I was on Rila Mountain again. Our homeland is so beautiful and majestic. I remembered the fairy tale in which God distributed lands to different peoples and when he reached the Bulgarians, there was nothing suitable for them, so he broke off a piece of paradise!
Honestly, I don't feel like going to the Alps or the Rocky Mountains in North America (and I've been to resorts in both), when we have such beautiful mountains here in Bulgaria.
This was commented on "Facebook" by Kiril Petkov.
One person from the group I was with sprained his leg. The guys from the mountain rescue service came. Super friendly, they helped right away, we went to the medical center in Borovets and they helped us there, it turned out that nothing was broken.
Finally we ate at one of the local restaurants, where they also gave us homemade lyutenitsa. Normal, down-to-earth people, we talked to everyone.
And I thought - if we really have such a nice place and many of our people are so warm and genuine, why aren't we able to fix our country?
Some of the answers were hidden in my conversations yesterday:
1) We have lost hope that it depends on us.
People from Samokov tell how entire neighborhoods were bought in the last elections and that's why there was no point in voting at all.
Although they were outraged by the fact that "one fat guy wants to buy the whole country." One lady told how she had spent her entire adult life hoping for things to improve, nothing had changed, and that's why she was tired not just of voting, but of hoping.
She remembered a few good things, like her mother's pension, which had increased in our time, and was glad that she would be able to go to Greece this summer without waiting in lines. At the end of the conversation, she complimented me that I was a down-to-earth person and had nothing to do with what the media describes me as. I don't know if I awakened a spark of hope in her again, but if that happened in our conversation, I would be very happy.
2) We have accepted too many unacceptable things as part of the normal.
Another lady I spoke to, who simply came to our table to greet us, also impressed me. She laughed and told a story about how she knew how cunning Boyko was and had known him before. She said: "Isn't he tired of being on the political scene all these years, and who still believes him?"
She was outraged that Peevski was now giving away a lot of money to his mayors, and she knew that this was not his money, but our common money, but she was pissed that "this man doesn't care about anything".
Then we talked about the cases I had ahead of me (the lady turned out to be a lawyer), and she told me how everything in court could be bought if you knew the right people. I shared that no matter what the risk was for me, I would never pay a magistrate. And when she found out that the prosecutor they had assigned to me to handle my case was Angel Kanev, she exclaimed: "Oh, they ordered you, this is the most ordered prosecutor." We wished each other happy holidays and she went back to the table.
From this conversation, I was left with the impression that as a people we have begun to accept too much. Somehow it is part of the normal that the person who wants to be the next prime minister was a "big sly", that the other person paid his mayors with our money, but otherwise it was a scam, that in court you can buy anything, and it is part of the game to "set you up with a prosecutor", and this is all part of our reality, which we accept as normal.
So if I could wish for something for the next year, besides being alive and healthy, enjoying our beautiful Bulgaria, eating homemade lyutenitsa, which is tastier than any imported specialized delicacies, that each of us would change two things: to find hope in ourselves and not lose our dream that we can fix our country, and not to reconcile with irreconcilable things in our everyday lives, not to pay corrupt people from the system, not to be satisfied with sly and thieves being our at the helm of the country and to know that all this depends on each and every one of us.
With this hope, I send off 2024 and welcome 2025.