The 90's were an interesting time to grow up in Bulgaria. After decades of censorship and isolation, people suddenly got exposed to western goods and culture. And we, the kids on the block, found ourselves listening to House of Pain, playing basketball with an old Molten, and dreaming of owning a pair of Adidas or Nikes and being able to jump high like those guys from NBA. Buying a pair of good sneakers, however, wasn't for everyone's pocket, so most of us had to settle for cheap fakes - either Nikes with a swoosh in the opposite direction or Adibas with four stripes instead of three. These always smelled of cheap glue.
We lived in such buildings
At the age of 13, I finally got my first pair of Adidas originals for which I paid 115 leva. Little did I know that having such sneakers can bring both fame and trouble. One summer evening, while walking home after playing in the schoolyard, I was met by the local teen gang - dull boys, most of them also chubby, in their fourteens and fifteens. That evening, I learned the phrase "Jump out of your sneakers, we want them!" Little did these boys know how fast I was able to run!
Most kids play with smartphones nowadays
Yes, I know - it's hard to wrap your head around how such things could happen. But those early days of "democracy" were turbulent ones. While we could finally have the lifestyle of our neighbors to the west, we didn't have the money to afford it. The crime was on the rise, and my pocket money was stolen not once or twice. They never managed to steal my sneakers, though!
2PAC 4EVER
Do you have any peculiar stories from the 90's? Share them in the comments!
Dan
I can't relate too much to what you endured Dan. I grew up in Canada in the 60's - I know I am aging myself but you'll get there too one day -everyone will.
I found your story bittersweet - altho grateful for having a roof over your head, food in your belly and cool shoes....you didn't complain about the lack of freedoms or the oppressive government.
I was a mom of three teenagers in the 90's and there wasn't much peculiar except not being able to breath until they came home at night. Or holding my breath when they got their drivers license and would go out for the first time. Raising kids today is way tougher in my opinion.
So glad you outran those little snots. You called them dull boys. That's a new term for me....what does it mean?
Hey Deb :)
Actually, I can't complain about the oppressive government much because I was 6 years old when they took it down - I didn't have the chance to experience the oppression myself.
I am not a parent, so I can't relate too much to what you describe, but I remember how worried my mom was sometimes. Why do you think it's tougher to raise kids nowadays?
By dull boys I meant not very smart ones :)
I figured the dull thing out last night as I was trying to sleep....
Kids today, at least in North America, have too much stuff!! And with that comes boredom and the want for more. Plus they are on ipads, phones, computers, tv most of their waking hours and their attention span for imaginative play, reading, writing, playing, sports is poor to say the least.
Empathy and gratitude and consideration of others ranks low as well. They are all about themselves. Everything they do is "awesome", "amazing", "beautiful", "smart". They don't seem to know about failure and how to learn from it. Suffering? Oh boy, don't even think about that....they don't need to suffer or have hardship at all.
Instant gratification is the main staple for this generation of children unfortunately. Kid's rights was an idea that grew into monster proportions. Parent's have no "rights" and are held to an impossible standard. Put under a microscope, they are monitored, manipulated emotionally, and judged.
Kids today have not learned the importance of not saying everything they think, feel, or whatever opinion is going through their mind in the moment. When I say kids, I mean from talking age to 18.
I value what they say, don't get me wrong. But there is a different attitude today. Some of it is very good but most of it is self serving.
There is a lack of respect, I think for the most part. Respect for others - whether other's opinions, needs, beliefs and so on.
I've seen a lot of parents struggle with raising their children, feeling unsure of their skills and worry about the liberal influence from other parents, school doctrine and so on.
Parenting has never been easy....it requires a lot of self sacrifice and consistency.
These are my observations from watching my grandkids grow and act with their friends and attending programs at their school. Also, what I pick up from children's tv programming.
I know it sounds all doom and gloom - I don't mean it in that way. It's just a very different time we live in and there are many more obstacles for parents to maneuver around.
Aren't you glad you asked? hehe.....no dull boys or girls here!!
