Bulgarian National Radio: the 78-year-old mammoth with a contemporary twist

First of all, let me tell you that the Bulgarian National Radio has got its own chapel. I found this interesting and unusual:

An Orthodox chapel within the premises of the BNR.

We went to visit the Bulgarian National Radio on one of our networking days. The government-funded media giant has got four major radio channels (national, international), as well as eight regional ones across Bulgaria.

Around 1480 people are currently employed by the BNR - most of them at one of the two headquarter buildings in Sofia, others as regional correspondents. (To put the figures into context, there are around 7.3 million people currently living in Bulgaria, so the BNR staff would account for a 0.02 percent of the population).     

The two national channels are Horizont and Hristo Botev. The first one specialises in news, comments, interviews; between the spoken parts it plays contemporary popular music. Horizont is the most popular radio in Bulgaria, and is often considered the least biased.

Radio Hristo Botev, named after a famous poet and revolutionary, is a high brow cultural channel. On the menu are classical music programmes, concerts, radio theatre plays, cultural news.

The Bulgarian National Radio since its very beginnings has been a promoter of cultural activities in Bulgaria. It has got a record studio that has been helping the less commercially-successful musicians (classical, jazz, folk) to publish their work, a radio theatre, a children's choir, a symphony orchestra, even a big band. The BNR's legendary first director Sirak Skitnink (an 'Orphan Wanderer', real name Panaiot Todorov Hristov, 1883-1943) was a poet and painter himself.    

To give the 78-year-old BNR a modern twist, an innovative internet radio channel Binar was started in 2012 (my colleague Sarah did a post about Binar's one-year birthday party earlier in July). The music Binar plays is contemporary, both popular one and one drifting towards indie. Binar is a bit more than traditional radio as it also plays videos (of interviews in the studio; music clips) on its website.      
    
Finally, the BNR's fourth major channel is the international Radio Bulgaria. This one is aimed at promoting Bulgarian culture around the world and informing about happenings in Bulgaria. As one would expect from an international channel, Radio Bulgaria has got information in eleven languages. Similarly to Binar, the latter channel is internet-based and has got multimedia (images, sounds, videos) on its website.

Among the regional channels, Radio Sofia informs about what is happening in & around the Bulgarian capital; the other cities covered by regional radio channels include Plovdiv, Varna, Bourgas, Stara Zagora, among others.    

At the BNR's radio theatre studio.

The foyer of the BNR building in Sofia.

Mocking a radio show at Binar's studio.

A decree from 1935 announcing the start of Bulgarian National Radio. A radio station initiated by a group of enthusiasts several years earlier was nationalised by Tsar Boris III.

On-arrival, Albena: the famous EVS training

 

Dancing an improvised version of horo with a local Roma lady, Albena. 

All EVS volunteers have to undergo training. On 19-24 July we had our 'on-arrival' at the Black Sea resort of Albena, organised by the Bulgarian national agency. There have been nearly sixty trainees in total - EVS volunteers from projects all over Bulgaria - some of them 'on-arrival' like us, others 'mid-term'. 

Four trainers were giving us workshops, supported by several other people from the national agency. 

The training, of course, is not just about partying. A typical day included a couple of three-hour sessions, separated by a two-hour lunch break - the latter typically spent at the beach. 

I was not the only one thinking the sessions were fun but intense. We did: ice-breaking games in order to get to know each others, our projects & countries of origin; psychology workshops (personality types, negotiations, conflict management); classes about practicalities of doing an EVS (volunteerism, AXA insurance); plus creative tasks such as designing posters, shooting short films & running for quests all over Albena. 

We were given an in-depth presentation about Bulgaria and a language lesson, afterwards taken to a traditional restaurant to sample some more of the local cuisine and to watch folk dancing & pre-Christianity style fire shows while eating.

Most of our training sessions were animated by quick exercise sets (yes, you have read it right) in order to awaken our happily exhausted bodies and reset our brains. Even if at times I felt as if I was back at the kindergarden now I think that it was actually quite an effective way to make us learn.

All in all, it has been a good time for most of us, both information- and networking-wise, as well as a chance to uncover yet another Bulgarian destination. 

Thanks to Marionela, Nora, Svet and Atanas, our trainers, who have put some additional knowledge into our heads & for their innovative approach; and to everyone present for making it a worthwile experience. 

I am not going to go into details about the free time we had between & after the sessions but one of my colleagues claims he has made 'friends for the lifetime'. I can add, the new skills and contacts are likely to last beyond our EVS projects.

    

     

Beach library in Albena: now bookworms can have holidays too

EVS volunteers chosing a book.

