Hanging Out With the Gypsies

Our trip to Bulgaria was very interesting. One of the items that struck me was the high number of gypsies we encountered. I do not know the whole story nor will I pretend to understand their issues but through conversations with regular Bulgarians, I understand that they are an underclass in Eastern European society and are seen as only being able to do two things: play the fiddle and pick pocketing. I view this as extremely biased and unfair to them. This kind of attitude certainly does not give them many chances to climb out of that mould. I have even read in the papers there that most gypsy children are placed in low schools for the mentally handicapped. This is a sad story in this beautiful part of the world.

The gypsies I encountered were very friendly and open, even though I was not able to communicate with them very much; they seemed to be genuinely happy that an outsider gave them some friendly attention. We witnessed a gypsy wedding in the town of Sliven and stopped by a crew of vineyard workers on our way back to Sofia. I will do a bit more research on the history of these interesting people.