vhod fall

“Whose idea was it to plant all these stupid trees?!”

She sweeps the broom in short quick strokes over the ground in front of our block.

“Oh look at me I planted all these pretty trees… and oh, they’re so PRETTY…”
She speaks in her weeny voice for this, flicks her wrist and cocks her hip and looks over her crooked glasses at me as I sip my coffee on the bench next to the coffee machine.

“Preeeeeeetttttttyyy”
She drags out, scrunching her nose.

“BAH! Now look at all these leaves! Look at them! Look! Everyday they fall! Every goddamn day! And who cleans them up????? ME!”

“Goddamn celeni* planting trees everywhere..!”

Stefka really makes complaining an art.
I can’t help but crack up as she goes on and on.
she cracks a smile too when I start laughing…

I breath deep… and encourage her,

“Oxygen, Stefka… Oxygen!”

“Pff! Here, pick up some of your precious oxygen yourself then…”
she tosses the broom in my direction, walking toward me and the others around the coffee machine,

“Buy me a coffee.” She demands.
I smile, “of course.”
and oblige with the 40 stotinki.

*Celeni is the word in Bulgarian for villagers and in this case, and as is often the case in Trakiya, is used with negative connotation, as in uncultured or backward. There is truth in what Stefka is saying, Trakiya really was populated with many people straight from the villages during the big industrialization of socialism, this is why it was built. And these people really did plant loads of trees when the landscaping plan of Trakiya never got the chance to be executed due to the fall of communism.

Most of these accused tree planters, as Stefka well knows, are sitting on the bench next to me as she sweeps.