Bulgarian Freedom at the Dinner Table

An old street car rumbled by on the cobblestone as we strolled down the sidewalk. Golden twilight streamed down, illuminating the end of the street in a nostalgic glow. The cement apartments stretched above us, all to a similar height. Some were painted bright colors, some covered in flakes of chipping paint. Locals sat at sidewalk cafes, enjoying the coolness of the evening. From the moment we stepped off the plane in Sofia, Bulgaria, we immediately felt something new, something different: we’d finally arrived in eastern Europe. And not just Eastern Europe, but our first of the Balkans, the family of former socialist/communist countries that stretch from southern Romania to the tip of Greece on the Mediterranean.

We diverted off the sidewalk and into a park, bustling with life. Families were relaxing on benches and children were running, jumping, and scootering around the paths. We smiled. It looked like we’d found the place to be on an early August night. Cutting across the park, we were following Google Maps to a traditional restaurant I’d flagged after reading its positive reviews. We approached “Contessa (контеса in Bulgarian)”, a rustic open air eatery sided with varnished wood and covered in plants. The place was full, and the waiter, a young guy about our age, sat us at a picnic table near the door. He gave us their only English menu, which had to be passed around to the other few non-Bulgarian speaking tourists in the room, one family from Israel, another seemed Italian.

The menu was stock-full of traditional dishes, six pages worth. Everything from cow tongue to sheep brains. Clueless to where we should be starting, we consulted with the waiter. This is where we first felt the warmth of the Balkans. Being the restaurant’s best English speaker, he was racing from table to table taking care of guests. Even so, he was happy to stop and explain everything to us.

“Ok, so this is our first day in Bulgaria…where do we start?” I inquired. He asked us where we were from and asked some questions about our journey to Bulgaria. Taking his time, he explained more than ten of the dishes with care, going down the list. Still bewildered by all of the options, we selected a few plates that he approved as a good place to start (see gallery for our food choices). After writing down our order, he started talking about the restaurant. And this is where things came into perspective. 

“This restaurant is owned by my family,” he said proudly. “It’s actually one of the oldest restaurants in Sofia.” Bonnie and I were both thinking at this point about how cool it was that we had stumbled across one of Sofia’s oldest restaurants. It must have been in his family for a hundred years or something, maybe his great-great grandparents founded it. Then he grinned, “My father started this restaurant.” 

As the words left his lips, my mental calculator was whirring and my brain was digesting this info. Ummm, wait a minute…timeline is not adding up…the oldest restaurant in this city of 1.2 million people was started just one generation back?? Your father? My head frantically tried to make sense of it. 

“My father started this restaurant 27 years ago,” he chimed again with gusto, and then he took our order away to the kitchen. Bonnie and I looked at each other. Twenty-seven years ago? So he’s telling us that this place is one of the oldest, and it was established in 1991? Then it hit us. In Bulgaria, democracy is young. 

Of course, our generation has seen the videos in history class of the Berlin wall coming down in 1989. For me it always seemed like old history, and so far away. Grainy videos of people hacking a big cement wall with sledgehammers, the fall of communism and the Soviet’s iron curtain. It always seemed like something from the past, but there at the table in the restaurant, this revolution that welcomed in the 1990s now seemed so recent, so close. From here, Bonnie and I dove into the history of socialism and communism, taking a few walking tours around Sofia that delved into different aspects of Bulgaria’s political history and revolution. 

On November 10, the day after the Berlin Wall came down, Bulgaria ousted its communist leader. In February 1990, the Bulgarian constitution was changed, eliminating the communist party’s dictatorship. Just a few months later, in June, the first free elections since 1931 were held. While learning all of this firsthand, walking around the city, seeing old communist buildings (see gallery) converted to privately owned shops, I couldn’t help but think back to our waiter and his family at Contessa. 

As a twenty-something like us, he was the first generation of his family to grow up in democratic Bulgaria. His parents lived in the communist era, grew up under governmental control, and without capitalistic possibilities. You couldn’t just put some money down and start a restaurant with a dream in those times. The state controlled the jobs available. 

I imagined our waiter’s father, the restaurant owner, in the early nineties, after living the first part of his life under the rule of the communist leaders. He was probably excited to take advantage of his new capitalistic freedoms to do whatever he wanted, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy. Think of having to make smart business decisions after working under a government that dictated everything. It must have seemed like a whole new world! And then, just months  after voting in the first free election of his life, he started the restaurant, Contessa. Amazing. 

This experience really set the tone for us as we started our journey into the Balkans. As Americans, it can be easy to take our freedoms for granted. However, to hear the experiences of people close to our age, of their parent’s stories—it really put things into perspective. And as Bulgaria’s history grows and evolves, I’m sure Contessa’s will as well. Maybe in fifty years, I’ll return to Sofia. As the evening wanes, I’ll round the corner, cross the park grass, and I’m sure I’ll see lights twinkling from a rustic wood restaurant, tucked under the vines on the corner. The sign will read: “Contessa, established 1991.” I’ll sit down at the picnic table near the door, and someone will plop down the menu in front of us.

“Welcome,” he’ll say with a smile. “My father started this restaurant 77 years ago.”

Next Up: Croatia

Peace be the journey,

Cody