Feeling my way through Plovdiv, Bulgaria

The first few days in a new city are always challenging: it takes time to adjust to a new place and environment. In this context, I found it difficult to fully absorb everything around me in the midst of our arrival to Plovdiv, as I was tired and dazed by the travel, just as I was quite shocked to suddenly be in this swelteringly hot new place.

I was glad that we spent most of our first day in Plovdiv just walking around and exploring the city: I felt that we walked through many different neighbourhoods and districts, although I was not completely sure where we were going, actually, nor how to pinpoint any of it on a map. In this seemingly powerless position as followers of our tour guides, we were allowed the freedom therefore, to focus on our first impressions: to look and to see, to feel, to smell and touch the city, just as it was touching us. In fact, in the daze of the first days, all I felt I could or wanted to do was feel: I took in the sites and places we visited through my senses and the rumblings of my body. Each street corner we turned onto felt different to me, especially given how dispersed and dichotomous Plovdiv’s districts are.

For instance, starting at our hostel and walking through old Plovdiv, I was wary of my steps through the cobbled streets, paying close attention to where my feet landed and even the angle of the large stones I took each step onto. The focus I held on the cobbled streets during this first leg of our tour inevitably shaped my experience of the neighbourhood: I spent much more time looking downwards than I did looking at the buildings and houses of the old town. These, of course I noticed to be beautiful and diverse, some restored and others not, some colourful and others not, some even marked with ornate designs on their edges and corners. However, strangely enough, they did not impress me as much as the incredibly uneven, slanted, and diverse array of stones that lined the streets. For these stones, most probably incredibly aged and worn, held in them the deep history of the old town, having had so many people from all sorts of times, places, ethnicities, and cultures walk on them and imprint on them their presence. As simple as they are, it seems to me that these stones carry as much culture and history in them as some other forms of the city scape, the people, and creations that bring it to life.

Moving onwards and making our way to the Kapana district, a sense of lightness and freedom overcame me. The area, known for its artistic and creative purpose, felt so incredibly different from the old and deeply established old town: Kapana is new, it is vibrant, it is happening. The streets are beautiful in a different way, representing a different kind of culture and a different kind of life. By the time we reached the neighbourhood during our first walking tour, it was more or less mid-day and the sun was heavily beating down on us. I was incredibly hot, my stomach was rumbling, and my feet were getting tired. I had also taken in so much information about the city already that I was having trouble listening to what our guide was telling us and given the sun in my eyes, I was not even too sure what I was looking at. The feeling of listlessness that was overcoming me, again affected my experience of Kapana and I remember it even as I walked through the area today. Seeing as it is a neighbourhood that is fairly close and on the way to our hostel from the rest of town, we encounter it usually on our way home, towards the end of a long day of exploration. It is an area of relief and relaxation, but also one of excitement and action, so incredibly different from the old town, which is much more quiet and still.

These two descriptive examples of how I felt my way through the city on our first day raise a number of questions regarding the embodied experience one could have of a city, depending on the places one visits, the circumstances of the visit, and how one is feeling at that particular moment. These elements of personal experience can change drastically from one minute to the next, just as they can change from one street corner to the next. Feelings of safety and discomfort also play into the experience of an area depending on one’s own personal history with certain symbols, events, and eras, as we discussed in our class later on that first day. Finally, in relation to the European Capital of Culture, I wonder how the changing of the city landscape and dynamics might affect one's experience of the place and of its people too. Plovdiv is clearly undergoing a time of great change and transformation, each stage of which is worth considering as a monumental stone in its history. What the city might have looked like yesterday will be different today and will have changed again by tomorrow. How the people of Plovidv experience their home, just as their guests do too, will depend greatly on these changes as well.