Bookpacking’s Blog

AKA Leffe-Lovers’ Left Bank Lunacy

Bookpacking had the good fortune to find ourselves at a loose end in Paris this Monday evening with a partner in crime; having serendipitously bumped into a fellow vagabond, from the same part of the globe as ourselves, that we see every year or so in France through work. After a suitably literary event at Shakespeare & Co, we hit the bars of Rue Descartes where the lure of Leffe at only €4 per pint was to prove our undoing. We made our way unceremoniously up Rue Mouffetard to savour the Kwak in The Mayflower, as the full force of Belgian brewing was unleashed on our unsuspecting British bodies.

We were following in the footsteps of some of the biggest names in western literature; such as Papa Hemingway himself. The big man was scathing of F Scott Fitzgerald’s lack of drinking prowess, shamelessly shaming him in his famous Lost Generation memoirs A Moveable Feast. Despite writing the classic ‘Gatsby’, for anyone who’s done a bit of digging, Fitzgerald is publicly pilloried for eternity – thanks to the jugular-targeting judgments found in his competitive ‘friend’s’ diary. We can only be glad that the sole epistolary witness to Monday’s over-hydration is a little more discreet.

Leaving the high street and stepping into a great period piece pub like the Palace Bar, there’s a sense of time stood still. Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Beehan and Flann O’Brien must have enjoyed the same sensation when they nursed their pints among the hacks in Fleet Street.

The tide of conversation ebbs and flows; groups come and go. Movement, yet rest. A laugh in one corner, a dispute in another. It’s all here: lovers; friends; colleagues; strangers; tolerated drunks. There’s stilted conversation with a visiting boss and the fizzy flirtation of the newly courting.

A television shows Man Utd v Inter Milan with the volume set low, while a fan revolves slowly far above, like a drone surveilling the friendly mob. Wars happen elsewhere and economic woes become abstract; any relationship problems recede as rounds arrive. The foetal familiarity of a welcoming pub keeps a bad world at bay; the only clue to any external environment is the TV’s gentle roar of a football crowd.

Old leather seats are ranged against the back walls, like a doctor’s surgery. A surprising amount of light makes its way to the back, silhouetting ornaments on the semi-partition: a horse and jockey are suspended over a hedge. The next obstacle for this frozen pair would be a hurling stick: not cod, for once.

Contrasting conversations swirl into one generic river of noise that lulls me into a pleasant lassitude. Then a raucous laugh cuts through the bar, jarring me wide awake – the crack of the craic. A gesticulating man on a mobile stands half-hidden by the partition’s opaque glass. His right side casts a large shadow on it, creating a bizarre mismatch with his exposed life-sized left.

Streams of chatter come from the islands of conversation spread across the lounge, pooling around me in a rich reservoir of dialogue. Two professors discuss the merits of a certain girl: presumably a pretty protégé. Fighting over teaching rights, perhaps? A serious tourist couple map out their mini-break over Lonely Planet. Endless variations of the same themes: X had a baby, Y passed away, Z’s stressed at work.

All the planet’s a stage, but tonight I’m an observer not a player. Alone in a crowd, the vignettes keep flowing, as I become one with the walls and fade into the Palace’s furniture.

 Bulgaria; Sofia; The Apartment

It’s Valentines Day in Sofia. But for the lone traveller like Bookpacking, they can console themselves that 14th February is also the feast day of St Trifon – crying into your glass is just fine today, as long as it’s wine at the bottom of it.

It’s an interesting day, hooking up with a couple of locals who work in travel & tourism for an informal tour of the town. Today the washed out colours of a European winter jarr with the E-number red of Valentines Day balloons from sellers  – like here in front of the Popa statue. A local landmark, it’s the place to meet if you’ve got a rendezvous.

The stone figure of a 14th Century religious leader made contrasts sharply with the vivid man-made material of 21tst Century tat. In front of the National Palace of Culture there is another one of those juxtapositions that seem to leap out at you in this region. A group of old people stand in front of a memorial, drinking wine and eating small pieces of some kind of sweetbread. With their heavy coats and a drooping flag, they are commemorating the death of General Hristo Lukov who was killed by communists. We shouldn’t get too sad though, because he was apparently pro-Nazi; history never seems to be neutral in this part of the world.

Meanwhile, in another part of the park, a PA system is pounding. Girls in modern dress are dancing on a stage in front of the dilapidated national monument while a young guy dressed as a giant condom hands out free prophylactics for what looks to be the Red Cross. The OAPs come from an era where the lucky few survived, the young people from an era where the unlucky few die. Will they come to monuments like this when they are that age, and reflect on past injustices while the younger generation parties on in ignorant bliss? One hopes they won’t have to.

Later, on the edge of town – past even the Panelka – we find ourselves at an obscure concrete monument full of bells. Some sort of UNICEF project to symbolise solidarity between the world’s children, it speaks of another century. With bells donated from countries which no longer exist or have been renamed, like the DDR or Kampuchea, it feels like time has stopped. Even the huge double-stacked tv’s in the security guard’s shack (to stop “gypsies” stealing the metal) look like they came from another era with their wood-effect sides.

There is no-one else here, and in the late afternoon gloom, the sentinel-like main tower cuts a dark angular silhouette against a uniformly grey sky. Dogs prowl and on the main road prostitutes stamp their feet as cars fly past on the dual carriageway. Horns sound as excited men impulsively leer, but no-one stops.

Walking through a field strewn with rubbish, to the start of the housing estate where the bus waits and a lone dog stands territorially on the potted tarmac, this feels like a frontier. Not so much the edge of town, as the edge of civilisation. An old game, with old risks, for those girls.

So when we get to back to town, and the safe warm confines of one of Sofia’s coolest ‘bars’ Apartment – “It’s not a bar, it’s the Apartment” – the soothing sea sounds in the aquatic-themed room we’re led to are all the more appreciated. Sinking into the sofa with a Leffe and some organic chocolate cake, we can reflect that the world changes. But not that much.