Alexandra White

A Semester in Bulgaria: A Window Into Beauty, History, Community, and Hope

by ALEXANDRA WHITE, Associate Professor of Management

Why Bulgaria? When my family and I shared our plans for where we would spend my spring 2022 sabbatical, the most common response was, “Hmm. Why did you choose Bulgaria?” followed closely by a thoughtful pause and often a follow-up question: “Where is Bulgaria, anyway?” While we developed a shorthand for explaining the geography (north of Greece, south of Romania), we had a harder time articulating the answer about why we had chosen this particular Balkan country. Why Bulgaria? Part of the answer is exactly the reason other people were puzzled about our choice—because we knew so little about the country and its Balkan neighbors. Between the two of us, my husband and I have been able to travel to places in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, but neither of us had spent time in any of the Balkan countries. Bulgaria seemed like a beautiful and mysterious place and was conveniently located near other places that intrigued us as well—in particular, Greece and Romania. Bulgaria also happened to be the place where I was awarded a grant to be a Fulbright U.S. Scholar. The Faculty of Economics of Business Administration (FEBA) at Sofia University (located in the capital city of Sofia) graciously offered me an opportunity to teach in their newly-established master’s degree program in Responsible and Sustainable Governance. So my husband and our two teenage children set off for our adventure on February 1 from Minneapolis, which also happened to be the exact day that the EU (of which Bulgaria is a member) decided to lift the requirement for proof of negative PCR COVID-19 tests. This change meant we were saved the expense of the $800 cost of four rapid PCR tests; it felt like a lucky omen. COVID-19 cases were rising all over the world, including Bulgaria, so as we boarded the plane from Minneapolis, we double checked our uncomfortably tight N95 masks and hoped to avoid contracting the virus on our journey. We had a long layover in Amsterdam before our Bulgarian Air flight. I took a walk in the airport to stretch my stiff legs and marveled at the gates I passed; passengers waiting to travel to Kyiv Boryspil, Bucharest, Manchester, Birmingham, and London City. I heard

Alexandra White outside the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration building for Sofia University with its sign in Cyrillic characters (left), and inside her office (right). The office’s prior history as a dormitory room in the 1950s is still evident with the built-in closet. The dorm sink used to be mounted to the right of the door.

Plentiful neighborhood markets like this one on Vasil Levksi Boulevard made daily shopping easy.

people chatting in French and in many other languages I didn’t recognize. It was then that it hit me: after over two years of sheltering in place, we were really, finally, away.

Early Days in Sofia & Unexpected Opportunities

We arrived at our two-bedroom apartment in Sofia on Gurko Street on a grey and snowy day, and lugged our bags up the four flights of stairs (no elevator). A few days after arrival I had my first meeting with colleagues at the Sofia University business school, which is housed in a former 1950s Communist-era dormitory. Each office still looks a lot like a dorm room, and every day I would walk through a device that checked my temperature as a COVID-19 precaution, then greet the security staff in my halting Bulgarian, and receive a tiny key from a huge wall of similar keys. A key lesson I learned over my sabbatical, which was both cultural to Bulgaria and to life in general, is to avoid getting attached to expectations, plans or outcomes—all can be quick to change. But the process can still be very enlightening and valuable, though very challenging to someone like me who prefers structure, plans and clarity. In this vein, the detailed course proposal I worked diligently on, and was required by my host university, ended up not being used at all. Once I met with my colleagues, it was apparent that for various staffing reasons, I was not eligible to teach a full-semester class. So I pivoted quickly and developed a graduate-level management elective called the Ethics of Management.

Before my graduate course was scheduled to begin, I was invited to participate in two very interesting experiences: one as a speech contest judge and one as a faculty advisor for a social innovation competition. The speech contest is one offered through the BEST foundation, a nonprofit non-governmental organization founded by Americans that organizes public speaking competitions in English and provides student leadership opportunities. So in short, Bulgarian high school students from all over the country perform speeches in English at various levels of competition. Because of COVID-19 cases, this spring competition was held virtually—all performances and judging took place online. My role as a judge required an evening training session and a weekend long commitment of actual judging (including writing detailed summary reports). I was very impressed by the high work ethic and high level of performance of the students, and enjoyed being part of the process. The social innovation competition was an in-person event from Friday evening through Sunday evening in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, in which college and high school students participated on the campus of American University in Bulgaria (AUBG). AUBG is an

English-speaking liberal arts college open to both Bulgarian and international students. I was invited to serve as a faculty advisor for one of the groups of five students. The premise of the competition is that non-profit organizations from Bulgaria register for the event, and each of them that participate Single ticket for bus, tram, or trolley is 1.60 Bulgarian lev (about 80 cents).

