The last two days I have been walking around in Sofia, and travelled to Pleven where I am right now, awaiting christmas. In Sofia I visited one of the many malls, where I eventually bought myself a Bulgarian novel for 4 EUR, and a good meal for a similar price.

A mall in Sofia but not Mall of Sofia. It is called Sofia City Center and is located right outside the city center...

During my first summer in Bulgaria (2007), a Swedish journalist was here, to file an article about the new EU capital. he was quite as disappointed as he expected to be I think. Also he mentioned the then newly built Mall of Sofia, that he profoundly misunderstood. He saw the luxury inside, remarkable when compared with the misery that can easily be found outside, and from the fact that most people in the streets looked poor to theis Swedish observer, he draw the conclusion that only the mega rich Bulgarians visit the malls. Which is not true.

There are some mega rich Bulgarians, but their numbers have fallen drastically due to the financial crisis. There are also worrying many people who describe themselves as very poor - 13% in a survey I saw in the socialist newspaper Sega. Also their numbers have increased due to the crisis. But the great majority of Bulgarians,around 40% in the same survey, are neither very rich or very poor. In terms of income they are probably poorer than most Swedes, but in terms of living standards the differences are much smaller than one would imagine from official numbers, in which Sweden's GDP is about ten times that of Bulgarias. (2007)

Malls is a major phenomenon in Bulgarian city architecture today, even in smaller cities like Pleven. Prices inside the malls are generally not higher than in shops in the streets - as a matter of facts most of the shops are the same. The visitors are exaclty this group of quite well off middle class people, who have a little extra money to spend, and make it an all day event. It is exactly the place you might expect to meet someone you know, if you work in an office for 500 EUR a month.

One of Pleven's two malls.


Another place where you might meet them, of course is the train or bus station, where everyone living in Sofia is more or less often. For some reason I find myself travelling all the time while in Bulgaria.

Whereas the traffic in Sofia has been horrible for days, and it can not only be the snows fault, the bus trip to Pleven went very smooth. Sure enough media has reported about delayed busses and trains due to the snowy weather, but in fact the problems have been very small in Bulgaria compared to continental Europe. I think Bulgarian media sometimes exaggerate the negative news, and they are quick to use words like "chaos" and "a little hell", about a situation that is awkward but normal anywhere.

Today's videoclip is from central Sofia, where some young lads were snow boarding. Idyllic... Yes, my new years resolution for 2010 will be to learn to shoot better films ;)