the panel houses somewhere in Bulgaria, this is exactly what you see - neighbours sitting outside, cracking jokes, not doing very much at all. I am not implying that they are happier than other people, but they do seem to have a good time.

A harsher climate kills the opportunities to "hygge". It might be less confortable outside, and in a harsher environment good planning might make the difference between survival and death. WSwedish summers, improvising must have been dangerous in pre-industrial times.

The struggle to stay alive also gives an incentive to demand a just government, as bad politics could easily be lethal. And there is not much of a garden to retreat to when times get rough. Could this be the reason that people seem to lose very much of their political sense when their lives become comfortable.

--- So what do we want? ---

It is obvious that people without "hygge" and whose toil in the fielsd give meager results have more to win from industrialization, and maybe we can establish some sort of historical relation between climate and development. But the world has changed a lot since Montesqieu's days, and other forces are probably in play now.

Still, some question about priorities linger. We might need development, but isn't hygge what we really want?

Maladets! lands in Bulgaria

I am the kind of guy who always, even if I bring nothing else than my passport and an issue of the Economist, must give away something at the security check when i try to board a plane. I guess it is my left wing history that shines through...

About a year ago, when I left Bulgaria, I had packed my much loved swiss army knife in the hand luggage, which I had to give up, of course. That is kind of understandable, as it is not hard to imgagine how an able terrorist could threaten the pilot with a Swiss army knife. This time, however, I was forced to hand two Risifrutti rice-meals over to the authorities.

It really gets me thinking... how on earth could I hijack a plane with a Risifrutti? Isn't my belt a better weapon. Theoretically, on the James Bond level, I could shred my T-shirt, and use it to  strangle the pilot. But a Risifrutti? If I threw it and hit him, it wouldn't even hurt.

Airport rules are silly. Every day thousand of people are checked, their bags are turned inside out and schampoos and rice meals are confiscated. I wish some sociologist would examine how people accept such humiliation treatment without a complaint. Imagine if someone told you that you can't bring a bottle of water on the train - most people would just laugh at that.

Maybe it is some kind of feeling that you are important, and that flying is a special activity that makes people accept anything on an airport. Maybe it is their own fear of terrorist who can turn water into bombs that creates this enormous confidence in custom-servants.

I don't know. Once I was in the plane, everything was just fine. I got to sleep, to read and to eat the parts of my food that was not liquid. We flew low cost, so there was no food on the plane, but I can't say that I missed it. I missed the Risifrutti, though.

And once in Bulgaria... what can you say? This country has an ease and a charm that is just conjuringg, especially in the summer. some firend surprised us with meeting up at the airport. Then we spent the mellow evening in Borisovata Gradina, eating the mandatory fried potatoes with chees and kebabche. A beer to that - and life is as close to perfect as it gets.

This trip has begun more than well.

Heading south

The time has come to once again visit maladets! home country - Bulgaria. That means that maladets! in Bulgaria will come to life again.

As last time, the ambition is to serve the world wide web with more pictures, less analyzes and more personal writing. The context behind wathever comes up will be sea,  sun, traffic jams, tsatsa, Shumensko and other Bulgarian niceties. And who knows... maybe I will find my MP3 player somewhere?

Enjoy!

Blogging in the time of cholera

I was sick. Or to be completely true, I am still sick while writing this. I am laying under the sheets, drinking tea, while my head is spinning from antibiotics and other drugs they put in me...

When it comes to dealing with health and sickness, Bulgaria and Sweden are very different. My current diagnosis is a cold with lots of coughs, moderate fever and breath pains when I have coughed too much. A Swedish doctor would tell me to relax, drink tea, eat healthy stuff and call him again tomorrow if the coughs are still there. Bulgarian doctors, and it seems all Bulgarians are trigger happy, and immediately offer antibiotics, something that would be only the very last solutuions for a Swedish doctor.

And it is not only about the doctors. As a Swede I am sceptical towards medicines in general, and antiobiotics specifically. I want, and expect, my own body to conquer the disease without foreign help. It might take some days, but who has died from a flue? To help it I use ascetisism. No coffe, no alcohol. Tea and vegetables.

Bulgarians in Sweden on the other hand, despair over the doctors' reunctancy to prescribe medicine, and blames him for their diesases. I know, it sounds like a gross generalization, but it is real. Some days ago it was another Swede, with another Bulgarian girlfriend, and another Bulgarian mother in law, who fought the same battle, trying to avoid antibiotics as long as possible.

I held out for days, but eventually the fever got too big, and my Swedish method of living through it didn't seem to work. After all, I did not do it the proper Swedish way, since I didn't restrict myself from neither wine, women or coffee. So eventually I started the antibiotics cure. When in Rome, do as Romans do.

