“You know it has an expiration date, right?”
The lady in the lime green skirt suit that monitors the reading room at the library looks up at me over her glasses.
She can’t figure out why I am looking for stuff about Trakiya.
“No one wants to talk about it, but allllll those buildings, where alllll those people live, they’re going to expire.”
I widen my eyes, urging her to continue.
“Yeah they were only built to last 50 years. But look at us. Here in Bulgaria, we aren’t going to talk about it.”
I know that the Czech Republic did extensive structural and cosmetic repairs on their panel blocks. They also wrapped and insulated the exteriors protecting the crumbling concrete from moisture, they poured millions into the projects. They really like their panelkas.
Here in Bulgaria, you can see the wear and tear, but people individually continue to pour money into them, with remodels and wrapping their individual apartments, creating Tetris like facades. But structural issues is something that lies beyond the individual’s control, for better or for worse.
Homeownership and the individual is a key concept in Bulgaria. Through socialist times the Communist government appropriated the Bulgarian tradition of homeownership to be able to produce these block apartment buildings. Meanwhile, in all the other bloc countries of the Soviet Union, the State owned the housing. Ownership made it happen financially but also garnered enthusiasm from Bulgarians through the pride of homeownership. Clever how they made that work, but maybe its a piece of whats hindering the overall rehabilitation of these buildings.
“Expired.”
The library monitor tisk tisk tisks her tongue a few too many times.
I take it as a bit dramatic, as its only been 40 years.
“Well, at least we have 10 years.” I offer.
I tell her I will ask the architects this question.
She demands to know who I have talked to and who I would be trying to talk to.
She finally relinquishes the books that I had ordered from the basement,
and I sit down directly across from her to dig through architectural articles about the housing complex with an expiration date.