
Image courtesy of Jonathan Chng on Unsplash
After fifteen years, not much seems to have changed on the Sofia – Plovdiv railway line. Still, things look strange to me in an unsettling way. I cannot help but feel as though at the Iskarsko Shosse stop, a short subway ride away from Sofia airport, I have caught a train well-known to me from my childhood. The cars are reassuringly grimy and grungy.
I am thirsty. My eyes are drawn to the trash receptacle in my compartment, which swells with crushed, empty Bulgarian mineral water bottles. The names of springs flash through my head: Hisarya, Bansko, Devnya, Sandanski, Sapareva Banya, Varshets. In the early days of Bulgaria’s market economy, firms sprang up that introduced plastic bottles, previously known to locals mostly from pictures of the West, filled with Bulgarian mineral water from these springs. In their advertisements, the firms claimed that Vanga, a blind Bulgarian mystic and seer, had blessed their product.
Vanga’s abilities to foretell people’s destinies had been in much demand during communist times. While religion had been officially forbidden, belief in the supernatural was tolerated. Folks waited for months on end for a turn to visit the vrachka in Petrich, a small town in Southern Bulgaria. Their repertoire of questions was of a personal nature, for no one dared to inquire about the future of Bulgarian communist politics: Would a relative find relief from a prolonged, mysterious illness? Who would have a boy after years of trying? Who would marry at long last, and who would return from an extended, distant journey? Sitting on the Sofia — Plovdiv train now, I am craving for a bottle of Bulgarian mineral water. I very much need a reading of my past rather than the future: Did I never belong here?