петък, 10 октомври 2014 г.

The romance behind the train stations or else?

Which one of these awakens the butterflies in the stomach when you hear trains, train station? Or is it the journey, the kiss goodbye or something else?

I struggle to find my associations with train stations before I started this graduation work. 

I think at first it was with love 

remember all the romantic scenes in the movies?

Later an association with adventures, guitars, dirty songs and misery:


 During my travels around Bulgaria - going hiking, climbing and caving.


Later - an association with Corruption and the Bulgarian Mafia - after the scandal around the Architectural Contest for renovation of the Central Station in Sofia. Very ugly story I watched closely in support of my teacher back then - Emil Popov. It was the first time I saw the dirty business side of architecture.

Later - an association with idealism and fear for Bulgaria's future - from the book Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand. Where the Railways are the foundation of a country's economy and the result of man's brain and fare labor. 

Later - an association with my struggle for making one of the oldest and most beautiful railway stations in Bulgaria into something well-organized and functioning and modern.

Later - an association with Corruption and the Bulgarian Mafia in the face of TIM - looking at the city of Varna - the closed shops, empty streets (in August!) and misery.

Today - an association with back pain from my last train trip to Varna (7 hours).

So no butterflies in the belly now. Only bugs in the brain asking why I should waste time making a project for a building no one's going to invest in when the trains barely get from one point to another in one piece.