The internet keeps connecting us, and the internet keeps dividing us. But how many parts of our lives have we handed over to technology? We rarely stop to think about it. And the Christmas holidays are the perfect moment to do just that. If you've grown a little weary of festive emotions and laden tables, I've prepared a special Digital Story for you.
Today's heroine found love on the internet. That unexpected spark online took her to England, where she built a happy family. Until, at some point, she and her husband decided they wanted to escape… from a society in which everything happens online and human contact is a relic of the past.
Individual stories make up our shared history, and Daniela Radkova's tale ends in a place that is very special to that shared history. And with causes that are beautifully symbolic, especially for the holidays.
Farewell
How many women do you know who can parachute? Until recently, I didn't know any either. Daniela grew up in the Rhodopes, the mountains of southern Bulgaria, and her path led her to… a military unit in Plovdiv, where she trained as a paratrooper. She says the scariest jump isn't the first one but the second—when you already know what's coming.
The scariest leap into the unknown, however, came later, long after she had left the unit. After a painful breakup with her ex-boyfriend, she was killing time on the internet. Those were the days when Facebook “farms” were all the rage, and she topped them off with movies and random chats with all sorts of people. Only to run into, by chance… a colleague from her army days whom she had not liked one little bit. In the meantime he had moved to England. They exchanged a few words… and then the road carried them so far that it led to three sons.
The small talk grew into an endless chat, and having set out on that road, Daniela walked it to the end. “He suggested, ‘Why don't you come to me in England?’ And, to my own surprise, I answered, ‘Why not?’”
To My First Love
In England, the adventure was only beginning. At first the young couple worked on a mushroom farm. Work permits were required back then, and once they got them, they decided to move on. Their next job was at a kitchen cabinet factory… But can you picture former soldiers, people who had jumped out of planes professionally, standing in one spot doing repetitive, monotonous tasks? Exactly. You can't.
“We were at the second-largest kitchen company in England. We advanced enormously, they respected us, but at some point… the same thing over and over, cabinet, cabinet, cabinet. I told my husband I had to change jobs because I couldn't take it anymore.”
A friend suggested she start as a delivery driver for Amazon. Before long, the pioneer of e-commerce welcomed Daniela's husband too.
“But at some point in England we fell into the same rut as everyone else. You sit on the couch, go to the water company's website, pay for your water, pay for your electricity, your gas. You need pens, you go to the site and order. You need a TV, you go and order… At one point I realized we had no social life at all! We had turned into little robotic figures that went to work.”
And so we arrive at Covid and the times when delivery drivers were the only people who could move among others with relative freedom. (How quickly we forget such supposedly unforgettable things!)
A Dark Cloud Looms
“It was eerie and awful,” Daniela recalls. “Only us drivers were on the road—everyone else was locked inside. At some point I felt I simply couldn't bear it. We had turned into robots!”
“That's when life online grew even more. People started working from home. Every day you pass the same house, drop off some parcel, and watch the children's room disappear, renovations begin, and in its place appears a room with a monitor. Then two monitors, three. People began shutting themselves in completely. They even stopped getting dressed and stayed in their loungewear. They stopped going out. Social life stopped. You pass by every day and see it changing before your eyes. We decided it wasn't for us. That we wouldn't cope with this digital way of life.”
Right around then their second son was born. The parents knew they didn't want him growing up in a robotic daily routine, and that it was time to return to their roots. The family made the big decision in 2022 and parachuted back home, 12 years after they had flown off to Albion.
Patriot
You've probably noticed (ChatGPT certainly would, if you asked it) that the subheadings in this piece are the titles of poems by perhaps our best-known poet—Hristo Botev, the nineteenth-century revolutionary—whose poems, for all that, can be counted on our fingers and toes.
It is Botev's hometown, Kalofer, a small town at the foot of the Balkan Mountains, that is home to Daniela and her family today. The now former (or perhaps future, who knows?) paratrooper runs a little souvenir shop, where we are greeted by a colorful jumble of just about everything except… the most typical local “product”—Kalofer lace. The town's shopkeepers have agreed not to sell the most iconic item, because doing so would drastically cut the number of people who visit the museum devoted to the traditional craft.
Daniela started with an online business, then noticed that the web was full of handmade crafts that simply had nowhere to be seen outside the web.