The difference inideas about health and sickness run deep. Consider this - when Bulgarians drink they raise their glasses and say "Nazdrave!", "for health". Whenever they ask each other something for birthdays or new years, being healthy is always mentioned first. "Health is the most important thing" is a common thing to say, even among young Bulgarians.

Swedes say "skål" meaning the "bowl/glass that we drink from". This skål is either accompanied with a song (that praises the bliss of drinking) or a lenghty speech aboout some individuals personal achievements, much like they do it in Georgia. If someone in Sweden wished me "a healthy 2010" I would look at him or her long, wondering what he or she meant with that. Does he expect me to get sick?

Somehow we take health for granted in Sweden. During many years, the lower living standard in Bulgaria potentially made diseases lethal in a way that they were not in Sweden. People did die. But they wished each other to be spared from this destiny, the most brutal of all. Getting treatment quickly might have been about survival in a way that it was not in Sweden.

Another thing is that it is a hell of a lot more annoyning to be sick in Bulgaria than in Sweden. Consider sitting on the bus with 40 degrees of fever in Lund, and compare that with sitting on a bus in rush hour Sofia. And if your apartment is cold, you better get better quickly, or you might get worse just as quick.

But when it comes to the doctor's prescriptions of antibiotics there is also another pattern of society which is relevant. Sweden is, in spite of repeated efforts of neoliberalisation and Europeanisation, a fundamentally socialdemocratic society, a society that sets the individual free from his relatives and close relations, but subordinates him or her under its political will.

Actually, I dont think that Swedish society is moving towards Europe any more. Is there anyone in Sweden who wants to abolish the monopoly on alcohol? I can see such individuals, but no political movement, and I think that is good actually. But my point is that the difference between Sweden and Europe is still there, and Swedes are as proud as ever about it.

Maybe it was when we understood that also Germany and France have a social democratic tradition that we settled with the way we are. Maybe these things simply can not change. It is interesting how no technical revolutions, no new governments, can really change some fundamental things in the Swedish society.

Antibiotics is actually a very good example. It is good for the individual, who gets healthy quickly, and does not have to suffer more than necessary. But it is a huge problem for society that too many people take antibiotics, as bacterias show up who are resistant etc. For a Swede it is natural that he or she as an individual pays the price for society's welfare. It would be difficult to convince a Bulgarian to sacrifice his or her happiness for society.

Or another example - the swine flue vaccine. In Swedish TV, people actually said that people should vaccinate, not for their own sake, but for society. I could somehow buy the argument that I should have vaccinated not to contaminate elderly and sick, but some people took it one step further and asked us to vaccinate to save Sweden's economy. That is not a healthy thought...

Looking at Sweden and Bulgaria, it is easy to see what these differences in society at large. Whereas most people live much better in Sweden than in Bulgaria, there is absolutely no guarantee that an individual lives better in Sweden. For those who are strong and lucky enough to create the life they want, Bulgaria is a wonderful country.

Sweden, on the other hand is clinically clean from corruption, which I think also has to do with this. Power is not vested in individuals, but in the jobs that they do. You do what the police says, simply because he is the police. You don't expect any special treatment and you don't get it - therefor you have no reason to bribe him. You respect the uniform, not the man in it.

If fact, most of the time the Swedish police doesn't even need to tell you what to do. As a people we are masters in internalizing rules and regulation, and turning them into taboos. We simply don't break rules, not because we are afraid of the police, but because we simply don't break them It must be fantastic to be a politician in Sweden.

In Bulgaria, power is brokered by specific people in specific situation. You might do as the police says, or you might not, depending on who he is. Since every situation is different, you can always improve your chanses by putting money in the right pockets. Lots of openings for individual creativity, but it is difficult to build a society like this. Imagine the ightmare of being a Bulgarian politician.

Since the politicians in Bulgaria surely do not expect people to follow their instructions, I can well understand how some of them take a bigger intrest in enrichening themselves in stead of trying to rule the country.

What goes for the police, also goes for doctors. Swedish doctors are extremely far from their patients. You have to be more or less dead before actually meeting one, and their dealing with patients is the way a civil servant deals with cases. Efficiently, distantly, always with the bigger picture in the back of their head.

We citizens, on the other hand, have internalized their instructions for a healthy lifestyle, and take on the responsibility of healing ourselves without bothering our superiors.

Bulgarian doctors, and I think doctors in many countries, have a much more personal relationship with their patients. Another relationship, where money or gifts in the right place might well improve the individuals chanses of getting what he or she want. The meeting between patient and doctor is a specific case, with a specific solution - very often antibiotics, since this is quick, cheap, and preferrable from a purely individualistic perspective.

Whatever... as long as I get healthy soon. I hate being sick, and being sick in a different country is even worse. If antibiotics is what it takes, than so be it!

