[caption id="attachment_1143" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="A Set of Block Apartments in Mladost"]<img class="size-full wp-image-1143" title="Mladost Apts" src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/dsc01075.jpg" alt="A Set of Block Apartments in Mladost" width="500" height="375" />[/caption]

I am living this year in the Sofia neighborhood of Mladost.  I didn't know so much about the neighborhood until I moved out here this year.  I knew that there was a metro stop, my school, a big grocery store or two and giant block buildings.  In her book Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria Kapka Kassabova describes Mladost 3 that outsiders would have seen "an uninhabitable dystopia of concrete and mud, I learnt to see it for what it really was: my home." I read this and thought: gasp. What is this place?

Then I thought how will I ever talk about this place to my non-Bulgarian friends? Will words be enough? I've never see or lived anywhere exactly like this.<!--more-->

[caption id="attachment_1144" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="A View From My Apartment of Mladost"]<img class="size-full wp-image-1144" title="Mladost Billa " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/img_0047.jpg" alt="A View From My Apartment of Mladost" width="500" height="750" />[/caption]

So I read some more of Kassabova's book where she continues to write more about the Mladost "panel" apartment buildings.  She writes in the Mlasdost "panels, as my parents' friends called the hastily-built concrete blocks, things were grim.  Within a few years of being erected, bits of the panels' walls were falling off. Seen from a distance, their hide was peeling and they wept gray tears, like mutant monsters squatting in their own waste." Reading this a part of me made a bodily reflex that was part ach it made my stomach tighten and my heart beat a little faster. Once this stopped, I thought about what a wonderful (and dramatic) description of the neighborhood Kassabova had written.  Buildings like monsters, I couldn't get over what a clever way this was to talk about the neighborhood but also how clearly this Kassabova neighborhood was also a nightmare--a nightmare that for better or worse was also home.

I've been here for a month and I think that it would be easy to say that the neighborhood is charmless but I also think that would be a mistake.  Is is a beautiful downtown neighborhood? No.  But that doesn't make it any less of a neighborhood.   It's not as if I am living in a wasteland in Mladost.  In fact it's far from that. I am living comfortably in my apartment and there's plenty around me to keep me busy. The one thing I am still getting used to is the fact that only a few of the major streets have names.  The rest of the streets are nameless and people give directions based on the number of the block apartments that they live in.  There's something so impersonal about not having an exact address.  It makes giving directions to non-Bulgarians a challenge.  Hell, I'd guess that it makes giving directions to Bulgarians a challenge.  But it's not as if I am alone in this.  There are plenty of other people living with me in Mladost.

[caption id="attachment_1146" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Block 45 in Mladost "]<img class="size-full wp-image-1146" title="Mladost Block 45" src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/img_0049.jpg" alt="Block 45 in Mladost " width="500" height="333" />[/caption]

Maybe things will change come winter when the gray of concrete buildings, the gray of the sky and the dirty streets get me down.  Right now even though the neighborhood is pealing and the sidewalks are uneven at best--I don't see the monsters of Kassabova's Mladost.  But I too feel like this is home.