As we come across stacks of new meters in brown boxes L says, ‘Ah, Homosexual Indians.’
‘What?’

‘They remind me of an exhibition called Geheimsache Leben—Schwule and Lesben im Wien des 20. Jahrhunderts [Secret Affair Life—Gays and Lesbians in 20th-Century Vienna] which showed one of Franz Vranitsky’s archive boxes for political papers labelled, without a hyphen, ‘Homosexual Indians’.
‘Or The Wizard again; Baum once said that he invented the name while looking at a two-drawer filing cabinet: A-N and O-Z.’
‘I give up.’

We walk up stairs, out onto the flat roof and look at a jungle of electrical masts stretching to the horizon.

Up till today we have been heading generally south-east through the central plains but now, heading towards Asenovgrad, we turn almost due south, pointed towards the foothills of the Rhodope mountains which Bulgaria shares withGreece. In the town of Asenovgrad itself we visit a small workshop employing about ten people which does business in one of the local specialties – bridal gowns. The front showroom is so densely populated with all the immaculate formality of white and light-coloured brides’ dresses and accoutrements that I feel sweatily out of place and physically clumsy. The owner and employees are very patient in stilling our curiosity but when a Roma family enters to enquire about a dress I get a feeling of dissonance, that the visitors and the customers require two distinctly different modes of treatment that the personnel can’t quite resolve. The business does not just sell locally, but supplies some models to shops in Plovdiv and Sofia.

Later on we walk towards the market and find another abandoned community cinema, though this time we have to remain on the outside of a wire perimeter fence that unfortunately has no breaks in it.