I totally agree with you, dear! I have two boys and struggle to raise them! If you are trying to teach them “old fashioned values”, you are risking to ruin their happiness, because society and their peers will marginalize them and they will probably be bullied...and the kids, including my own, are spoiled rotten with the attention span of a goldfish.
😂soooo true!!
Stand firm with your parenting....it's YOUR parenting not someone else's. You won't ruin their happiness with rules or boundaries. They want it from you. Their will always be bullies to attack you through your kids and make them feel bad for having parents who won't let them do this or that.....
One day they grow up and have kids of their own and have to make the same decisions you are making now.
Then you can sit back and laugh. ;)
Hehe, I wanted to read the perspective of someone who has experience in these matters :) Most of my friends are in their 30's and have little kids, and what they complain about (most of the time) is that their children want more and more, and that they super easily get bored of their toys and stuff. Just what you described.
I was talking to a friend of mine last weer - her nephew is 2 years old and still cannot talk. However, he knows how to play videos on YouTube, how to skip the ads, take pictures with the camera and even switch to the front camera for a selfie. Weird?
I don't know if I will ever have kids, but it's good to be aware of these things.
That's sad.... Yes that's weird about the 2 year old who can't talk but knows how to operate electronics. He has no need to talk. I'm just shaking my head here. Poor little one.
My childhood was much earlier...Yugoslavia at that time was more open to “western” culture then Bulgaria was. Label things were normal in Sarajevo but to be honest I did not care about them. I remember as a child, I was traveling with my family through Bulgaria, we exchanged some money for levas on the border, in order to buy something to eat, for 200 dinars we got so much levas that we couldn’t spend. Because we were just passing through and you couldn’t take out any levas across the border we left what was left to a shop clerk. As a sign of appreciation, he gave us two boxes of caramels which we opened after we crossed Bulgarian border...Oh my goodness, those were the best caramels I tasted in my life, so good that I still remember the taste!
Hehe, It's nice that you have sweet memories from your trip to Bulgaria :) Maybe those caramels really were that good! I wouldn't be surprised because back then, the food was much better than what we have today. Thanks for sharing your memories, Di! :)
Tasted first Pepsi Cola back in the 90's, after the revolution and the fall of Ceausescu. I remember the trucks coming off from Turkey with shit loads of things, throwing Turbo bubble gum to the kids. My first sneakers were those type of kitschesque abomination with lights that were flickering when walking in them. I was in awe, of course!
So yeah, fucking communism!
I had those sneakers. 😂
A boy from my block got the same pair and the kids thought we should marry (logic 😂) and we celebrated a fake wedding. We received Turbo gums and Giusto juice as gifts. And then I stole a KISS chocolate bar with banana from a girl I didn't like.
hahaha
Lol 😂 Giusto juices? We didn't have those - we had Step instant juice powder.
Don't imagine something fancy!!! It tasted like crud, but it was good in a way. 😂
Oh man, the Turbo chewing gums! Did you have a decent cars-collection?😁 You can call those blinking sneakers kitschy if you want, but I still think they were super cool. Haha!
Those shoes that lit up when you walked were cool, but my favorite sneakers had to be the Reebok pumps.
They really didn't do much other than put air in the tongue that always leaked out. Any time we started to play I would always have to make people wait while I pumped up my shoes.
I remember the pumps - one guy here had them. So there was no difference in ... performance whatsoever when they were pumped?
P.S. Thanks for the resteem man!
What is not talked about or acknowledged is that what you’ve described is how many Americans live. Then and today. Possibly moreso today. There’s such a small percentage of people living the American Dream. And while there used to be a huge middle class which had a taste of it and a realistic shot at catching it if they worked hard and planned well, that’s no longer true. Our middle class is being squeezed out. A recent study showed that over 80% of Americans are either in poverty or just at the brink.
Democracy is a wonderful ideal. But when practiced with capitalism, it’s doomed to morph into corruption and oligarchy.
I know that the middle class in the US has been squeezed out in the last few decades :/ I told you once that I hoped you guys elect Bernie Sanders who was talking about restoring the middle class. He basically wanted to implement the Scandinavian model. I dunno though if he would have been allowed to change things for the better.
