Episode 5: The sea of Sofia

The Urban Detective

"It's going to be magnificent: in the Sea of Sofia, there will be ships, each 30 meters long and 6 meters high. They will sail down tunnels of trees and greenery, saluted by little hotels and nice restaurants." An Engineer of the unrealized project for the Sofia sailing channel speaking to Sofia Magazine, 1959 Sofia is decidedly not a waterfront city, but in the 1950s and 1960s the communist party sought to change that: the project for a sailing channel in Sofia envisioned a man-made river flowing from the area of the Iskar dam past the south areas of Sofia and all the way down to the future "'Harbor of Pavlovo". Hundreds of citizens were mobilized in "voluntary" brigades to that purpose - first to dig up the channel, and then, a decade later - to cover it up, in an epic fail of an engineering project. Dubbed "The Sea of Sofia" by Bulgaria's most famous dissident writer Georgi Markov, it became a metaphor for communism’s monumental absurdity. But was it really? The architects Pavel Popov and Hristo Gentchev, the journalists Ognyan Georgiev and Hristo Butsev, and the documentarian Johnny Penkov tell the story of the "Sea of Sofia". Additional sounds in the episode from Freesound.org: Rowing2 by Juskiddink; Digging with Pick Axeby Cameronmusic; Seagulls by Eelke; Shoveling Stones by Monotraum; Coast Waves Children by Klankbeeld; Gentle Waves-Quiet Beach by Amholma. CC BY 3.0