Mladost - Between the Apartment Blocks, in the Rows

Mladost: Between the Buildings, in the Rows. A Literary Route through Mladost 1 and 2 Neighbourhood begins at the Mladost 1971 Cultural Center and Todora describes her author-led literary tour as follows:
“The “green neighborhood” of Sofia, as Mladost used to be called, hides many stories in the large spaces between the apartment blocks, around the market, the community center, and the small monastery. Before the latest wave of overconstruction, traces of the “Sofia’s sea” could still be seen there. Dozens of people connected to literature and culture have lived here, among them Mirela Ivanova and Georgi Gospodinov, while an important part of a novel by Garth Greenwell from USA is set in the neighborhood. In this walk, far from the center of Sofia, we follow texts and eyewitnes’s stories, and above all seek possibilities for conversation, for shared spaces, and for accurate translation between neighbors, generations, fiction, and reality.”

During the walk, we talk about the everyday practices that change the city, about the lack of shared spaces in some parts of Mladost, but also about how residents themselves stand up for their city. Mladost emerged in the 1960s as a neighborhood for newly arrived families in the city, with large parks and open spaces between the apartment blocks, even if the buildings themselves were constructed hastily and with low-quality materials.
The market in Mladost 1 Neighbourhood remains a favorite place for many, and in Natural Novel, whose author Georgi Gospodinov lived nearby for several years, one can read conversations overheard in that very place.
Since the 1990s, the neighborhood has been completely transformed by a wave of new construction and entrepreneurship, chaotically filled with small apartment buildings and shops. In a parking lot in the newer part of the neighborhood, Todora reads us poems by Mirela Ivanova, bringing us back to the crisis years of empty stores, electricity rationing, and the hyperinflation of the 90s.
Further on, we continue toward the Monastery along overgrown paths, liminary spaces between the districts of Mladost and Darvenitsa. There we move through texts by Garth Greenwell from his book What Belongs to You, as well as poems by Galina Nikolova and Dimitar Kenarov and the story of Andrea Popyordanova’s project Neither a City nor a Garden about Park Vartopo.

The walk ends in the park of Mladost 2 Neighbourhood, where Todora reads passages from her own short stories, inspired by Mladost, and we continue with the personal stories behind the objects collected in The Flea Market by Maria Makedonska.

Authors mentioned in the walk – Georgi Gospodinov, Mirela Ivanova, Kalin Donkov, Kalina Kovacheva, Galina Nikolova, Dimitar Kenarov, Garth Greenway and others.