Reflections and guests

We had visitors for two days this week (no, not this guy here 😆, fortunately or unfortunately). And as has become a tradition, we spent one of the hottest last days, with them at a pool, and so we managed to cope with the heat, even without feeling it much. Despite the constant danger of fires, which threatens the surroundings, the settlement and the house in which we live, including.

Today I realized that living here feels like a trap by me. In the winter, I don't want to go anywhere because, even though the last few winters have been mild, it's ugly and unphotogenic outside, and I can never handle the cold, no matter how bad it is or not. I can't wait for summer to come. But when summer comes, then I can't go out either. It's not just that I've been uncomfortable with not having an income for quite some time now. But because I am afraid of fires around that may affect the house. On the one hand, I want to get out of here very badly, but on the other, while I'm here, I want to be able to keep some things, something that I can take with me in a hurry, at the last minute.
Recent events in the country have proven that the state is once again useless in fighting fires, protecting houses as well as people, the disaster notification system does not work and people in most cases have to deal with everything themselves. Yet that's another topic.

So, we were at the pool. I will not start the topic of how expensive the entrance ticket to such places has become, that is another topic again.

These people are friends of my partner. We see them once a year. Because they live in England. At first I thought I got along well with them, mostly because they live abroad. But that was before we went on a trip together, which turned out to be just a vacation - it was the occasion for a post called The easiest way to ruin your relationship with acquaintances - by going on a trip with them. 😅

Still, I kind of get along with them, despite that incident. They show understanding when we discuss the situation in Bulgaria, but they are already so far from it that they literally do not care and cannot enter into my situation. Which on the other hand makes our communication somewhat pointless. At least for me. And maybe that's why I spent my time at the pool quite lonely, deliberately avoiding going into the pool and staying alone on the sunbeds.

Not just because of the meaningless communication, actually.
Like last year after I lost my job, and now, when it's still impossible to find another one, the woman in the couple tells me the same thing - you shouldn't stop, you just don't have time, your time is running out... Every time she makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong or just not doing anything. Although I have not stopped looking for work, knowing that my time is running out.
That's why even that day, under the strong sun, talking to these people, observing them, their behavior, mindset and way of life, their characters and so on and yet their life so well developed in their favor, I was literally frozen in my mind projecting the footage of my own life. My life flashed before my eyes, as they say.
And I asked myself the question again: how did it get here? I don't have a clear answer to that. And perhaps no one can tell for themselves how it got here when we talk about adverse life events or an adverse situation that threatens to become permanent.

I had recently read about an Englishman living in Spain. He was an English teacher, fluent in Spanish. But due to ill health, he ends up on the street. Literally in a few years, 2 or 3, everything collapses and his life fails completely. Can this person say for sure how it got there? Because I certainly can't say that about myself.

I sat and thought about my life while my partner and the couple were at the far other end of the pool. In front of me was the kiddie pool and I absentmindedly watched the kids inside until I noticed someone on the other side looking at me. It was a good-looking man who had come here with his children. Well, there weren't many people for watching this weekday at the pool 😆, so I understand his interest. But then I thought about it.

I stood alone pondering my life and looked as if I could not swim and was afraid of water. Because, face it, going to the pool and not getting into the big swimming pool would only mean one thing and exactly that.
For a moment I considered getting up and going into the pool. I'm a good swimmer, maybe better than all the people around put together. But how did I get to the point where I stopped swimming?

Then I gave up. Isn't that really what has always weighed on me - that people tend to see in me what I can't do rather than what I can do. I was never enough for anything. I have a university degree, but not the right one. That's why this education never helped me at all. I could never qualify as an accountant or any other more specialized profession. I never got around to learning programming because it wasn't for me, even if it was lucrative. And despite the many other positives and virtues I have or could have, I'm busy trying to prove that I'm good, that I can, that I know... I'm really tired of it. Especially when I meet people (like these now) who tell me how they hunker down at work in England and wait for the work day to pass or play pool waiting for the same thing while I struggled with physically impossible tasks under incredible stress, ruined my health, only to be subsequently fired.

Well, yes, because I'm in Bulgaria.

I have to admit that for a while now, maybe a few weeks, a month, I really haven't been searching as hard as I used to. And this is because I realized that the main problem is that I continue to be in Bulgaria, where everything is quite distorted, even perverted in that sense of the word for something that is beyond distorted, so distorted that there are no words to describe it.
So maybe the woman in the couple is right. At least as far as Bulgaria is concerned. But that doesn't mean I've really stopped. I'm just looking for other options. Somewhere else.

In the evening we had dinner out.

I didn't take pictures of the pool because, like I told you before, I expect my phone to leave me at any moment, but I didn't hold back from taking pictures of the alien I show you here and all the other things in this restaurant we sat down at.
I was here two years ago when I photographed the alien for the first time, but unfortunately the photos from that time were lost due to my other faulty phone. And knowing that I might never come here again, I took these pictures. Because I think this decoration is genius. Up to some extent.
The restaurant is called "Mars" as the second picture shows, although it is written in Cyrillic and I guess incomprehensible to most of you.
But because of the locals' way of speaking and other reasons, I didn't know it was the planet Mars before I saw the alien quite by chance, hidden way back, in a remote garden and at another end of the establishment.

The rest of the decoration I'm showing you is quite controversial for me personally. First is a poem (also controversial) (did you read it?😅 Very bad translation. It should rather be: Do not put water on my grave. In the other world I don't want to wash. And if I rise from the dust, it will be to get drunk.) by the local communist poet who committed suicide at 28 - I've told you about him before as well.
Then part of the history of the creation of this communist city with all its communist symbols.

At first I thought it was just made for tourists, you know, to show something exotic to outsiders who would come here, not everyone has seen Stalinist architecture for example. But then I remembered - what the hell tourists? So who will come to this pushed place, this hole? As we approached the restaurant, I saw the locals looking at us. They are so unused to seeing foreign people that they know well who is local and who is not. And then how they stared at me and laughed while I was taking these photos... No, this is not done for tourists, because there are none here. It's some sort of twisted tribute to the city, even a tribute to communism itself.
With this last photo I show you, of Comrade Georgi Dimitrov, the greatest communist figure in the history of Bulgaria. With the inscription in it, this time only in Bulgarian: I am proud to be the son of the Bulgarian working class. A lot can be said about the local people here and why they are so strange and above all, why I don't get along with them and can't find a common language - how to find a common language with irradiated communists? But this is another topic, although related to everything I have written so far.
I still wanted to show you this particular decoration, after all. 😃

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|