Batakliev's Bloc

I was sitting on my staircase eating supermarket Greek salad (€ 2,95, feta, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and mayo dressing). My travel bag was gaping wide open. Books, cables, t-shirts and disembodied tube tickets were scattered all over the place and I was waiting for the locksmith to come and let me in. As I was swallowing another eroded feta cube, half dressed in mucousey yellow substance, I realised I had fallen in love. I had fallen in love with London. And this is where I had left my house keys, neatly tucked into a drawer in a cute little flat in the West End. Big cities cause big gaps between people. You may be very special but I'm not coming to see you after the last tube has gone, I read between the lines of random best friends. Coming closer can be a bit of a stretch for many. Not many speak their minds and follow their hearts in the domain of distance. "We like who we seem to be", told me a distinguished Londoner who also doubled as an unemployed talented writer

On an autumn afternoon in 1991 I received a bubble envelope. It was about 3pm and I had just come home from school. In post-communist Bulgaria bubble envelopes meant a package from Western Europe. And packages from Western Europe meant a glimpse into unattainable magic. I grabbed the envelope and started feeling it with both hands, trying to guess what's inside. In a rush of excitement I was popping the bubbles one by one and my heart was racing in anticipation. There had to be a tape inside. And indeed, there was one. A boxless black audio cassette with a recording of Heaven or Las Vegas by The Cocteau Twins . I stood outside for a while. The front door was wide open and so was the mailbox. For a short eternity, I was a happy and content 15-year-old, who had just been initiated into a secret realm, invisible to the rest of the world. It was as if I was surrounded by a bubble (one I had left unpopped) and through it I was contemplating the special moment in time. A moment I ca

Think about the activities you are least willing to do. The tedious chores which trigger utter reluctance bordering on mental choke, once your mind incarnates their uninspiring lifeless torsos. Like dried-out tails of dead mice they scrape the recesses of the mind causing the face to assume cliched expressions of immense boredom. Think of pulling the plug which is underneath the table, having to go back to the supermarket because you forgot to buy salt, changing the dust bag of your vacuum cleaner. Well, I changed mine the other day. It was not easy. This was one of my "not-done" activities and its dried-out tail was casting a spell of inaction despite the visibly declining performance of the vacuum cleaner. I decided to break the spell. I acted. What followed may have been a dream yet I remember it vividly. The front of the vacuum cleaner opened slowly, like the bulging door of a space ship. Stuck inside, like monumental alien spawn lay the overripe bag, pregnant with th

It wasn’t the first time I’d had sushi. God, no! My palate had been lubricated by raw fish on many a delightful occasions. But it was the first time I sat around one of them delight trains, the sushi-go-round. Like little scientific experiments they came, grouped into clusters of two or three according to colour, taste and surprisability. The train moved smoothly and silently and the delectable morsels passed by solemnly like some awe-inspiring extraterrestrial exhibits. This is well gonna be a business-class dinner, I thought to myself. Then I noticed the chunky red letters painted on the restaurant’s window: “Eat all you can for €15”. Well then, sort of. There was no plate in front of me. Only a little bowl for the wasabi & soy sauce. I reached out for a fat specimen decorated with glistening orange crumbs and pinched it with a plastic chopstick. I didn’t take the tiny plate it was placed on and let its two sexy plate mates move on. Then I snatched a crunchy ball. And another

Travelling from place to place, one hardly allows oneself to get attached. I did. I got attached to Siem Reap . Upon leaving it, I felt a strange heartache. The heartache of being severed from a location of love. It must have been the hypnotising splendour of the Angkor Wat temples. A parallel universe where the sun always shines and the birds always sing to exhilarate the wanderer. Or was it the beautiful stranger lying next to me in the massage salon close to the Old Market ? We never spoke to each other. We only stared at each other's feet while they were being skilfully massaged by tiny animated hands. And then there was Sok Ban. The owner of the tiny animated hands. I couldn't get enough of her massages. And I couldn't get enough of her melancholic dark eyes. One evening, on my way to the Angkor Palm restaurant, I dropped by the massage salon to say hi to Sok Ban. "Where do you eat?", I asked her. "I eat market.", she answered quickly

"Go, Go, GO", the profusely made-up Asian lady at the reception desk instructed me. "First massage, pay later". I didn't know what awaited me at my hotel's spa. It was a fairly satisfactory hotel and I expected a fair degree of satisfaction. A short amiable gentleman in a beige uniform ushered me into a locker room and directed me, by means of gestures, to take off my clothes. Then he furnished me with a blue satin gown and a pair of over-sized satin shorts. The silky fabric soothed my skin. I could smell the sweet scent of repose. An eager hand, attached to an obedient body in a beige uniform, opened the door to a waiting room of sorts. It was a spacious circular chamber, dimly lit and decorated with Egyptian motifs which seemed to be projected onto the walls and the vaulted ceiling. Astral Asian vocals trickled down like angelic irrigation. Cool conditioned air was seeping into every opening of my silky outfit, causing my body to shiver gently and str