Category: Memories

Marlboro Bags

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

This post is part of the series about communist Bulgaria between 1979 and 1989. I already posted about my cat, ice cream, TV, and elections.

My kids go to school with backpacks. Their backpacks tend to be large and capable capable of carrying over 10kg of weight. The modern education system in Bulgaria relies on thick, glossy textbooks and lots of printed material, which makes them heavy. I also go everywhere with a large backpack, full of necessary items.

Back in the 80s, as true commies, we had another solution to the problem of how to bring all of our items to school, apart from not having much to carry. We used nylon bags like the one below (found for sale on a local marketplace site). The more colorful it was, the better. I had the exact same as the screenshot, and I’m pretty sure it lasted almost a year. Changed many while in school, and wasn’t picky.

Of course, they couldn’t carry 10 kg like modern backpacks, but they didn’t need to. We had far fewer schoolbooks and used light textbooks. We also didn’t need to carry everything to class. Books were usually only needed at home, for the brave ones who ever opened them. I don’t think many of my classmates did.

As for the images on the bags, foreign cigarette brands were the most popular. The more colorful and unfamiliar, the better. These bags were worth serious money and could be purchased from the flea market “Bitaka”. Getting a new one was a big event. I just don’t see any dopamine high in modern kids’ lives that’s similar to this experience, perhaps getting an iPhone.

Speaking of cigarette brands and why Marlboro of all things. We grew up with access to smoking. My classmates smoked since a very young age, probably under 10. However, the cigarettes available were local, and everyone wanted the foreign, which weren’t officially available anywhere. So, Marlboro, Camel, JPS and such were primarily imported by tourists, truck drivers, and visitors from the West. Even if you could get your hands on an empty pack, it still had value. I found 10-ish such packs thrown in the wild as trash and kept them in a glass display cabinet. You could trade them with other kids. And the packs were pretty, unlike the ugly things from the modern times, covered with photos of injuries and dying people.

So the true “socialist look” of the 80s was cheap, fake jeans top to bottom, white local leather sneakers, and a Marlboro bag in hand.

First and Second Program

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

This post is part of the series about communist Bulgaria between 1979 and 1989. I already wrote posts about my cat and about ice cream. Now it’s time for a revenge trope.

My parents had a Junost TV. This beast is 12.2″, black and white. It had two inputs for antenna cables on the back.

Bulgaria during my childhood had two TV stations, called First and Second Program. Both were part-time: they aired for 5–6 hours on workdays and full days (8 am to midnight) on weekends, with the Second Program being shorter. Both had maybe 1–2 watchable kids’ movies per week, and maybe another 1–2 watchable regular movies, usually on Saturday or Sunday. You had to switch between the channels to find the good stuff, and we always had the TV program published in the newspaper to guide us through this, so we didn’t miss anything foreign.

But I wanted to talk about switching between channels.

The way switching with this TV worked was:

  • You pulled out the antenna cable on the back of the TV from one of the sockets and put it into the other
  • Then you pushed a button indicating which antenna was in use
  • And then this big rotary dial, I think it was also used to click a few times, but maybe not. Why would it exist otherwise?

Whatever the ritual was, I mastered it quickly and did it thousands of times.

Then my parents and grandparents got color TVs and moved the Junost to the kitchen. My parents didn’t let me touch their TV, but my grandparents didn’t mind. My grandfather was nearly blind and couldn’t do it himself, so I had the right kind of encouragement. These TVs had a more complicated system with stored channels that was essentially the same dial and the same button, multiplied by 16 stored “channels” through 16 dials.

So, by the end of the 80s, I was the master of setting up TVs to play First Program, Second Program, the Russian TV, and, in some parts of the country, the Serbian TV. Now I’ll have a short break, and please don’t switch the channel.

The way people went on vacation during communism and shortly after was mostly through “cards” provided by their employer or another institution. My parents got a card for 20 days in the mountains, in a health resort with mineral water in Velingrad. By health resort, think of a 4-story building with modest rooms, with four single beds each, a canteen on the ground floor, baths with a pool in the basement, and a TV area on the second floor. The TV had 30-ish soft chairs arranged in front of it. The area was comfy, and the kids spent lots of time playing there. Given that TV mostly aired in the afternoon and evening, there were no people watching TV before, let’s say, 4 pm.

It’s a weekend day, and the kids’ movie will be at 3 or 4, on channel one. An hour later, an episode of some soap opera will air on channel two. The TV is an older model with a dial, a cable that needs manual moving, and a button that needs to be pushed to switch the antenna, not that much different than our old Junost. So all the old people were already there by 2, even before our kids’ episode, so they could get good seats for the soap opera later. There weren’t enough seats, but kids would leave after our movie, freeing some.