More on malls

In Slavenca Draclic's excellent book "Cafe Europa", the author describes an Albanian man who sits by the road, trying to sell one banana. His idea of economical progress is to get this banana sold, so that he can buy two bananas tomorrow, sell them the next day to buy three, and eventually becoming rich. This is not what street vendors look like i today's Bulgaria, but when you see some of them it is not difficult to imagine the scene that Draculic describes.

For Draculic, the banana selling man is a sad illustration of the void Albania fell into after the fall of commuism. That is not the way people get rich. (it is definitely not the way that today's rich Bulgarians made it). But that this banana selling man would be a perfect illustration to a book about classical liberal economic theory, like Adam Smith's The Wealth of the Nations.

These theories have a lot of flaws, but the crude economical life in the Balkans show that there is some truth in Smith's and his peers' philosphy. I have seen few places in Europe where Neo-liberalism has been carried out so consistently as in Bulgaria. What is more important, capitalism here began from a kind of tabula rasa that is the starting point for Smith's theories but has never existed in a country like Sweden.

Weak demand, poor customers and lack of capital have forced the Bulgarian market economy to develop into a small scale capitalism. Some might call this backwardness, others might say that is natural at this level of development, but it nontheless have some very positive sides for the customer. Bulgaria is sometimes like a capitalism with a human face - you buy the goods from the person in front of you, not merely have them handed over by a disinterested employee in a multinational corporation. That is not always nice, human face can laugh, cheat and be angry. A multinational corporation is always couldn't care less, even though they employ the best minds of our genereation to convince you that they do.

I have written about the Bulgarian malls before (here and here), but I have proably not understood them properly. In an earlier post I wrote that what is sold in the malls is not more expensive than what you can buy in the streets. This is true to some degree, but as a matter of fact stores in the malls are more expensive than most stores in the normal shopping street, while they are cheaper than the more eclusive stores on Vitosha Bvd. for example.

Mark my words... "THE stores in the malls are cheaper than MOST malls in the street". What is really significant about the malls is not the price, because next to the amazingly expensive Bennetton, there is always a Zara with a 50% discount, and a Kenvelo where clothes, at least for male clients are cheaper than anywhere else. In the street, on the other hand, there is still a myriad of small shops, with different kind of goods like hand made jewellery or more or less hand made clothes, different prices etc. This is exactly how capitalism looks in the school books, but the reality in capitalist countries differ.

This kind of stores hardly exist in Sweden. In stead you find the same stores in every town: H&M, Dressman and MQ for clothes, Cervera for kitchen utensils, Claes Ohlsson for tools etc. Interestingly, deragulation has done nothing to increase the number of small stores, rather opened up markets for international brands. The same brands, and the same prices everywhere. When small stores exist they position themselves as more expensive boutiques.

The economic reasons for this are obvious - it is difficult to sell clothes cheaper than H&M, tomake them by hand in Sweden is not realistic, and the rents in central commercial areas are expensive. The housing bubble has probably made them a lot more expensive.

What the entrance of malls in the Bulgarian economy really represent is this kind of Brand Capitalism, as I know it from home. In every Bulgarian town there will be a mall, with the same brands and the same prices. There are nice things in the malls, of course, but I think many find it more interesting to visit the smaller stores, where chances are you might be dissapointed or positively surprised.

The prices of commercial space in Sofia and other East European capitals have sky rocketed in the last years, and there is probably quite a lot of pressure on smaller entrepeneurs. In addition to existing malls, many new malls are projected It will for sure turn some of the current entrepeneurs into disinterested employees in multinational corporation.

Still, I can't see malls completely erasing the small scale capitalism, still visible in every Bulgarian street. Not all small scale vendors are nice, of course, and we could wish that the malls outcompete the crooks among them. But unless Bulgarian shopping habits, values change drastically I think people will support their local traders. You simply feel so much more important as a customer, when the the shop owner depends on your money to survive the day. Kenvelo does not.

Maladets! is back in town

The updates have been few lately, but this is not to be interpreted as anything else than a sign of health. A foreign country should a) be experiences b) written about. Whenever you have the choice between the two, staying away from the internet to get some real life experience i always a good thing.

After a nice new years eve in Sofia, we went up to a hut in the mountains, close to Troyan. Wonderful. One cvan easily say that we saw the best Bulgaria has to offer at this time of year. Snow, sunshine and mountains.

The snow will not be long lastig though. Unlike the rest of Europe, Bulgaria has had extremely high temperatures over new year. On new years eve it was closeto 20 degrees warm! Eventually snow and temperatures fell, but before we are leaving to Sweden the temperatures areexpeccted to reach above 10 degrees again.

Until then...