The five snowflakes that fell over the city yesterday quickly turned into a thin layer of ice. This is the second most unpleasant regular event in the city, only dwarfed by the annual snow melting. Unfortunately, when the snow is not much, people tend to not clean it.
And to celebrate the snow, here’s a song that doesn’t sound like metal but if you listen carefully, has harsh vocals. The artist is Lustre, and the track is The First Snow.
Embrace this innocent beginning To a chapter of woe and wonder A night all dressed in white The first snow – a token of curiosity.
It is the final years of the communism. I’m about 7-8 years old, already 2nd grade in school, around 1987. One weekend, there would be elections. All adults had to go to my school on a Saturday and vote. The political system was such that the country was lead by an unchangeable elderly first man and his buddies. The eletions were for some local authority, like district mayors. The old guy got reelected by an invite-only party, with a 99.9% majority.
So, as a curious kid, I went to vote with my mom. All the options were communist party aging dudes. Someone prepared a poster with their e and Leninist accomplishments. One studied in Moscow, another lead a factory. Mom picked a guy who lead the postal office. We didn’t have a phone line. Applied for one but the waiting time was 10+ years. She hoped that the postal dude will speed things up and we’ll have a phone.
She voted and we went back home. Dad didn’t want to go because it was a waste of time. By noon, someone showed up at the door and rang the bell.
“You’re the last one who didn’t vote, what are you waiting for? We don’t want to report you, we just want to go home. Come or we’ll call the police.”
We never learned who won. The communism fell 3-4 years later. 7 years later we moved to a new place. We never got a landline on that first apartment, the new apartment already had one.
Photo Credit: Petko Yotov, CC BY-SA 3.0. From this view, the neighborhood looks almost unchanged compared to 1986-1989. Won’t be surprised if it’s 20+ years old, especially with the filter.
This Saturday, we had a chance to see the actual main event for the Kukeri in Blagoevgrad. They were thousands. The video and the photos can’t describe the sensory shock of getting close to these people. I’m glad to have had the chance to experience it, we normally leave Blagoevgrad earlier and miss it.
One can only imagine how terrifying the national event in Pernik called Surva is.
Sharing your goals on a public blog adds extra pressure to actually complete them. Thankfully, most of my friends and family don’t know I blog, so the embarrassment is not too big. I set some goals last year, and now is the moment to look back and see how well I did.
✅ I’ll try to climb Vihren (2 failed attempts in 2024) – success
✅ I’ll try to keep an average of 10k/day for 2025 as well but increase the difficulty by doing more hiking and less city – success for the steps and mostly for the hiking as well
🚩 I’ll try to add 1h/week of gym time, starting with body weight exercises like push-ups and plank. – failure
Honestly, the Vihren goal was too optimistic and we stopped doing hiking after it. I don’t know what happened with the gym idea. I did a grand total of under 1 hour of exercise. I don’t have an explanation, it was never part of my todo, had zero interest in spending time on it, and just dreaded the idea that I’m going to do that. But, reality is, that I need to find a way to do it.
So, for 2026, let’s try again:
10K steps on average for the year – it is at risk because one of my knees doesn’t feel right
Get back to the mountain and post 3 bean soup blog posts. The mountain misses me
Veselin.blog 