My Prayer
Back in England she had set up a page for handmade baby accessories. “The problem with online shopping was that you couldn't see these things physically anywhere. Online stores are a great opportunity, but you can't always choose exactly what you want just by looking at a picture. I wanted to make a shop you could walk into, see things, touch them. Look at the colors, lay the patterns side by side.”
So she decided to open a baby shop in Kalofer. But somehow, naturally, slowly and inexorably… souvenirs crowded out the baby accessories. People come to the center of this National Revival–era town and, as they stroll, look for fridge magnets, wooden spoons, cutting boards. The baby shop became a souvenir shop. It still takes orders from people who remember the page from her England days, but that has taken a back seat.
Kalofer had another surprise in store for her. After her eldest son was conceived following a long struggle and with the help of IVF, and her second child arrived at the very height of Covid, again with the help of medication… a third young man unexpectedly joined the family.
And so today the digital detox is a fact. Daniela, who met her husband online and went through the technological alienation on the island, now enjoys a healthy life surrounded by relatives in a small town.
In the Tavern
Why Kalofer of all places? Daniela's husband comes from this picturesque mountain town. And “a person born in the Balkan Mountains or by the sea can never tear themselves away from them,” she says.
Today, being far from the big city helps Daniela and her husband be happy. But that's not all: thanks to those very same technologies, they can do all kinds of things, including… successfully completing a distance-learning degree in England.
Daniela is adamant that education shouldn't be a reason that stops people from returning to smaller towns. “Right now the big brother goes to English lessons, swimming, even football in Karlovo. If one day he decides to study somewhere else, let him try. There are rented rooms. People have always survived that way, but today we seem to have spoiled our children a bit.
At 14 I went to Plovdiv, on my own, to a rented room with another girl who, until then, had lived in the same little village in the Rhodopes, with landlords—an old granny and grandpa. It's nothing so dramatic; back then so many kids managed that way.”
To Her
“In a small town everyone's opinion is always being heard. One person says you're good, and everyone thinks you're good. One says you're bad—everyone thinks you're bad. Someone is always gossiping about what you do, why you do it, how you do it. But that's where the bad part ends. In Kalofer you'll never go hungry or thirsty, or be stranded on the road. Someone will come, help you, take you home. Whenever you need something, even if the shops are closed, there are always neighbors and people to count on. You have work to do—everyone will rush over to help. Call a neighbor at 10 p.m. and they'll give you milk, rice—whatever you've run out of and need.
“I'm very glad we went back to the old ways,” Daniela says. “I really like that more and more people are doing it. They realize they need to dig their hands into the soil and how much energy that gives you. Childhood is completely different here, too. I got out of the habit of locking the door long ago—there's simply no need. My child goes out to play, a whole gang moves around in a swarm, and they have lunch wherever is closest—at our place or someone else's.
In Kalofer it's as if time stopped 30 years ago; modernization is creeping in slowly but can't push out the traditional. There's one ATM in town, and survival is largely a matter of barter. I give you eggs, you give me milk. But there's the other side too—just now an old granny left me a little money ‘to treat myself,’ because I spent 30 minutes ordering things for her from Temu for a serious sum. In the end she was so pleased she didn't know how to thank me.”
Struggle
In recent years Daniela has kept finding causes to devote part of her time to.
Today she is focusing her efforts mainly on two: renovating the town's neglected cinema and getting new books for the town library.
She doesn't meet many kindred spirits along the way, but, as she puts it herself, sometimes happiness loves silence.
She is determined not to give up until she secures a comfortable hall where her children, and those of the whole town, can enjoy a movie without traveling dozens of kilometers. And also to bring back children's and parents' interest in books. The little town's library definitely needs new and interesting titles.
Her family is skeptical, her acquaintances are puzzled, but she is set on reaching her goal and giving the town its new treasures. And Christmas is the perfect moment…, when even the most devoted digital adepts step away from their consoles to share stuffed cabbage rolls with their relatives. If you haven't yet found a good deed to do for the holidays, Daniela's causes are definitely a fine opportunity.
Quizzes, charity auctions, initiatives… Daniela has taken on no small number of ventures, and we can all help her, little by little and hand in hand. Let's look for the beauty of the analog together. If her story has filled you with the urge to help, you'll find more about the ways you can do it here.