As I write this I am lying on the beach, skin still damp after a nice swim in the Black Sea. It's summer time, let's face it. Next month, in August, probably half of Bulgaria's population will be going on holidays.

But enough about my hard life now. What I wanted to share is that I have discovered a beach library - a real library with real books located in the open, right behind sunbeds and beach umbrellas in Bulgaria's white-sanded Albena resort, some 30 kilometres away from the 'summer capital' of Varna.

If we believe the enthusiastic promotional materials, Albena's beach library is first one of such kind in the whole EU.

 
The setup is simple: one long, curvy shelf, stocked from both sides with books and magazines in several European languages, including English, German, Bulgarian, Romanian, French, Spanish, and Russian. There is also a small section called 'other languages' so if you happen to be a speaker of a less represented language you may still be able to find something to dig into.

I have seen plenty of recent fiction to choose from, as well as random books about health, travel and money; gardening, birdwatching and sex; arts albums, self-help guides, and digital photography manuals. There are stories for children as well as encyclopedic-looking volumes of classic French literature.  

View from the resort side. The sea is just behind the books.

The collection is always changing. You can borrow all books for free (only the name of your hotel is asked for reference) - and even keep them if you don't manage to finish them before your holiday ends. In return, readers are offered to donate their own unneeded books to the library.    

Both the library's stand itself and most of its resources still looked fresh at the time of my visit; the baseball-caps-and-shorts-wearing librarians happy and sporty. It is the library's first season of life, and, I believe, it has good hopes for the future. The sharing and reusing ideas are always welcome; and I have witnessed some interested readers. 

The Albena beach library is open between 8.30 AM - 5 PM every day. Unlike to most of other libraries you may go to this one dressed only in a bikini. 

The librarians' office.

Happy birthday, Binar! Cake, balloons and swing in the park

Happy birthday, Binar!

Last week I attended a very special birthday party. Binar, the internet radio of the Bulgarian National Radio was celebrating the first year of life, and they prepared a great party. Well, actually, they celebrated TWO parties, both in the same day. I love birthday parties (no, really) so I expend a great time with them.

The first part was in the BNR building. There were a lot of balloons, country hats, wine and one of the best cakes I’ve tasted in my life. The people who run Binar made their speeches; they cut the cake (yummy!) and the brand Max Factor, one of the sponsors, gave us a birthday present: and small box with make-up and free make up sessions with a pro.

The best cake EVER 

Only with this would be perfect, but they had more surprises for us… Then, we were invited to move to Yuzhen Park and there was the second part of the party. When we arrived there was a surprise waiting for us… a swing party! There was Lilly of the West, a Bulgarian bluegrass and country music band, which played a lot of songs from their new album while three professional pairings of dancers. Really amazing!

So, we expend the rest of the evening listening great music, drinking, and partying with all the people. I met a lot of interesting people, and the grass in the park was perfect for seat and talk with them. I didn’t dance, because sometimes I am a bit shy (ehem), but a lot of people started to dance and was very funny.

Pretty people in the park 

Binar.bg it’s not only an online radio. There you can find a lot of news about culture, science, society and much more. They have a lot of programs about different topics (only in Bulgarian, I’m afraid) and, of course, you can listen a lot of kinds of music. And all of this in Internet, so you can play videos, see pictures and more..

I really enjoyed this birthday party. Not only for the cake, of course. The people were very friendly, the music was really great and the evening in the park, surrounded of dogs and kids was simply perfect. For my next birthday I want a party like this one!

More info | Binar.bg

ZIFT (ДЗИФТ): the Socialist Noir

"zift (zĭft) n. 1.black mineral pitch, bitumen, asphalt; used as bonding material for road surfacing and, in the past, as streetwise chewing gum. 2.Slang. shit. [Turkish, from Arabic]" 

ZIFT by Vladislav Todorov (the English edition).

Some people just aren't born lucky. Consider life of Moth, the main character of Vladislav Todorov's novel Zift. 

In 1943, at the age of eighteen, he goes to prison to serve a sentence for a murder he didn't commit. Twenty years later he is released, only to discover that the world as he knew it doesn't exist anymore. It's now 1963, one of the gloomiest times of communist Bulgaria. The whole political system has changed.

Upon leaving the prison, Moth has a vision: to settle in a tropical island and swing in a hammock for the rest of his life. Instead, he finds himself in a reality more suffocating than any prison: that of a totalitarian state.

