Portals of Time in the Quarters

The crossroad next to the Ribnitsa Park in the Karshiaka Quarter seemed to me a multidimensional portal of time. It still comes to my dreams when their plot lines take a turn to the invisible “folders” in the “childhood department”. Multidimensional, as it was the border line between working days when we kids went to school, while the adults were going about their daily routines, and the days off when that crossroad was the last one on the way to our country villa. Once we went through that “portal”, the sense of enjoyment thrilled me!

As a matter of course my consciousness has named the crossroad simply “Friday” and its smell has nothing to do with the exhaust fumes of passing cars; instead, I perceive the odour of freshly baked croissants! It was an indispensable ritual for my friends at the village and me to have croissants at 4 pm. We had to buy them on Friday to make sure they were as fresh as possible. The croissant shop was where you find this new residential building that towers like a black crow over the crossroad in question; it has devoured the shop that sold the croissants for our childhood ritual. Right there, in that small shop I found out the meaning of “luck”. The word was unveiled and stamped upon my mind with the first watch I won in a lottery, which made me infinitely pleased.

This portal is multidimensional not simply because of the borderline between the working week and the weekend. Diagonally from the once shop there is a café these days: this diagonal and the place of the café take me back to my nana’s tales and, thus, the portal is not just a link between the town and the country, it also leads to the past.

In the past there was a bakery there, which supplied freshly baked bread for the entire neighbourhood. In order to get there the youngsters did not cross the street, as one might imagine, they heroically jumped over a channel. Quite so – today’s Danube Boulevard was a channel some 70 years ago. It so happened on one occasion that my nana, on her way to the bakery, could not jump over it and plopped in with her new red coat. Sad, really, as people used to throw the soot from their stoves into the channel and the red coat turned black. Not unlike the story about the Golden girl, who plunged into magic waters. The bakery, however, has more than that attached to it. My great grandmother worked there but she did not live to see me born. So I have listened to tales about the bakery in order to get acquainted with my great grandmother and in my mind she is firmly associated with this place.

To cut a long story short, this is how the portal functions, the portal at the crossroad next to the Ribnitsa Park. Any place can be overpoweringly related to what is personal and trigger seemingly uncomplicated memories. But it is such memories that make up the background of an entire life, or even of entire generations. Countless uncomplicated stories could be revealed by any corner in each neighbourhood, street or park.

Do you have your own time portal in town?

From Anelia Manova’s recollections (an ethnologist), 30 years old, and her grandmother, about the Karshiaka Quarter.