Dedicated teammates working on their project at the AUBG campus as part of the 2nd annual social enterprise contest called the “Innovation Station.”

(we had 12 this year) write a business case for a problem they would like solved in some way. Each student team receives a different case and has to brainstorm through Friday and Saturday evening and come up with a proposed solution. Each team (whose members were assigned randomly, so they don’t know each other ahead of time) had a non-profit mentor and a faculty advisor to help. Each group presented its case on Sunday, and the winning group received 70,000 euros to implement the idea. Only two of the twelve groups were high school students—most were college students with much more experience and knowledge. I was assigned to Team 9, one of the high school groups, and was absolutely impressed with their hard work and creativity on their proposal. It can be very intimidating for younger people to compete against seasoned college students (many of whom had already done similar entrepreneurial type competitions before). However, Team 9 took all this pressure in stride and came together well. It was a joy to work with them and help them feel good about their final product. As one of the team members told me, “I know we didn’t win a prize, but we won anyway, in having a great time.” I remain impressed that high school students would give up their entire weekend to work late into the night with no real reward other than the actual project itself.

The War in Ukraine & the Shadow of Communism

After a few weeks, we began to get adjusted to our new home. Our children navigated the tangled difficulties of their online learning, while the adults figured out essentials like shopping, public transportation routes, and weekend plans. Then, just 23 days after we arrived in Bulgaria, the excitement of feeling far away from home turned to worry. On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, just 885 kilometers from Bulgaria. As a member of both the EU and NATO, Bulgaria denounced Russia’s actions, and the prime minister and other officials publicly voiced their support for Ukraine. Living in Sofia, we were relatively far from the conflict, but wanted to do something to help. Fortunately, we soon had an opportunity. As refugees began to enter Bulgaria, the Fulbright Program organized a schedule for volunteers to help tutor Ukrainian refugees in basic English. The safest and easiest method during COVID-19 times was to meet via Zoom. So my husband, who has a background in teaching ESL to adults, worked with a conversation group while I worked one-on-one with Olga, a student my age, with some beginning English. For several months, every Wednesday night we met online with our students on opposite ends of our Sofia apartment. The opportunity to do this work gave me an incredible appreciation for the dedication of these refugees, who with all of their struggles were choosing to learn a new language, and holding on to the hope that comes with mastering something new. In our early conversations about the war with Bulgarian neighbors and colleagues, many reported that while they supported Ukraine, they worried that a significant portion of Bulgarians—particularly older people— quietly supported Russia’s efforts.

They explained that some older Bulgarians still view Russia as a protective force that fought the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s and liberated them, and then later enabled Bulgaria to become a communist state from 1946-1989. Like many aspects of Bulgarian culture, we noticed a contradiction—the push towards progress and the quiet, persistent pull towards the past. We learned about the public removal of visible artifacts, Sveta Sofia statue in central Sofia (left), which in 2000 replaced the such as the statue of Lenin statue of Lenin (right, now part of the collection at The Communist Art that purposefully faced the Museum). Sveta Sofia wears a crown to symbolize power, a wreath for national headquarters of the fame, and an owl to convey wisdom. Bulgarian Communist Party, and the careful smoothing away of the raised hammer and sickle medallions along the building’s exterior. Yet many other communist symbols remain, with no plan to restore or preserve them, left to disintegrate. One snowy, foggy Saturday in April we visited the Buzludzha Monument, an enormous structure built between 1974 and 1981 on a mountaintop, its interior walls covered with ornate mosaic tiles. It was intended to serve as a monument and ceremonial meeting place for the Communist Party. After the fall of communism, it was abandoned, tagged with graffiti, and is now structurally unsafe to enter. Some believe it should be preserved, others believe it should be left alone to deteriorate.

Krushuna Falls near Krushuna Village northern Bulgaria This contradiction was also evident in my conversations with others about the ongoing influence of this history. I mentioned to a Bulgarian colleague that I was going to visit the Communist Art Museum over the weekend and asked if she had been there. She frowned and said, “We lived all of that. We don’t want to think about it or see it again.” Younger students shared with me their passion for sustainability, for progress, for implementing more of what they see as “Western” values—individual rights, equality, innovation. But they also admitted their grandparents often told them that communism had been better in some ways than life in today’s Bulgaria. Communism had provided people a sense of security, comfort, and purpose. No one went hungry, everyone had a job, everyone knew what to expect. Many people described it to me as not communism but a “planned economy.” As one student told me, “We young people don’t want to go back to it [communism], but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for a lot of people.” It was also clear that the communal part of communism pervades modern life in Sofia today. I was struck often by the acts of communal kindness, both in the classroom and beyond. A few examples stay with me. In my Ethics of Management class at the university, I presented my Bulgarian students with an ethical dilemma about a consulting company that is losing revenue. The scenario (based on a real experience from my professional life) is this: the boss wants you to fudge the revenue numbers to make them meet the requirements. If you don’t do this, he will have to fire two people. Students are supposed to pick one of these two difficult options and explain their ethical reasoning for the choice: is it okay to commit fraud to save two people’s jobs? Is it better to lay people off than risk the company possibly being exposed for fraud? We discussed the case for a while until one of my students, Nadya, raised her hand and offered a third possibility. She spoke quietly yet firmly. “I have a better idea. I would give the two people part of my

