Leannej and My Name is Scot visit Bulgaria and see Borisova Gradina Park, Mount Vitosha and an antiquated amusement park, in this first installment of their Balkan artist expedition.

We went to meet our friends at a lake in Borisova Gradina Park, a very large, rambling, forested park in the centre of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.
We were supposed to meet at a lake in the park and then go to a concert, featuring the lead singer of a popular Bulgarian band. We never found the lake, although we did find the concert, and later on, our friends.
The lead singer of the popular Bulgarian band played his acoustic guitar in front of a crumbling communist monument. Halfway through his set, we heard an ominous cracking sound. I saw a woman scramble to her feet and run. She was clutching an infant to her breast. Where she had been sitting, there was a large chunk of broken tree.
People in the crowd looked at the branch and then at each other and laughed a little nervously. The lead singer of the popular Bulgarian band carried on singing about love and god and no mercy.

Mount Vitosha looks over the city of Sofia. Our friends drove us up to the water reservoir high up on the mountain. The reservoir is an old crumbling structure.
There is a mineral bath and an antiquated amusement park. Looking up at the mountain top, I thought of my time in Banff.
I told my Bulgarian friends about driving through the Rockies. How you could drive for hours without seeing any settlements. They said this was something they had never experienced.
I was reminded of a time I saw a tourist bus stopped on the side of the highway on the Canadian prairies. The tourists were standing with their backs to the bus, photographing the prairie.


All photos by My Name is Scot.