I don't think democracy in its purest form can exist.
Obama’s hands were tied and he was a centrist. Sanders would have been completely paralyzed. But it’s all moot. Even if Bernie had won the primary, the election was fixed. Between the Russians and the wonky electoral college, Trump was inserted and that’s how it was designed. He didn’t win. Yet here we are...
All my stories from the 90' are peculiar. 😆
I was smoking stale crackers and was pretending that they were cigars. I received my first perfume (Malizia Bon Bon) as an apology after I beat the crap out of a guy who was making fun of me for being not so well dressed. Stole some Kinder surprise eggs from a store and gave them to my friends who never tasted chocolate...yeah..."good times".
Hahah, how exactly did you smoke those stale crackers? To my knowledge, they have a biscuit-like form! I see you had a turbulent childhood 😁 I got a Kinder Surprise egg from my company yesterday - a bonus for the upcoming Easter. To be honest, they suck nowadays. Back in the 90's, they had a collection with figures from the The Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I would rip half of the cracker, put it in my mouth and set it on fire and somehow inhaled the smoke with the help of my trusted hands. Pretty disturbing 😁 Must've been my version of CRACK. 😂😂 😂
I loved the collections they had. The Smurfs, Happy Hippos, Ventura Leos. However, my favorites were Tom and Jerry at the beach.
Oh my god 😂 That sounds horrible, but who I am to judge - I used to inhale smoke from matches.
Look what I got yesterday
Downright offensive. 😂 What happened to licensed Kinder toys from Disney?
Did it come with an instruction manual? 😁
I had to look up what a kinder surprise egg was. Apparently they are available in the US now, but before they were approved it was a $2500 fine for smuggling those into the US.
I don't think they fine drug smugglers that much.
I don't think it is the original Kinder. I believe it's Kinder Joy which they said it's safer. Is it the one with chocolate-covered wafer?
I still think you will be fined $2500 for an original Kinder. 😂
But they don't make them like they used too. Even the chocolate tastes different. The giant Ferrero screwed the recipe.
That's a great prize for Kinder eggs....did you eat that nasty egg too? blech. I don't like them at all. My grandkids used to like them but I don't recall them eating the actual candy, they just wanted the prize.
I ate it 🙄
I think you managed to outrun the bad guys just because you had originals and probably they were running with Adibas :D Quality gives us a power ;)
lol....best answer !!! I love this....Adidas saved the day, or Dan :)
Hahaha 😂😂 I have to agree with @countrygirl - this is one of the funniest comments I've read in a long time 😁
Having quality shoes most likely helped in that situation :))
You knew you can run faster at a subconscious level :P
As an American, I got asked out of Romania in the early 90's while visiting with some German National friends. Only because I was American. Boo.
Who does that?
Absolutely no idea. Must have been something political. Times were weird in the 90's with almost anything. Most of the people were hostile towards some of the foreigners.
You are very welcomed now :)
It was political and rather violent. But, much better now. :)
Huh, that's now strange! I thought that our neighbors to the North were very positive towards America and Americans in the 90's. Maybe some of my Rromanian friends here can shed some light into why this happened? @szuri @catalicernat?
A grew up in the countryside in Norway so very safe. my family was hard working Christians
we had one channel on TV. the Norwegian state canal NRK was super boring all the moves was costume dramas from England in 1900 slow and boring.
then Norway in 1991 had its 2 canal TV2 and the and they showed skippy the bush kangaroo. my mother Want to see it since Ho had seen it as a child. we got it but is was not the same a the one she had seen. but we capt it anyway and a fund my love on macgyver. seen all the episodes many times. then my brother fund x-files he is a few years older then me
a remember we went to bed then after my parents
fell a slepp we sneak out to see it had nightmare every time though.
the one a men cam up the outlet in the showers eating kidneys.
many nights were broken right there.
