I’m wrapping things up in Bulgaria. In a couple of weeks I’ll be going back to the United States, a place I haven’t seen or felt for eight months. A bus or a train will take me to Sofia, where I’ll spend the night before flying out. Lisa will ride a bus to Boston and meet me at the airport. From there we’ll take a train to Portland and a bus back to Bangor. No cars will be involved, except perhaps a taxi.

I haven’t driven a car since I’ve been here. My driver’s license disappeared on the Athens metro in January. When I get home I’ll have to get a new Maine Card from the University so I can ride the Bangor bus system for free again. I’ll get my bicycle out of winter storage. I’ll drive down to the coast to see my mother.

What an interesting part of the world this is. Bulgarian politicians are talking about the development of a new “silk road” trade route, linking the European countries along the Danube with China. (It was the interruption of this commercial pipeline that led to the European sailing voyages of the late 1400s and early 1500s and the colonization of the Americas.) The countries that comprised the former Yugoslavia are still working out their relationships with one another, and with the European Union. Languages, currencies and cultures seem to co-exist in a fragile balance that somehow works.

What have I learned? The title of this post is a lyric from a George Harrison Beatles song, “The Inner Light,” which first appeared on the flip side of “Lady Madonna,” when individual songs were released on 45 rpm vinyl records. The Beatles were popular in Bulgaria, as they were everywhere else. I’ve learned a Bulgarian song from the 1970s that references them.

But I haven’t learned nearly enough about this historically dynamic, physically beautiful, oddly introverted country where I’ve lived for most of a year. I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve learned enough Bulgarian to order a meal or buy a bus ticket, but not enough to hold a real conversation. I don’t understand most of the customs and rituals, and I’m baffled by the politics.

And again, I’ve developed a deep empathy with immigrants to the United States, for whom every transaction is an effort, as it is here for me. The difference is that in Bulgaria, and throughout Eastern Europe, you can usually find someone who speaks English to help you out at the post office or a bank or almost any other place of business. A few signs are in English; the same is true of product labels. Occasionally you’ll hear English on the street and be able to understand a conversation in your native language. Immigrants to the United States have almost none of these advantages.
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Yet in eight months in Bulgaria, no one has ever berated me in public for not speaking the language, for failing to “assimilate.” Is it any wonder that ethnic minorities in the U.S. tend to congregate, to draw support from people who understand them?

Europe is a melting pot of languages, and this monolingual American is constantly amazed by how many people speak two or three or more of them. Why aren’t we doing that in the United States? Why aren’t we, at the very least, teaching Spanish in kindergarten? Why do we instead push for English-only legislation and the adoption of an official language? Why do we want to build walls instead of bridges?

Bulgarians seem surprised that anyone wants to come here, let alone learn their language. Two million Bulgarians have emigrated since the collapse of communism in 1991. Many of my students will work jobs this summer in places like Nantucket and Old Orchard Beach. A lot of them want to live and work abroad after they graduate.

But others tell me that they want to stay, and help lead their country into a global future filled with possibilities for people everywhere. I’ve written in this blog that we are living in the Late Automobile Age, the waning days of the mindset that we should all own cars and drive them wherever and whenever we please. Likewise, the world is witnessing the last desperate gasp of nationalism, the idea that we can wall ourselves off from one another and live by our own rules regardless of what happens on the other side.

Neither regime will go quietly, but go they must.

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