Au revoir!

Every journey has a beginning, and an end. And mine isn’t an exception. I realize that the vague philosophical quote makes this post sound like a suicide note, and it is, in a way. With this post I am ending my blog.

It has been a wonderful journey and I am very grateful to those of you that actually took the time to read some of my stories. For those of you that just looked for keywords and left generic comments – it’s ok, the blog wasn’t meant to be everyone’s cup of tea anyway. It wasn’t particularly structured either, I am sure most of you were wondering what the hell was going on half the time. Well, for better or for worse, that time is now over! In spite of the many sleepless nights, nerves wrecked and cameras borrowed, I like how the blog turned out. Not saying it couldn’t have been better, but I’ve always been one to learn by trial and error. And in terms of errors I made more than a few. Yes, yes, this just keeps getting more and more depressing, but it kind of hurts when you have to mercifully kill something you have created.

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And, completely ignoring the somber and depressing tone of the first two paragraphs, I will continue onwards sounding as perky as I actually should be! I was going to emphasize on how this was a learning experience, and how it helped me grow as a person, but let’s be honest – no one really wants to read about that. So, this farewell post is going to tell the stories behind the stories, or how these people ended up in my blog. (HINT: Most of them – by accident)

As you have probably noticed by now, my interviewees tend to flake out on me in the last possible minute. For this first post, I was expecting a dear friend of mine to tell a very interesting story – which one exactly I let her decide. But she overslept and missed her bus to Blagoevgrad (at 7 p.m., yes, that’s what happened), which made my interviewing her very inconvenient. So, I started going through my phone contacts desperately searching for a person that could help me. And Kalina popped out. She was nice enough to let me write about her, and to tell me a very personal story.

The second post was the complete opposite of the second post – it was very well thought out and planned, but that was the only way it could be executed. I was meant to take the interview at the Christening of my friend Anna’s son, a joyous occasion for every Bulgarian. Still, things went wrong! I was expecting to hear your everyday, run-up-the-mill story about a happy marriage and the joys of motherhood, but what I saw was post-partum depression and insecurity. I honestly, wasn’t prepared for that. I had also forgotten to bring a camera, but the photographer, hired for the Christening turned out the be a pretty stand up fella and allowed me to use his spare!

After this slight emotional trauma, my blog takes us back to class, where we learned the basics of shooting and editing a video in Windows MovieMaker and YouTube editor. And then we catch a (radio) wave with Ivo and Chanko, who were kind enough to let me do a double feature. The hilarious part here is the small blogging camera’s journey – it was forgotten and abandoned a whopping 11 times during the day of the interview. It’s so weird how easy it is to lose something that doesn’t belong to you.

And we’re moving ahead to posts that will not get me banned from using university owned hardware. The next one is my dear friend Bo’s post. There weren’t any mishaps here, she was just perfect – had a fun, little story to tell, was doing something interesting enough to make a video about, and after the entire thing was over she fed me. What more could I possibly want?!

The post after Bo’s was the horrifyingly stressful midterm post, which had me running around Skapto, looking for interview subjects. I actually froze a little bit, when I heard Prof. Gilbert say “Pick a recent news story that’s related to your blog!” What was I supposed to write about?! A celebrity’s choice of (un)dress? Putin’s decision to hinder EU trading? I was completely confuzzled (I know it’s not a word, but it’s adorable) .

And after a riveting dash through Skapto, another borrowed camera in hand, the time came for my actual midterm post – the summary post so eloquently named “The road so far.” In it I said I would try to fix the structure of my blog, but I didn’t, since I decided I loved the chaos of it. I liked how my blog became more about the stories and less about the choices, in spite of originally being the other way around. The fact of the matter is, my entire topic is just an angle, a prism, through which to think about stories. Every story has a choice.

After that came my favorite post – the story that unfurled in front of me! It was kind of awkward, kind of sad, and kind of frightening, but it was a fun little experience.  All in all – mixed feelings about this one.

Then came the class on curating web content, a.k.a. the “wook, mom, I made a macaroni pictuwe!” post, in which I clumsily tried to navigate Thinglink and Storify – the latter of which I actually really liked and plan to use in the future as well. But I will probably lose thinglink – I just don’t find it visually pleasing.

And speaking of losing things – my next post was about Tuttee, who lost a whole lot of… Tuttee. This is one of the posts, that had some initial thought and planning, by the way. It was also supposed to have a very neat video of him just doing his thing around the house – editing, cooking, etc. – but technical difficulties (by the name of an accidentally formatted SD card) killed that video in its tracks.

