This is my friend, Alex.
She is American and she is Bulgarian.
She is amazing.
Her parents are first generation immigrants to America from Bulgaria. They met in Plovdiv and left Bulgaria for America to give their children a better life.
Not ever living here and curious about her roots and her background, she came to study and live here, taking up what her parents had left behind. She has a baba here, and is constantly uncovering family ties and parts of her history she never knew.
She uncovered me at Architecture week, where the official language is English. I had made a comment at a seminar and then said it in Bulgarian too. After the seminar, she approached me, “You’re American right?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh thank god, I need a little piece of America here.”
Me too, Alex, me too.
She has a gallery in the belly of Kapana (an area of the Plovdiv center.)
Both navigating the betweens of these cultures,
we are going to be good friends.