Small Streets – Big Names

Here, next to the Catholic Church, on the right hand side of the Liliana Dimitrova Boulevard, Captain Raycho Street and Dimitar Blagoev Blvd, there is the Catholic neighbourhood. There is just the one specious thing I’ve seen there.

It was at a funeral, my first years with the orchestra. We walk down the pavement, back then Liliana Dimitrova was a depressing street. Miserable one-storey buildings and workshops were on both sides of it. My colleagues and I accompanied the hearse and we were walking real slow. Suddenly, between two houses, there came a wide gap, just vacant space, a muddy gap. Next I could see a notice at the corner, Tchaikovsky Street. I cannot forget the shock of it, to name this miserable cranny Tchaikovsky Street. In Vienna, in the summer houses district, where the best houses are, an entire neighbourhood is named Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, or Chekhov. Unfortunately, Tchaikovsky is in a rather different corner of the world.

One day I had to find Mrkvička Street. I walked through the entire area of town, I was looking for a doctor, Dr Gagalov, and I could not find it. Eventually I stumbled upon it. Mrkvička Street is now called Ivan Karadzhov, it is a turning of, a cul-de-sac of Petko Slaveykov Street, right at the Monday Market, next to Nikola Gospodinov Street and Mitropolit Filaret Street. The first turning is Kozloduy, and the one after is Mrkvička Street. That miserable street was called Mrkvička.

An adapted text from an interview with A.K. recorded by Meglena Zlatkova