salary so we can all survive for a while. That way no one has to lose their jobs.” Her classmates nodded in agreement—a sound idea to address the problem. I have taught this case for eight years and never has a student suggested this third option. Another example of this communal spirit came at the grocery store. One day I was at our local Billa store with a large pile of items, a necessity with a family of four eating all meals at home. A man waiting behind me in line had a single large bottle to purchase. He gestured to the cashier that he wanted to just pay for his item rather than waiting behind me. Without asking me, she accepted his coins. After he started to leave, she called after him, as he hadn’t given her enough. Although my Bulgarian is very limited, this exchange was clear. They discussed and compared his coins for several moments, and the cashier seemed to emphasize that it was still not enough. Finally, another customer at the other checkout lane reached into his pocket and paid the difference. Both the cashier and the original customer accepted this development. No one said thank you or even broke a smile during the whole transaction. There was something ordinary and expected about all of it. To me, this moment showed me so much about Bulgarian culture and what I experienced as a temporary visitor; when someone needs something, you help.

Exploring Bulgaria

Throughout March and April, we became more confident about exploring other parts of Bulgaria on the weekends and holiday breaks and were dazzled with the variety of ancient and beautiful places so close to us—breathtaking mountains, caves, and waterfalls, wellpreserved monasteries, fortresses, and rural villages.

Devetashka Cave, which dates back to the Stone Age, near the town of Lovech and Devetaki Village, northern Bulgaria

In Brasov, Romania, the statue of Lutheran reformer Johannes Honter (right) points at the high school he founded in the central square of the city. The school continues to welcome German speaking students from any area of the world.

Learning about Lutheranism in Romania

In May, my primary teaching commitments were complete and I was able to take some designated vacation, so we set our sights exploring Bulgaria’s neighbors, starting with Romania. We chose first to visit the beautiful city of Brasov, which is most famous for its proximity to Bran Castle (a popular spot for those who like to imagine it inspired Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel, Dracula. This connection is a fun myth; as it turns out, Stoker never visited the castle nor did his fictional castle resemble Bran Castle). Perhaps more interesting than a tenuous connection to a fictional vampire was the discovery of a connection back to Luther with the legacy of Johannes Honter. Born in Brasov, Johannes Honter was a sixteenth century renaissance person in every sense of the word—a humanist, theologian, educator, cartographer, and writer. Honter established Brasov’s first printing press, and in 1541 founded a school that is still in existence today. He led Lutheran reform in Transylvania and founded the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania.

Admiring the Ancients in Athens

After our visit to Brasov, we flew to Greece and spent a few days in Athens. It was an incredible experience to see the Acropolis, which is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, whose first fortification wall was built in the 13th century BCE. We also visited the Ancient Agora, Roman Agora, Aristotle’s School, Hadrian’s Library, and Kerameikos cemetery. We were struck by the juxtaposition of the bustling sounds and experience of modern Athens—the rush of vehicles and motorcycles, the crowds of visitors—with the exquisite relics and art that remains beautiful despite its age. Somehow, getting to see these amazing structures and artifacts creates a sense of stillness and solace within the noisy city. In mid-June, before we returned to the US, we had our series of “lasts” in Sofia—our last ping-pong game at our favorite table in the park across the street, our last Shopka salad at the beer garden (a favorite Bulgarian dish that roughly translates as a “Peasant salad”— a fresh and simple mix of Bulgaria’s version of feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes and red bell peppers), our last trip to the fruit market, my last bus ride from the office. Now that the snow had cleared, we also decided to take a hike on Vitosha Mountain. Just an hour’s bus ride from Sofia, it was a perfect respite and we had the unexpected gift of hearing an actual cuckoo bird in the wild. And yes, it really does sound just like the clock. As I reflect over our four and half month experience, I think back to the

Ancient amphitheater at Acropolis, Athens, Greece. Note modern staging to enable ongoing use.

question “Why Bulgaria?” In some ways I still cannot answer the question about why this country called us to visit. But I can say after living there I remain inspired by its people, its beauty, and its complicated history. This place has a kind of magic that I don’t think I will ever truly understand. Hopefully we will return to Bulgaria in the future with Luther students to help us explore familiar paths and journey on new ones.