Haha, watching the X-files gave me nightmares, too! Do you remember Twin Peaks and the creepy Bob? Were the TV Satellite dishes popular in Norway back then? There were some people here who installed such on their balcoines in order to watch foreign TV channels :)
a few had the Satellite dishes but it was a novelty. a did not see twin peaks then but in 2000 ish or a borrow the from a friend on hes recorded on VHS tapes. do not remember creepy bob but a remember the ear. it was creepy
Hehe :) and the Twin Peaks intro song? I love it!
Must be so weird to witness such a shift.
My stories from the 90s might talk about my first Nintendo or the first World Cup that I saw (USA ‘94), the first time I heard the name Maradona.
Movies stories like the first time I saw Pulp Fiction or Jurassic Park... but to be honest they all seem very inappropriate considering the picture that you painted talking about your country in those years.
How did the “adults” react to all those western models and influences? Did they provide some kind guidance or were they a bit unprepared themselves to deal with their “new” country?
Hey man! It wasn't all bad, of course. I also played Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive games with my friends; the difference was that we had to rent them as we didn't have money to buy our own consoles. I also remember watching the World Cup in the USA where Italy beat us in the semi-final. I think Roberto Baggio scored twice 😁 We also watched all those movies - on pirated cassette tapes, of course!
A lot of people that were the age of my parents at that time (between 30 and 40 years) fought for having democracy, so even though they were probably not entirely prepared for what was about to come, they wanted the change. However, my grandparents and many old people simply didn't want to accept the situation, so they kept supporting the communist party because they wanted the good old times to come back.
The communist period and so-called democracy that came after it are very complex topics. I have been thinking about creating a post about them, but I don't know if I will be able to be objective enough.
Well, for what it’s worth (wich in my case is literally a couple of cents on a good day), I think you should.
Who cares if it’s not biased. At least you are aware of it and not pretending to be. This type of insight is very interesting and unique. I would read it for sure.
Thanks for the feedback, Valerio. You are probably right - I shouldn't care much about being biased. I will certainly create a post or a series of posts on communist and post -communist Bulgaria.
Cool!
Wow. Having grown up in a stable place like Australia I can only imagine the changes that you must have experienced. Great post. Nice to see some insight into another world.
Glad you liked it, Robert :) It was very difficult for the majority of elderly people, and I can't say that many of them have adapted to the change. To this day, you can still see a lot of people in their 70's and 80's talking about the good old times and how bad democracy is. Well, if I have to be fair, the Bulgarian version of democracy is nothing to brag about ;)
P.S. It seems that I have somhehow unfollowed you, and I have no memory of that.
It sounds as if the 90's were a tough time to grow up in Bulgaria, but interesting, too. The change to democracy would make for a good book, I bet. Glad they didn't get your shoes!
Some of my Spanish friends grew up under Franco and had interesting stories to tell about the changes after his death.
Ugh. Kids and smartphones... The next generation will have no social skills, unless you count social media.
Oh yes, interesting for sure! Despite everything, I had a happy childhood :)
What happened in Spain after the death of Franco? I'd like to learn more about it.
Franco was a very repressive dictator, so there weren't many freedoms. He used the church as a form of control, as well. All the schools were run by nuns or monks. According to some of my Spanish friends, there was almost a cultural over-correction when Franco died.
Catalunya is a particularly interesting example. The post-Franco effect is still evident in their relationship to the rest of Spain. Under Franco, Catalans weren't even allowed to speak their native language in public. Afterward, Catalan returned in force. It's no wonder there's a strong separatist movement there.
About Catalans, I've heard people saying that they are an entirely different ethnic group that has little to do with the Spanish. It that one of the reasons they want independence from Spain?
I'll read more about Franco once I have time :)
Spain, as a united country, is a recent thing. The people of Aaragonians, Bosques, Castillians, and Catalans were small kingdoms, once. Even Portugal has been united and divided through various marriages and squabbles over the centuries.
I'm, by no means, an expert, but the people of Catalunya have their own culture and language. There are also several towns in northern Italy that speak Catalan, though I don't know what the connection is. Under Franco, the Catalan people were not allowed to speak their language outside the home, and newborn children couldn't have Catalan names. They did participate and sign the constitution after Franco's death, though.
