I arrived in Sofia after spending a night in a stopped train car in the first big town north of Blagoyovgrad, pretty exausted and right off the bat rolling into the city got directions from one nice lady at the bus top, did email for three hours and finally found the Art Hostel after getting directions from a frogger with this black top/thong thing on I had never seen before. Art Hostel, Martina Marcolino was on duty. After some begging she agreed to let me store my bike in the basement rather than in the garden and I painfully maneuvered it around the tight stairway and down into the basement, took a nice shower, met some dancers from Australia in town to do a performance combining Jungian Analysis with artistic movement and set out to look around the streets of Sofia.

Sofia does not immediately greet the eye as some charming old center tricked out for tourism. Rather it is a decaying set of buildings mostly from the communist cement era peppered by a few genuinely old turn-of-the-century structures (or older). The plaster and paint crumbles off the facades and sprinkles all below with equality. Graceful corruption, trying to look west but clearly strongly rooted in the East (and the migration from the central caucasus and asia through Iran (where, I am told, they lived on the Caspian sea coast for a period) which Bulgarians as a people still remember).

The center of Sofia is all parks with outdoor cafes (bars), plazas with outdoor cafes, streets with outdoor cafes & outdoor cafes (outdoor cafes seem the main activity). There is something bright and cheerful yet languid in the people, the streets become especially bright when people are going to or coming from work at 8 AM or 6 PM. There are trams in the city squeaking their way around corners on metal rails, their antennae rasping and scraping sparkily on the mad web of wires above the streets. The parks are many but only a few are well-maintained, the others sad and dirty jumbles of underbrush and trash strewn around badly chipped and defaced communist-era monuments. There is a very respectable working mosque in the center from whose back springs a hot yet tasty mineral water emerging from the ground - the all day scene of a flurry of people with buckets, jugs and plastic bottles taking some home to a sick aunt.

The first afternoon I discovered that by sitting in the Art Hostel with Martina (who is a consummately charming professional DJ/hostel-hostess) a train of interesting aqquaintences come to visit her. One of them was Irena, her friend who spoke an abrupt kind of English with lots of smiles and a blouse showing her very tan and shining midriff. Irena and I chatted some and when she left for a rondezvous with someone I showed her to the door upstairs. The way she paused in the doorway on the way out was electricity and after she left I was confused for a while wondering what I might have done with that spark.

Almost immediately thereafter I ran into Dominick an Australian arriving to work his shift at the Art Hostel, this a chance reunion with a fellow I had last met in Konya Pansiyon, Istambul with his partner Talia Avernell, an ex-model and libertine from Australia. Dom was continuing his lifestyle solo (with Talia now living in London) drinking as many shots and fifty cent beers and getting to know as many of the Bulgarian girls as possible. Under the auspices of sleeping at his place I was able to leave my stuff at the Art Hostel while not paying the 10 Euros a night and thereby saving money and spending almost a week’s worth of days exploring the Bulgarians of Sofia with the city as a backdrop.

Its funny, I almost don’t even see the buildings anymore, the people are what’s alive and speaks of culture, thank God I see things about them that I am pretty sure they don’t know about themselves. One night out with Dom after midnight in the street I ran into the four Australians I had seen perform hours earlier. They were standing outside a pseudo latino restaurant celled Macchu Picchu. The performance of theirs I had seen was for me was deep and understandable despite the usual half-asleep coma effect slower modern dance tends to have on my conciousness (and this performance was in a room hot enough to hatch eggs in – it was in the geologic museum and all around us stood two-meter-high natural crystals of man-sized diameters).

The Australian performers were Glenda – a 50-something Jungian analyst & excellent singer:guitar player and the creator of the performance concept, Elizabeth – a 70-something dancer who has worked in professional companies around the globe and also did a breif stint as an amateur anthropologist in Papua-New Ginua, Peter – a business consultant turned dancer, and Vivian – a dancer my age who works closely together with Elizabeth. Also with them was their local coordinator of the event – a Bulgarian Jungian analyst practicing in Sofia named Theodora.

When she heard about my mission to visit "The Lights of Europe" Elizabeth grabbed my arm and said I "must visit the spiritual community of Damanhur in northern Italy." Ellizabeth runs a dance company from her estate in rural Australia (address at end).

Glenda said of our chance meeting that she was not surprised we had run into each other there on the street – she said everyone in the company had noticed me watching out there in the audience. Destiny beckoned when it turned out they were heading out to the black sea coast to try and visit the Danube delta (this related to the architypal theme of their performance: the flood) and needed another driver. I volunteered and the next day we were off towards the sea in a foul old delivery truck turned rental van which had been found for the job.

The whole trip lasted about four days and except for one quick day of peace was solidly spent navigating the swooping irregularities and dastardly potholes of the Bulgarian roadscape. I took it upon myself to do most of the driving and became seriously exhausted by the end of each day. The highlights of this trip for me were:

- Veliko Tarnovo, 15 minute pitstop to peek over this beautiful touristic city
- Walking down the sharp steep cliffs to the dark blue-green waters of the Black Sea and swimming like seals in the bouyantly salted water.
- Eating fantastic gourmet fish dinners for very cheap along the coast – turns out that most coastal black sea villages were settled by Greek fisherman and hence the cooking of the fish is an extasy of garlic lemon and grilled spices.
- Having the opportunity to spend that much time talking with Theodora and Glenda and the rest of the gang.
- Reading some funny and crude lessons from Rumi to the ladies at night and one time even playing the Daf for them breifly with a Iranian Sufi song by Daud Azad in a seaside restaurant.

When we finally rolled our now thoroughly devastated van back into Sofia we were all exhausted. On the way we had dropped Peter off to catch the bus to Istambul and the remaining members of the company went to the heavily guarded American Embassy which Glenda and Theodora had rented out for Glenda to give a talk to the public on her image of a world gone into architypal imbalance with Logos totally supplanting Ethos and still on the rise.

Here Are My Rough Notes From Glenda's Talk

Elizabeth's Cultural Center (in the bush)
Mirramu Dance Company,
849 Lake Road Bungendore
NSW Australia 2621,
ph: 61(0)2 6238 1492,
mob: 0418 698 196,
fax: 61(0)2 6238 0091,
mirramu@hotmail.com