Western popular images of Bulgaria are still fused with stereotypes about "the Balkans" as a peripheral "Other." In these constructions, cities and contemporary urban life hardly figure at all. This book presents a variety of urban livelihood strategies, social relations, and personal agencies in the context of social and cultural change. A central task of social anthropology is to bring the unfamiliar into focus, and this urban ethnographic study contributes to a better understanding of Sofia as a major city in contemporary Europe. (Series: lines. Beitrage zur Stadtforschung aus dem Institut fur Ethnologie der Universitat Hamburg - Vol. 7).