A look in the past

While in the previous posts just plain theory was used, today I am switching things. I will be using something practical, something real. It is an interview with Krasimira Todorova, member of the board of the directors of Pireus bank. Apart from evidently being a succesfull woman, she can provide us with the fundamental knowledge for our comparisson. Concretely speaking, it is the perspective of the communist-grown society or in other words the parents of the “Youth of Sofia“. The interview deals with something essential for the average young men or women in Bulgaria– Friday night and how to spend it in Studentski Grad.
The interview itself was taken in Sofia, in the Hilton hotel’s restaurant on the 12th of September.
The link is below:

And below you can find the translation in English:

Quick summary of the development of Bulgaria after democracy (or how we all learned to love money)…In other words, some background information

After the fall of communism, Bulgaria served as a role model of what would be later called “transitional democracies“. Translating this term into common language- people’s expectations of quick welfare and building up of a functioning market economy weren’t met. Quite the contrary, Bulgaria plunged itself in a 10 year period during which entrepreneurs stole what they could via the means of privatization of national property. Those same entrepreneurs formed the Bulgarian mafia, which dominated not only all of the business areas at that time but also was perceived as the high-class of the “society”. Here precisely hides the link to the situation of our youth. The life of the gangsters in the 90s was associated with the driving of fast and expensive cars, visiting trendy places and last but not least a specific music genre developed for their tastes-chalga. The latter praised all the above mentioned qualities and was the emanation of what the lifestyles and values of Mafia members were at that time. The problem is that even though nowadays, the situation has changed and gangsters do not dominate and show off that much, chalga music and the lifestyle it looks up to are still trendy. Not only that but they have affected the youth of Sofia and twisted their values and understandings of the world, downgrading them to one simple word that drives them forward to the night clubs, bars, restaurants etc. Money.

Misleading and explaining

Reading the title of this blog- “youth of Sofia” one may think that this is another beautful tale of how great is to be young. Or some rebellious 90s inspired rant against the older generations. The truth is, however, that this blog will deal with young people but it is going to be written from an older and maybe,seemingly, outdated perspective. “Youth of Sofia” will deal with how the adolescents of Sofia live, how they perceive a good experience, what they value. All of those are in connection with Sofia’s night clubs,bars, coffee shops, restaurants and etc. Describing those will be in connection with the main question that this blog will try to answer- what happened to the so-called children of the democracy in Bulgaria? Did they grow up to fulfill the expectations of their parents- to be better people than them ?