Right outside the door a bulky soviet Pobeda car (the name means 'victory' in English) awaits; it takes him to Slug, Moth's former gang mate, and the actual killer - now a police officer. Slug has in his interest that (1) the truth about the murder is never revealed; (2) Moth tells him where a precious diamond is. Moreover, Slug sleeps with Moth's beloved Ada, a.k.a. the Mantis - although Moth has yet to find this out, the hard way.

Slug poisons Moth and declares he would be dead by the next morning. Although Moth manages to escape, he is doomed. With Slug plus companions on his heels, body & willpower declining, Moth runs through the night streets of Sofia. He is lonely, injured, being chased; the city of his youth no longer shelters. He can trust no-one, and his lover now plots with his persecutor.

Moth indeed dies the next morning: in a cemetery, at a gravediggers' office, with a pair of misshapen work boots under his head, being looked-after by the deputy-chief gravedigger - perhaps the only genuinely caring person in the whole story. He dies chewing on zift, his default choice of chew (although this last time the reason why Moth wants to munch on zift is a bit different).

Symbolically, the novel takes place during one of the longest nights of the year, that of the 21st of December. Although it does have some comic elements, the novel is gloomy, just like life back in the communist times. Through the story of Moth, we learn about the realities of a totalitarian state.     

*
After reading the novel, I no longer feel the same as I walk through my current neighbourhood in Sofia. Fragments of the city's recent past seem to be everywhere, and I keep thinking about the events described. Although Zift is a fiction book, it is based on real facts - it is a historical novel. It reminds me of another similarly gloomy book, Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis, about the soviet times in my home city Vilnius.

I find Zift a valuable book in a way that it tells about the realities of the communist past. A former involuntary soviet* myself, I often notice that certain people in Western Europe find things connected with Eastern Europe's socialist past exotic, adorable. Typically, those are not the most historically aware leftists who easily get hooked on symbolics such as USSR flags & hammer and sickle t-shirts.  

Therefore, I believe, historical novels like Zift are highly needed. More than 20 years have gone now since the end of the Eastern Bloc but there still is a shortage of information about what was happening in that part of the world for a half of the 20th century. We need historical fiction so that the average, lay people become more aware - not just the academics. 

*
In 2008 a namesake film was released, with the script written by the novel's author Vladislav Todorov. Told in a tough, laconic manner, it immediatelly became cult in Bulgaria, and won numerous awards in local film festivals.

The film is entirely black-and-white, thus giving a first impression (to me, at least) of a TV documentary from the 1960s. I have to say I have not yet had the chance to watch the film, apart from a few random episodes on YouTube.

Below is the trailer. If we excuse the earsplitting soundtrack, Zift does indeed look like a promising movie. Or exotic and/or comical - depends on what you are looking for. 

Zift, the film trailer (2008). Directed by Javor Gardev.

A copy of Vladislav Todorov's Zift (in English) can be found at the library.

* from Lithuania. During the early communist times part of my family - as well as thousands of other Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians - were banished to Siberia and labour camps for not being 'good' socialist citizens. A historic novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys gives an insight into such deportations.   

Review by Agne Drumelyte.

'Don Carlo', Verdi en el parque

Nuestra entrada al paraíso

Para escribir este post tengo que remontarme al pasado. Poco más de una semana, tampoco os vayáis a creer que voy a hablaros de algo que ocurrió hace un par de años, pero con la cantidad de cosas que hacemos a veces me cuesta un poco saber en qué día vivo. El caso es que el pasado domingo 7 de Julio tuvimos la oportunidad de asistir a la representación de la ópera Don Carlo de Giuseppe Verdi. Todo un lujo que, además, se desarrollaba en el marco único del parque de la academia militar G. S. Rakovski, aquí en Sofia.

La ópera 'Don Carlo' fue compuesta por Verdi basándose en el drama de Schiller Don Carlos, Infante de España. Narra, como podéis adivinar, acontecimientos importantes en la vida del Infante Don Carlos, hijo de Felipe II de España. En concreto, el drama se centra en el amor que Carlos siente por Isabel de Valois, su prometida, pero que acabará casándose con su padre como parte del tratado de paz que puso fin a la guerra italiana entre los Habsburgo y los Valois. El amor de nuestros protagonistas será el principal motor de la historia, aunque no el único, claro.

Verdi nos presenta en 'Don Carlo' un singular juego entre política y religión, entre vencedores y vencidos, entre razón y corazón. La sombría figura del Gran Inquisidor, los terribles castigos de halo religioso y el hambre y la desolación en las tierras de Flandes suponen un magnífico contrapunto a la dramática (por imposible) historia de amor entre Carlos e Isabel. 

