Hostel Europe
Ed. Libros.com © 2018, 370 pages, 14x21cm.
Hassan is 51 years old, he is from Morocco. At the age of 19, he left his country hidden in a ship that took him to Málaga, Spain, and since then he has lived and worked almost two thirds of his life illegally in five different countries of the European Union. The last nineteen years were spent in Germany. He worked in the market for buying and selling cars until he was deported in mid-2013 to Morocco. About a year later, on May 26, 2014, he came to Bulgaria with hope – and some conviction – that in three weeks he would be in Germany celebrating his daughter’s 13th birthday. However, his plans went wrong.
Both in the Arab neighborhood of Sofia and in the creepy hostel where he sleeps, Hassan meets dozens of Syrians fleeing an increasingly widespread civil war, Afghans and North Africans in the same situation. They all come face to face with an economic, social and political situation in Bulgaria and Europe that is adverse to them and with an overwhelmed asylum system. Some of the guests call it Hostel Europe because, according to them, it is a metaphor for the Europe they meet as soon as they set foot on Bulgarian territory; a European Union in crisis and more concerned with shielding its borders and protecting itself from the jihadist threat than with integrating refugees and enforcing human rights legislation.
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