People will generalize. Say “Oh, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia… they’re all the same.” Well, wrong. These are people with their own history, their own past filled with troubles, joys, sorrows, and victories. This is a place with its own culture, its own traditions, its own way of life. To call these people anything other than what they are would be an insult, just as calling an American a Mexican because the two places are geographically close would be wrong.
Even more than twenty years after the fall of communism, Bulgaria is still struggling to get back on its feet. It has yet to reach the GDP of pre-World War II and pre-communism. This is a country with one of the oldest and richest histories in the world. After the birth of the human species in Africa, Bulgaria and southeastern Europe were the places where the human civilization branched out. The history is far deeper than anywhere in the West, yet people do not look past the destruction that communism has cost these innocent people and this beautiful land.
I have learned that this is a place just like any other society in the world in that it contains people, people with families, parents who want good things for their children, people who only want to be happy. In the West, can’t we say the same? Discrimination and judgment are almost innate human qualities. Most of the time, we can’t even help what we think and say because all judgments are built upon our past life experiences. In American elementary schools, the world is rarely viewed as a whole. Children are taught American history and in high school, western European history, causing them to judge places like Eastern Europe, a region I never recall learning a drop of knowledge about in general history classes. I will admit, when choosing my location for study abroad, I had heard of Bulgaria, but I had no idea of its geographic location, its history, or its culture, and when I informed people back home of my plans to live in Bulgaria for the spring, they had no idea where it was and why I would choose “a place like that.” It is not their fault obviously; we live in a society which causes us to make our own judgments of places such as Bulgaria with the extremely little knowledge we have.
I know my parents were worried about me coming to Eastern Europe. I’m sure they thought a million times “why couldn’t she have chosen a western country, just to ease our minds a bit?” I cannot blame them. First and foremost, they’d still worry anywhere I went. It is sort of their job. But the way our government and our media depicts places like Bulgaria to the Western world shapes our view of these places: dirty, dangerous, unstable, ugly, violent, lacking on the path to modernization, backwards from the West. In other words, they are not living the lifestyle of the West, or the “right” way. But who determines what the “right” way is? If everywhere else in the world lived the way of the West, their cultures would disappear. These people have already suffered all they need to suffer. Do you think they wanted the Communists to come in and take over their homeland and ruin their traditions? I’m going to go with no on this one. This country is rebuilding from being the victim for nearly all of its existence. It needs time, and, more than anything, it needs acceptance free from judgment. It truly is a beautiful place with so much to offer and people just living their lives like everyone else in the world. I can honestly say, I would not have picked another place on our planet to have spent the past four months of my life. Bulgarians may live a different life, but I want to make positive they are given every ounce of credit they deserve.
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