/ world today news/ I wrote this text a month ago for the Bulgarian magazine “LIFE”. I’m releasing it now because something like a debate has taken shape about the new look of the capital. Projects that made my hair stand on end were also shown – something like a helipad was supposed to represent the square in front of the National Palace of Culture, and illustrations from a book from my childhood, “A Stranger in the Sunny City”, showed how the Pearl Canal is turning into the freeway of the future.
I have no doubt that these projects will be implemented and Sofia will become an even uglier and unlivable city. I’m skeptical that public discussion will change anything, but other than words I can’t think of any other means of pressure. Even so, the idea of protest was totally devalued by the “beautiful and smart” and perhaps it is natural that ugliness and stupidity rule this city and have turned it into the most westernized capital of Europe.
One billion and 459 million BGN is the budget of Sofia for 2015. This should be good news, but I don’t think it is. Apart from much of the money that will be stolen or squandered, quite a bit will go to the city, which is getting irredeemably ugly every year. The worse news is that the rulers and a significant part of their voters like it.
It is very difficult to argue on aesthetic topics, especially with taxi drivers, but this does not mean that one should remain silent. I know intelligent, educated and competent people who are shocked by what is happening to the Bulgarian capital, but their voices are not heard at all, and I do not remember that there were serious debates in Sofia about urban aesthetics and its thoughtful development. Sofia has lost its appearance for a long time, its individual neighborhoods increasingly look like separate ghetto-cities, and the center has finally been taken over by the urbanized countryside, which turns everything it touches into a thorn.
Go to the underpass of Sofia University, which has resembled the Central Station from its darkest years (not that the situation is not tragic now and then) – stray dogs, dirt, a few drunkards making noise on drums, accordion and electric guitar, stolen umbrellas sold when it rains, tattered antique books lined up on the railings, makeshift stalls and old women selling seasonal martenits, flowers and haberdashery. All this against the background of neon advertisements of “McDonald’s”, “Bila” and a huge poster of Hristo Kovacki, who wrote a book with the title – “Universal Order”!?!
If one is in the mood one may laugh heartily at this shock, but when one realizes that this is the heart of the capital, at the foot of the Alma Mater, and imagining what the student centers in Germany, England, or Holland are, one may cried and was depressed for a long time. Lion’s Bridge, which should now be called Lion’s Ring, is totally and irreparably disfigured. One of the symbols of the city was practically hidden by a roundabout facility, pointless underpasses and overpasses that made the traffic jams even worse than before.
The Doctor’s Garden was destroyed, which consumed one million leva to resemble something like a Praktiker brochure. They ruined the space between the Party House, the Council of Ministers and the Presidency with a kind of concrete and sheet metal subway trench, an ugly sidewalk and poorly organized traffic. Ugly glass and steel buildings were erected wherever possible (see the European Commission building on Rakovski Street – an attempt at a replica of the Hearst Tower in Manhattan, New York) jutting indiscriminately next to neglected old townhouses and condominiums. The temple “St. Alexander Nevsky” was imperceptibly turned into a bus station, and the cars piled up everywhere make the existence of streets, sidewalks, alleys, urban spaces, etc. meaningless. Only parking lots everywhere. Plevneliev would have taken a nap, but don’t be fooled.
“Vitoshka” resembled a luxury cartoon, in which every owner of an establishment accumulated what he saw abroad, without any idea about the general appearance and aesthetics – in general, everything that is supposedly modernized and “touched up” resembles a temporary bazaar . The streets and sidewalks in the center are still riddled with holes, as if they had been bombed. The new sidewalks are made through millet with the same terribly ugly pavement (apparently the same company wins the contests), and the containers overflowing with garbage stand for days and are a common sight along “Shishman”, “Sheynovo”, “Angel” Kanchev”, “Ivan Vazov”… The excrement of animals and people, as well as the smell of a landfill, took over the very center of Sofia.
I know very well that someone will accuse me of blackness, hatred and bias, I hear the exclamations: How nice the Lion Bridge has become, do you remember what the university underpass was like, etc. How can I explain that the person or people who designed the Lion Bridge and everything else in Sofia should be arrested and sentenced effectively for bad taste and incompetence. I’m not even talking about the obvious corruption swirling around these never-ending construction projects – for example, the insane flyover to the seminary, which increased traffic jams and gobbled up millions.
It is no coincidence that half of the budget that I mentioned at the beginning is allocated to road infrastructure – that is. for robbery. Despite the infamous GERB highways, the streets of Sofia, and indeed of Bulgaria, are in a deplorable state. But here, too, I am not referring to corruption. She is the lesser evil. The bigger one is the bad taste and sloppiness planted with a lot of money that is beyond repair.
On the site of the emblematic Sofia factory of the Proshek brothers, they erected a huge building, terribly ugly, styleless, born in the imagination of a woodpecker, which will never be blown up and removed. End. This space that could have become a great art center has been destroyed forever. This is the case with many more enclaves in the center, which are slowly turning into chalga. Not to mention the parks, bald and taken over by stalls and “attractions” so that no normal person would think of taking their children there…
Lion’s Bridge and all the rest is silicone, kitsch, bad imitation, hypermarket brochure, failed retro imitation, destruction of tradition and blatant simplism – but there’s no way to explain that to people who don’t have the eyes to see it. In fact, the worst thing is that
there is almost nothing left of old Sofia, and the new one is some sort of futuristically developed Pernik.
Senseless pouring out of huge sums of money meant to solidify the ugliness. It’s not really a city anymore. All of Sofia looks like a depressed suburb, a verse from a song by Veselin Marinov, in a soft eastern dialect, which makes me pessimistic about the future. Like I said, it’s about culture and taste that can’t be explained or embodied. And they cost us one and a half billion BGN.
#Sofia #coat #arms #ugliness #View #Info