And speaking of killing things – next is the post, that I feel most insecure about. Yeah, the one about John Constantine, the fictional character. On one hand I think it’s a neat little blogger co-operation, on the other I actually did it, because another interviewee flaked out on me, this time too late to find a replacement. In the end, I actually ended up exerting a lot more effort than I would have on creating a regular post. What I enjoyed here is the fact that I could let my imagination run amok and do whatever it does best – create pictures and translate them into words.

And while that’s my medium of choice, there are people who just love their pictures. Preferably on a wall somewhere. Why, yes, I am referring to my latest post! In it, I interviewed Pesho and partly his roommate, about the time they got so drunk that they became graffiti artists. This post happened in the spur of the moment, after a chance meeting around campus, since my original interviewee…. Flaked out on me! Well, in this case she just refused to be interviewed due to horrifying mood swings and complete lack of interest, but the result was the same.

As you can see, every story has a story. It’s these little things, that I will remember them by. I didn’t answer my question, I realized that it doesn’t really have one answer. It’s all about the shape and texture of the story. Those are usually shaped by choices, but more than that they are shaped by the people who make these choices. So, dear reader, if I have to leave you with one thing, I will just rephrase the message from my midterm post.

Make

Great

Stories.

Au revoir!

Oh, and let me leave you with this short video that is in no way related to the story. I call it “The life of the Director”, although it’s just a clip from the student holiday celebration at Redenka. (Hint: Some of the people in the video have been interviewed for class by other students)

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Amateur Street Artists

For this week’s post we have another familiar face – Petar Georgiev. He’s a junior here at AUBG, majoring in European Studies. He’s also an active member of the student community – ex-president of The Griffins, part of the BLIMUN society – and also a very friendly and open-minded person. I went after him for an interview, after I heard rumors of a particularly interesting event. And he agrees.

Petar invites me over to his room in Skapto 3 to do the interview. I enter and am immediately overwhelmed by the copious amount of what I can only describe as stuff in the room. If you take a look at the pictures, you will understand what I mean by that. And every little object is a memento of one story or another. A football from The Griffins’ first win, medals, empty bottles, posters, books… Everything in this room has history. And one of these objects is part of Petar’s story.

We sit down and start chatting, he tries to recall as much detail as possible. The adventure (as many in AUBG) begins at club Underground – a staple of local student life and favorite watering hole. Everyone at the university knows this is the place you go to party until the end. Whether it is of the night, conscious thought, or your allowance – you just wait for it to come. There are many interesting stories about Underground, few of which I’ve had the questionable pleasure of witnessing, but this one only starts there.

“What story do you want me to tell you? Oh, wait, I know!”

Petar plants himself on the bed next to the memory-laden desk and starts talking. Unlike previous interview subjects, Petar’s really talkative and open, getting the story out of him required almost zero effort on my part. He smiles as he recalls the faithful evening at Underground, the story’s point A. He and his roommate decided to go out on a whim, it was the evening before the makeshift Berlin Wall at ABF was torn down. Why am I mentioning this? Well… read on.

So as he and his roommate, Ivan Nikov, stumbled out of Underground in a drunken haze a marvelous idea came to light. Instead of going home and sleeping it off, our two heroes decided to wander the streets of Blagoevgrad in search of excitement. And they found it in the face of a hooded graffiti artist, who was defiling (or improving) the back wall of a random building.

“I remember thinking that this guy’s a real rebel and that I should help him in his fight against oppression – totally in the spirit of the upcoming destruction of the Berlin Wall”

So, Petar and Ivan went over to talk to him, throwing caution to the wind. At first, the artist was distrustful, scared even – how was he supposed to know they weren’t cops – so he assaulted them with a can of spray paint. And by assaulted I mean started violently spraying paint in their general direction. It took some persuasive drunk hand gesturing and horrified yells of dismay to snap the outlaw out of his delusion. When he realized the two were friendly, he started apologizing. Both of them remained unscathed from the paint attack. The three got to talking and realized they had a lot in common – they all disliked oppression and they all liked being drunk. After some more conversing and convincing, the artist allowed Petar and Ivan to tag along and help him out with his current… projects. Ivan and Petar loved the thrill of it all – skulking in the night, three shadowy figures armed with the weapon of change that is street art.

They had to avoid the police a few times, but all in all it was a peaceful evening. Well, as peaceful as a night out on the town, doing graffiti drunk can be. And after all of this, they even received souvenirs! Petar as the more prominent street artist (probably) received the spray paint bottle he had used – a rite of passage he had not expected. Ivan received something completely different. A tiny bust of Sophocles – an ancient Greek philosopher.

“It was really weird in the morning, ‘cause it took some concentration and effort to remember where these came from…”

Petar laughs about this entire misadventure and is certain given the choice he’d do it again, but this time he’d like to be a more active participant in drawing the graffiti – a skill that will definitely set him apart from other EUR majors.

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