'Don Carlo' fue representada por primera vez en la Grand Opera de París el 11 de Marzo de 1867 y os tengo que decir que no fue especialmente bien acogida por el público. Por un lado, Verdi no respetó los estrictos cánones que se imponían a las obras estrenadas en París; por otro lado, el intenso debate que la obra presenta entre religión y política no fue todo del gusto de los críticos y el público. Poco importa eso ya, puesto que 'Don Carlo' es una de las óperas más populares de su autor y una de las más representadas año tras año en teatros de todo el mundo.

Ricardo,  con el escenario ardiendo (literalmente)

Lo cierto es que me encanta la ópera, pero no soy una experta. En absoluto, nada más lejos de la realidad. De hecho, le tuve que preguntar a una amiga (que sabe bastante más que yo del tema) cuales eran las principales diferencias entre un tenor, un barítono y un bajo, además de las obvias, porque a mí estas cosas se me escapan un poco. En cualquier caso, no tener ni idea no me impidió disfrutar muchísimo de una historia que me pilla de cerca.

Y es que, cuando una está tan lejos de casa, no puede evitar emocionarse al oir sobre la historia de tu país. La terrible Inquisición, la opresiva presencia de El Escorial, el dolor del amor entre Isabel y Carlos, la amistad que une a este con Rodrigo... Es hermoso, y os confieso que en un par de ocasiones estuve a punto de llorar de la emoción, porque yo soy de lágrima fácil, y porque, bueno, me sigue pareciendo increíble que se puedan hacer cosas tan bonitas con la música.

Y después de esta magnífica experiencia me estoy planteando comprar un abono para la nueva temporada de ópera porque sé que voy a tener pocas oportunidades como esta. En mi ciudad natal no es que haya precisamente muchas representaciones (aunque me consta que le ponen empeño, ojo) y, en cualquier caso, difícilmente podría compararlas con la sensación de asistir a la Opera de Sofía.

Así que... ¿quién se viene a la ópera conmigo? 

On last July 7th we went to the park of the military academy G. S. Rakovski to see the opera Don Carlo by Giuseppe Verdi. ‘Don Carlo’ narrates the sad story about the impossible love between Don Carlos, Infant of Spain and Isabel de Valois, who was his fiancée but finally gets married with his father, Felipe II, King of Spain.

The opera in the park was an enchanting experience that we really enjoyed. Not only the music or the singers, the entire environment was perfect. Even I’m not an expert; I really like opera so I want to go to all the representations in the new season. Do you like opera? Do you want to come with me? 

NaNoWriMo in Sofia, a creative (and mad) adventure about writing novels

Are you ready, inner writer?

I have to confess that I’m a bit nervous about this project. I think I’m not mad, only nervous. This is the first time that the Sofia City Library is going to host the NaNoWriMo and, well, I really want everything to be perfect.

 PER-FECT.

 The NaNoWriMo project is a great idea for this kind of people who constantly say Oh, I really want to write a novel… one day. Or Oh, I have thinking about this perfect plot for ages, maybe I have to write down… one day. 

Write a novel is quite easy. I’m not talking about a really good novel, a masterpiece. I’m talking about write a complete story, with a beginning, middle and an end. 50000 words of your story. About vampires, princesses, cheerleaders or blacksmiths. About whatever you want to write. 

And, yes, the keyword in the last sentence is WANT.

 NaNoWriMo is a very exciting project about personal goals and craziness about literature. The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) was founded in 1999 by Chris Baty, an overcaffenaited mad man who thought that was possible to write a novel in only one month, the month of November.

 Err… Ok, Chris. Fine. Sure. Whatever.

 Actually, I trust him. Really. It’s possible to write a novel in one month. Maybe not the perfect novel, maybe only the first draft, or only the beginning of your story. But if you want, if you really want, you can write it. It’s not so much. Only 50000 words in a month. Nearly 2000 words per day.

 That’s all. 

I did the NaNo since 2004. Sometimes I reached my goal, sometimes not, but I always enjoyed the process. If writing is part of your life, part of your passion, you have to try, at least once in your lifetime. 

And why not try this next November?

 In the Sofia City Library we are preparing a lot of activities about the NaNoWriMo. Yes, the NaNo is in November what we want to do a lot of things before this crazy adventure starts. We can talk about creative writing, about plots, about how to develop characters and more and more. 

So... Do you want to write a novel… this November? Do you want to join us in this exciting challenge?

 Great! You only have to visit us at the Sofia City Library and ask about madness NaNoWriMo. I would be very glad to hear about your novel. Really. And then, we can procrastinate together, talk about your main characters or plot bunnies. So.Much.Fun. I promise. 

Stay tuned, writers!

More Info |  NaNoWriMo