So when the time came, the king of the dial executed the clicking, pulling, and rolling sequence to change the channel so the kids’ show would show up. By the time I was done, my seat was taken.
“Hi, I was sitting here?”
“Oh, you’re so young, you can sit on the floor.”
Uh. True. I can. I sat there, and when the kids’ show was over, I ran back to our room.

One hour later there was a revolt in the TV area. None of the adults had any clue how to switch the channel. The TV got all messed up. The adults figured out that I was upset because someone took my seat and that’s why I left the area without switching the channel. So they freed it, and sent a delegation of a few friendly grandmothers to our room to invite me to take my seat back, and please switch the channel. I switched it two minutes before their episode started. Not sure if any lessons were learned but the kids didn’t have problems with watching our afternoon episodes after that.

I’m mildly embarrassed by the story but we can’t change the past.

Three Types of Ice Cream

~ Veselin ~ 11 Comments

This post is part of the series about communist Bulgaria between 1979 and 1989. The first part covered a cat story.

I have two first cousins who are older than me and Hungarian. My uncle moved there in the 50s, and Hungary was not as isolated as Bulgaria.

One day, maybe around 1984 or 1985, they came to visit and we chatted, which wasn’t too easy because of mild the language barrier. The conversation was about ice cream. My cousin tried to convince me, that there are more than 50 types of ice cream in Hungary. I insisted that there were only three. By the end of the conversation, I was sure my cousin is exaggerating. 5-6 okay, but 50? No way.

In communist Bulgaria, almost all businesses were run by the government. Grocery stores didn’t sell ice cream. They didn’t have freezers at all, only coolers. So ice cream could only be purchased from private stands, where you paid for a waffle cone with a ball of ice cream on top.

Stara Zagora, a city of over 100k inhabitants at the time, had one stand I knew about that worked about half of the summer. It had one or two types of ice cream, usually one. The possible choices were white, brown, or yellow. Most of the time we would walk past the stand and it would be covered with cloth, not working.

So, what were the three?

White was vanilla. Yellow was supposed to be lemon, and brown was supposed to be chocolate. However, the country as a whole had issues with flavoring. It was very difficult to buy cocoa that tasted like cocoa, for instance. Our only source of good tasting cocoa was my Hungarian uncle. He would bring one or two packs of Nestlé when he visited, and that was it for the year. I’m sure the person who somehow assembled the ice cream at home also didn’t have a source of cocoa or lemon that tasted accordingly. Lemons and other citrus fruits were available for several days per year, in the winter.

As a result, the three types of ice cream were different in color but not that different in taste, at least according to my fading memories. I think they were all mostly vanilla. The yellow and brown were just a bit worse.

My imagination at that time couldn’t imagine another taste of ice cream, only another color. How could there be 50 types of ice cream if there were only six or seven colors? I wasn’t able to imagine more colors either.

I don’t remember when I first saw modern ice cream; it must have been years after the fall of communism. Communism withdrew slowly, and the riches of consumerist society didn’t become widely available until 1997. But at some point, I saw a Delta fridge, perhaps around 1992-3.

Oh. That’s how you get 50 types of ice cream. My cousin didn’t lie to me.

The season is almost over

~ Veselin ~ 8 Comments

We were in Greece last week.

Most tourists were gone, leaving the beach for a small group of guests who were late like us. The water was fine, the rentals were cheap. It was sunny and somewhat hot.

Our village had lots of stray cats, and even more dogs. There was a cat family with 1 month old kitten, which I couldn’t photograph but could hear. Meow, meow, mom, are you at the nearby restaurant, again?

Something is going on in Kresna, perhaps the new traffic light, causing 2h delays. We got delayed on the way there but not on the way back. I hope they figure it out soon.

What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite form of physical exercise?
View all responses

Torn between pull-ups and hiking.

Pull-ups are great, you against your weight. Each cookie and chocolate bar you ever ate pulls you down. Your will pulls you up. Who will win? However, I lost my ability to do pull-ups about a year ago and it is not on my list of things to do next year. Which leaves us with hiking.

Hiking is like walking but you’re somewhere far from computers, wifi, work, city life, cars, and many of the stress factors. You against a hill. Or against your thoughts. Much better.

Just a cool photo from before I became a car brain. Not sure why Photos decided to show that to me. The shadow in the mist is Glozhene Monastery.

This was likely from my old blog, maybe 15 to 20 years ago. I can’t reach Malyovitza these days but whatever I can reach, I do in a similar fashion. Jeans, LOL. So inappropriate. Some things never change.