Different Worlds

After 10 days in Iceland, I am back to the starkly different Bulgarian reality. And although I can complain about it, I am not going to do that right now. See, a can of decent beer costs about 1 Euro, and I can go outside wearing a t-shirt. How cool is that? Spending time in a place like Iceland makes you appreciate these things ;)

My last few posts have all been about the country of hard-to-pronounce volcanos, so to mix things up, I decided to upload several pictures from my hometown Plovdiv. Plovdiv - the European Capital of Culture for 2019, home of the biggest gypsy ghetto in Europe, as well as the concrete neighborhood Trakia.

Trakia is where I grew up in the late 80's and early 90's; a place dominated by massive concrete apartment blocks. Needless to say, I and the rest of the boys spent our childhood exploring the huge network of basements, preparing ammonium nitrate smoke bombs on the rooftops, and roaming the green spaces between the blocks. Oh, I am getting nostalgic.

You might not call it charming, but the neighborhood was thoughtfully laid out with lots of space for walking and relaxing. Thins started to change several years ago with the influx of people from the surrounding regions due to the better job opportunities. The city and its neighborhoods had to grow.

How do you think a city should expand: outwards to the countryside, or inwards by filling up the empty spaces? The latter is what happened in Trakia - new apartment blocks started popping up like mushrooms between the older buildings, in place of the huge green areas. On the following picture, the land has been leveled for construction.

I don't like this type of development, but I cannot deny that the construction sites make for some nice photography subjects.

An old apartment block from the 70s and a new one under construction right next to it. I like the bizarre shape of the old one.

There's also a Catholic church between the blocks. In order to fit, it is too made of concrete. As I was walking with a telephoto lens, I only have a photo of its cross. For the record, I have never seen people go inside.