Reasons to Be Bulgarian… Naz-dra-vee!

Gold cherry

By Turlough

Thu, 30 Nov 2023
  • 998 reads
20 comments
 

 

Old men in galoshes

Public place for washes

Tripe soup in big sploshes

We only take cash

Wood smoke in the morning

Scratching, coughing, yawning

Die in the house you're born in

Ladies with a tash

 

Shumensko foams in bars

Nights ablaze with shooting stars

Rusty Lada motor cars

The Black Sea coast

The smile of Desislava

Sticky hot baklava

Bureaucratic right palaver

And Lenin’s ghost

 

Waterfalls and mountains

Hundred thousand drinking fountains

Still reading by oil lanterns

The home of Orpheus

Summers hot and sunny

An alphabet that's funny

The finest local honey

Drivers smoking on the bus

 

Holidays in Shabla

All-night games of tabla

Abra and cadabra

Neighbours with the Turks

Yoghurt and banitsa

Give me three goats for my sister

How can you resist her?

Her father never works

 

Trees full of figs and peaches

Vasil Levski's speeches

Naked on the beaches

Muslims eating pork

Europe’s oldest nation

Can’t control inflation

We never trust Croatians

Migration point for storks

 

Sporadic folklore dances

Vast wilderness expanses

Dodgy government finances

Fifteen degrees below

Hauls of ancient treasures

Rakia in large measures

Countless other pleasures

A metre deep in snow

 

Reasons to be Bulgarian… Naz-dra-vee!

Reasons to be Bulgarian… Naz-dra-vee!

Reasons to be Bulgarian… edno, dveh, tree!

 

Note:

For any non-Bulgarians who may be reading this, the word ‘nazdrave’ (наздраве), when translated literally into English, means ‘for health’.

In Bulgaria we say it:

  1. As an expression of friendly feelings towards our companions before drinking, as in ‘cheers!’
  2. As a salutation to a person about to eat, as in ‘bon appétit!’
  3. As a gesture of goodwill to someone who has just sneezed, as in ‘bless you!’

 

Image:

The smile of Desislava.

Every image I use is from a photograph I have taken myself. 

Certificate U
Poem
Poetry in Commotion
Humour
Inspiration Point (work that responds to our weekly writing cue)

Comments

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

You have to make a video of this one (but please not the tripe soup)

Brilliant - thank you Turlough. Out of interest, how long have you been in Bulgaria? You've certainly immersed yourself in the country. I met a woman in Geneva once who'd spent 20 years there and she couldn't even speak French - what a waste!

 

Submitted by Turlough on

My initial reaction was 'urrrgggghhhhh' but it's surprising how lush a bowl of tripe soup (shkembe chorba) can be, especially with loads of garlic (chesun) in it and a big hot wadge of slightly charred flatbread (perlenka).

I've been here around seven and a half years and I love the place to bits, though the cherry on the torta is the cost of living being so low that I can comfortably survive without having to go out to work each day.

Yer woman in Geneva could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station.

Thanks for the cherries and the kind words and all that.

Turlough

Submitted by Turlough on

 

 

Turlough

Submitted by celticman on

15 below zero isn't my kind of hero. all the rest is much like here, but too many tories, oh dear, oh dear, or dear, what would lenin's ghost think? 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

He's everywhere... I'll ask him.

Turlough

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

It's sad isn't it? They're all over the place though - little enclaves of expats with zero interest in wherever they've moved to

 

Submitted by Turlough on

We have them here too. Many come for the cheap land for their dozens of aggressive dogs and/or the cheap alcohol and they often don't really know where they are.

A woman we know (our former holiday house sitter... until two weeks ago... a story in itself) was telling me once that she liked our horse chestnut sapling. I told her that when we first bought it I was worried that it wouldn't like our climate so I googled it and wiki said that the horse chestnut was a native of the Balkans. And she said, 'So what's the weather like in the Balkans?'

In any country I find that local people are much more welcoming if you at least try to speak their language, so I couldn't not. 

Turlough

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Definitely a poem to be heard. You seemed to have covered such a large extent of what you know Turlough. Immersing yourself in the country you love, must be the best feeling, and considering the time you've been there, you're no longer a newcomer, and have settled nicely

I really enjoyed the rhythm of your poem.

Jenny..

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thanks very much Jenny.

I'm glad you enjoyed it and grateful for your comment.

Turlough

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

You seem to have quite subtly interwoven many aspects of what it is really like actually stuck-in living there, with your usual abiility to give a rocking rhythm. eg

An alphabet that's funny (congratulations on mastering it so much!)
The finest local honey

Sticky hot baklava
Bureaucratic right palaver

Waterfalls and mountains

Nights ablaze with shooting stars (I presume you have little light pollution?)
Rusty Lada motor cars
 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

I'm really grateful for your insightful comment Rhiannon.

Thanks to for the congratulations on the Cyrillic alphabet. I just need to master the grammar now and I've cracked it.

As for the light pollution we have very little some nearby mountainous areas are even better and the big cities like Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna are awful. The same applies with traffic and industrial pollution as well as the winter smoke from millions of wood burners.

Many thanks indeed.

Turlough

Submitted by marandina on

"Give me three goats for my sister

How can you resist her?"

Well, yes.

Croatians aren't to be trusted.

I may try tripe soup one day.

As imaginitive as ever. Those treadmills of your mind are whirring in the early hours still, aren't they?. I hope you sleep eventually but, in the meantime, we get to feed on your creative juices. (Hmmm...not sure that last bit sounds right)

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Creaking more than whirring Paul, but I'm thankful that they're at least active.

Many thanks for your juicy comment.

Always appreciated.

Turlough

Submitted by jeand on

Hi

 

I really enjoyed reading the plusses and minuses of what I think must be your country of birth.  I could list many of the weather realted things to my home place of Bismarck, North Dakota But we don't ask for goats for daughters any more. 

Jean Day

Submitted by Turlough on

Thanks very much indeed Jean for your kind words but in actual fact I've only lived in Bulgaria for seven and a bit years.

I was born in Middlesbrough in north east England, I did most of my growing up (if you can call it that) in Ireland and Yorkshire and lived several other places on the way here. Bulgaria's my favourite though, by a million kilometres.

Sorry to hear there's no goats in North Dakota. 

Turlough

Submitted by jeand on

Hi

 

I really enjoyed reading the plusses and minuses of what I think must be your country of birth.  I could list many of the weather realted things to my home place of Bismarck, North Dakota But we don't ask for goats for daughters any more. 

Jean Day

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

This enjoyable and very positive tribute is our Pick of the Day!

Please share on social media if you enjoy it too

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Well that certainly is a reason to be cheerful.

Thank you very much indeed.

Turlough

Submitted by blighters rock on

Bus drivers smoking reminded me of the bars in Vienna where you can still smoke twenty years after the cronies stopped it in the EU. Bulgaria sounds like a place faithful to its past and two fingers to anyone that says otherwise. Lovely poem too

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Smoking's almost compulsory here and we're so far east the EU can't find us to tell us off for bending or ignoring their rules.

Thanks for reading and commenting. It's greatly appreciated.

Turlough