I know two Catalans. One is against separation, although she would like to see less control from the central government. She also said separatists are the minority by far, but they had control of the local government. The recent "illegal vote" put a lot of non-separatists in a no-win situation. If they voted, it would be against the law, and they could get into trouble. If they stayed home, their vote wouldn't be counted.
It's a very complicated social and political situation.
An entirely different perspective, Dan, and a funny one at that. A pity those kids weren’t sharper, and sought out more meaningful devices than bullying other youth, but that’s why we’re always on our toes eh?
Haha, glad that you liked it, man! :) I still meet some of those kids when I visit my mom; they are now grown men, of course, having wives and kids of their own. They all look like life has crushed them.
Did you grow up in the 90s or 00s?
Do you feel like this upbringing shaped you for the better? Would you change it if you could? Not in an over the top fantasy of being ultra rich kind of way, but has it turned you into the person you are now and are happy with?
That's a tough one to answer, Kieran. It surely had an influence on me, but I can't tell whether it was a good one or a bad one. What contributed most to what I am today is the period when I lived in Denmark. I became less materialistic and more appreciative of what I have, I quit watching TV, I started thinking more critically about some things... Denmark is so different to Bulgaria - there's much less corruption, a great welfare system, and a lot of open-minded people. I think it was the exposure to such people that shaped me most.
Hey man, thanks for the insight into your youth, those sound like some tough times you endured.. But you came out the other side and I bet are all the stronger for it.. Hopefully you had good family and friends to help you find the right path.. Good on you for being too quick for the bullies as well... I can just imagine you pegging it away, you had waited so long for the Adidas, that noone was going to take them away!! I loved growing up in Ireland in the 80s/early 90s.... Much simpler times, no smart phones, and only a few had comnputers... We played outside for hours on end... Once I got my jobs done around the house for my Mum, I was able to go off with my friends for 4 or 5 hours unsupervised... My used to go off in play in the fields and make treehouses, climb rocks, try cigarettes for the first time... I think we were only 7 or 8 when we tried the cigarettes!! We didn't inhale or anything, but it was just some rebellion... I must say I prefer that I grew up then.. I feel sorry in some ways for the kids today.. They are too molly-coddled and do not have the same freedom we had, and they are also slaves to technology, but I guess we all are...
Hey man, sorry for the late reply :) I finally got my hands on a computer, lol! It wasn't all that bad; I actually had a happy childhood in spite of the financial struggles and the teen gangstas. Pretty much what you described - I was able to hang outside with my friends for hours.
Why do you think most parents nowadays molly-coddle and bubble-wrap their children? By the way, have you tried going outside without your smartphone? It feels good not to have tech in your pockets ;)
Ah that's great to hear, so glad you had a great childhood, and these bullies were just a small sample of your life growing up. I had run ins with bullys too, I would love to go back, as you learn over time that as soon as you confront a bully, they stop..
I think the molly-coddling is partly a result of us being over exposed to everything that happens all around the world everyday, and this promotes feelings of fear that something bad could happen to our children.. Bad things have always happened around the world, and it is no more common today than twenty years ago, but today we know about everything that happens locally, nationally and internationally. When we were growing up, our parents knew about what happened locally, and some who had time to watch the news and read the papers knew about what was happening nationally...
Fear sells, and the newspapers and news hows on TV know this, and this feeds into a culture of fear, which I think has a knock on affect on how people parent..
There are plenty of other factors, but I think this is big one..
I think you are spot on!
Love these shots, the first one with the sunburst is so good!
Thank you so much @vtravels! I stayed there for 10 minutes before taking the shot, waiting for the sun to go down a bit more :)
Definitely worth it :)
"Democracy" huh? Bulgaria has been a post-communist quasi-democracy now for 30 years. People don't even know who represents them in Parliament. For example, if I can ask the author of this piece: do you know which specific person represents you in Parliament? Most people don't. They have relegated their right to self-government to a corrupt former Communist Elite and then they complain. Our team writes about stuff like that here: www.svoboda21.com
Well, I agree :) That's why I put democracy in quotation marks - because it's illusory and fake.
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