Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kristen Ghodsee is the John S. Osterwies Associate Professor in Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College.

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"This engaging book draws readers into unfamiliar tourist playgrounds in Bulgaria. Kristen Ghodsee deftly intertwines ethnographies with widely held assumptions about how the transition from communism to the free market affected the economy, the society, and the people. Tourism has rewarded the highly educated women who dominate the industry. She further questions the relevance of women's NGOs which emphasize non-economic issues rather than focusing on education and jobs."--Irene Tinker, author of "Street Foods: Urban Food and Employment in Developing Countries"

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The Red Riviera

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................................ixIntroduction..............................................................11 Shattered Windows, Broken Lives........................................212 Making Mitko Tall......................................................433 The Red Riviera........................................................764 To the Wolves: Tourism and Economic Transformation.....................1155 Feminism-by-Design.....................................................151Appendix A: Tables........................................................175Appendix B: Formal Interviews.............................................182Notes.....................................................................189Glossary..................................................................209Selected Bibliography.....................................................211Index.....................................................................223

Chapter One

It is impossible to understand the lives of Bulgarian women in tourism without understanding a little about the country they call their home, and almost every journey to Bulgaria begins in the capital city of Sofia. The Thracians called this city Sardonopolis; the Romans called it Serdica. To the Byzantines it was Triaditsa, while the early Bulgarians called it Sredetz. Some Bulgarian scholars claim that the area now surrounded by modern Sofia probably developed as a city at the same time as Troy and Mycenae, and point to selected writings of Thucydides, Herodotus, and Aristotle, who claim that it is the oldest city in Europe. Archeological evidence points to human habitation in the area since 7000 B.C.E., and something like the nation of Bulgaria has existed for over a thousand years. It is this rich history that at least partially makes the country so attractive to tourists.

Historically, Bulgaria was a convenient crossroads between Europe and Asia, and its capital is a natural geographic middle point between the Black and Adriatic Seas. Bulgaria's romantic allure and geopolitical significance faded during the Cold War when it was just another communist country behind the Iron Curtain. After 1989, the nation peacefully emerged from communism as the "island of stability" in the Balkans-sandwiched between the violent revolution in Romania and the chaotic breakup of the former Yugoslavia. In 2003, Sofia was a bustling capital that was home to 1.2 million Bulgarians or more than 15 percent of the country's population.

Like Vesuvius towering over the city of Naples, Sofia has its own guardian mountain, Mount Vitosha, which watches over the chaos of Eastern European urbanity. The main boulevard and shopping district in Sofia is named after the mountain, and is diminutively referred to as Vitoshka, or little Vitosha. On this street meander many well-dressed and fashionable young people, heads cocked slightly to the side as they chat on their state-of-the-art GSM phones, no larger than a box of Tic-Tacs. Interspersed among the high-street shops purveying the latest styles of Max Mara and Krizia are roped-o sidewalk cafes brimming with animated locals sipping black Bulgarian espressos and chain-smoking American and French "designer" cigarettes from deliberately displayed packs. Several stores, called "Pretty Shops," sell the haute couture equivalent of cosmetics: Estee Lauder, Clarins, Lancme, and Shiseido.

At the top of Vitosha is a classical Orthodox church, Sveta Nedelya, just thirty steps away from the entrance of the luxurious Sofia Sheraton, which shares a building with the Offices of the Bulgarian Presidency. Postcard vendors, old women selling bundles of wildflowers, and young men surreptitiously selling pirated compact discs fill the wide plaza around the church. At the other end, toward the street's namesake mountain, is the National Palace of Culture. It stands within a large public park that is also full of outdoor cafes and cocktail bars amidst overgrown trees and artfully landscaped concrete. On the side streets leading o Vitosha are a diverse collection of fashionable, up-scale restaurants serving international cuisines, Internet cafes with high-speed web connections, and cinemas showing the latest American blockbusters. There is, of course, a flagship McDonalds and a more humble but no less crowded Dunkin' Donuts. Down the center of the street runs a well-used, but distinctively European, yellowish-orange electric tram that sporadically sucks up and spits out pedestrian traffic onto the tree-lined sidewalks. The private car traffic that zips up and down the street consists of hundreds of bright yellow taxis and a disturbing number of black, armored Mercedes and BMWS.

From the very top of Vitosha Street just past the Sveta Nedelya cathedral, the other main corridor in the center of the city begins. This boulevard, now called King Liberator (Tsar Osvoboditel), is paved with dark, yellowish-gold clay bricks that were a gift to Bulgaria from the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. Scattered among embassies, cafes, cocktail bars, and office buildings are the King's Palace (now an ethnographic museum), the parliament building and the Alexander Nevski Cathedral. The boulevard ends at the doors of Sofia University, the most prestigious institution of higher education in the country. If Vitosha is the center of the new Bulgaria, King Liberator is the center of the old Bulgaria. The communists celebrated all of the major national holidays with parades down this street. Private car traffic was forbidden, and security was extremely tight. This was the part of Sofia used to impress the foreign dignitaries. Even today, many of the buildings here have been repainted, and the eighty kilograms of gold that decorate the domes of the Nevski Cathedral have been carefully restored. It is one of the few streets in Sofia that still has functioning streetlights.

Private cars and taxis drive freely over the cracking yellow bricks; the street is now one of the main thoroughfares through the city. Directly across from the parliament building and the Orthodox cathedral is the Taboo Club, the most "luxurious" strip club in the city. Slightly further down the street toward the King's Palace is one of the more fashionable cafe/cocktail bars in Sofia: Lipstick. In the summer, the tables are tucked between shady, chestnut trees that sparkle at night with white Christmas-tree lights wrapped around their branches and trunks. The patio area is edged with a dainty, wrought-iron fence. Private security guards pat all male patrons down at the door, and Bulgarians pay their bills and leave immediately when the G-class Mercedes sport utility vehicles pull up in front of the cafe. With their multiple girlfriends and bodyguards in tow, the Bulgarian mobsters take over the bar after midnight. Lipstick, with its open-air seating area facing onto the street, is perfect for drive-by assassinations. Bulgarians do not want to be caught in the crossfire. To the casual Western observer, however, the flock of German luxury sedans outside may be nothing unusual. For many visitors, Lipstick is a pleasant place to spend the evening, people-watching the Bulgarian elite and ordering exotic cocktails from the waitresses who all speak perfect English.

Vitosha is a Potemkin village that fools...