I think that spring is going to find us in Sofia sooner than later. Yesterday, it snowed. Today it's sunny but cold.  Overall we've had much, much less snow this year than past years but it's remained colder longer. In the past I've been able to switch over to a lighter weight coat in March but this year I'm still switching back and forth between my two winter coats.

It's been a strange few months in Bulgaria. After a series of protests (some of them violent) in February, the government (unexpectedly) resigned resulting in the formation of a care-taker government and the elections which had once been scheduled for July have moved moved up to May.

At the same time there have been an alarming number of self-immolation cases in Bulgaria over the past two months. This has been much more upsetting to me than the resignation of the government.

In the past week or so, Foreign Policy ran a piece titled: <a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/14/self_immolation_is_not_new_to_bulgaria" target="_blank">Self-immolation isn't as new as you think in Bulgaria</a>. This article outlined two things. Bulgaria is second only to the Netherlands in average cases of self-immolation each year in Europe but only 1/3 of Bulgaria's cases are related to mental illness and this is the lowest correlation in Europe. Thus most of Bulgaria's cases of self-immolation are a form of political protest.

Not to be left behind the Economist also ran <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21574034-desperate-demonstrations-against-ephemeral-government-poverty-protests?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/poverty_protests" target="_blank">an article on the intersection of poverty, protest and self-immolation in Bulgaria</a>. This piece led with the fact that:
<blockquote>Six people have set themselves on fire in Bulgaria in less than a month. Three have died.</blockquote>
I read this line a few times. It's hard for me to understand the kind of desperation, frustration and helplessness that leads to self-immolation.

I don't know how to reconcile this with my experience in Sofia. I don't know what this increase of cases says about life in Bulgaria. I don't know how to make sense of any of this.

I wonder if things will look better in spring. I wonder if the up-tick in self-immolation will fall off. I wonder if the upcoming elections will change anything.