КУЛТУРА

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Suddenly the College was overrun with Bulgarians - in native dress and with music and dance to capture your soul.

Plaintive folk songs ,,,

... interspersed with pulsating dances.

It was just magnificent.

And all so strange to be present at this wonderful cultural feast.

Bulgaria was very much in the Soviet sphere of influence and travel in and out was no small matter. So, far from an everyday event this.

The Bulgarians are proud of their folk culture, and rightly so.

I remember some twenty years later being in Sofia for the Annual Meeting of the EBRD. It was customary for the host country to put on a concert for national delegations. Invariably these turned out to be posh classical music affairs where the host countries vied with one another in showing how "sophisticated" and "cosmopolitan" they were.

Not so the Bulgarians. They put on a show of native culture that had me cheering their self-confidence and pride in their own. My head spun and my feet tapped and I came out exhilarated. This beat any classical show-off hands down. I have never forgotten it.

I should not have been surprised, remembering their fabulous visit to the College some twenty years earlier.

Paklons getting in with the ladies. No surprise there.

Roberte, Jordan & Auntie

I'm fairly sure it was Jordan, our Bulgarian student, who organised for them to come to the College.

"Auntie" on the right, if my memory serves me, was the lady who looked after her girls and saw that they came to no harm and were not contaminated by the western capitalist environment.

And even Roberte, our cynical Belgian journalist student, looks pleased.

When it was all over, Terkel was among those presenting bouquets to the dancers as a token of our appreciation and gratitude for this wonderful manifestation of Bulgaria at its best.