August 15; Pandemic benefits and other pleasures 🎶🦢⛵️
From opera on the lake to self-parking cars and other tech... this was my week
Happy Sunday,
It’s been an ongoing conversation since this pandemic started; there will be benefits, big and small, from the disruption that it caused us. And sure enough, as time goes by, they become apparent. To me, one of the most tangible upsides is in the cultural space, and specifically with opera and ballet here in Sofia.
Last spring and summer, lockdowns and the uncertainty about their lifting put performing arts on hold pretty much everywhere around the world. And so too in Sofia, where theaters, concert venues, and the opera house weren’t able to operate for the bigger part of 2020. Somehow, someone got the brilliant idea, to install an outdoors stage and seating area on the shore of Pancharevo Lake, a scenic man-made reservoir on the Iskar river, nestled between the Vitosha and Sredna Gora mountain ranges, just 15km from downtown Sofia. The reservoir was built in the 1940s and 1950s, to supply Sofia with water and power, and has since become a favorite spot for urban recreation, so close to the city yet giving you the feeling of being far away in the mountains.
And so in June 2020, the “Muses on the Water” project was born, where a local restaurant offered its lakeside terrace, and Sofia municipality provided a subsidy to build a temporary floating stage and scaffold boards with seats for the audience. All with the idea that Sofia Opera and Ballet could move their performances to the new lakeside venue in summer, allowing outdoors audiences to enjoy the productions.
Ellie and I visited one of the first shows, a Bulgarian rendering of the Mamma Mia! musical, last year in June, and we were very happy to see that Muses on the Water is back again this year with a full summer season program. What’s more, after last year’s success, the area has been completely redeveloped this spring, with a new concrete embankment for the stage and seats, a few designated parking lots, and a nicely landscaped area around the venue. The idea is that Muses on the Water will now remain a fixed feature of Sofia Opera and Ballet every summer, a great win thanks to the pandemic.
Last month Ellie and I enjoyed a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake there, and this week we attended a night with two single-act Italian operas, Cavalleria Rusticana (made famous by the Godfather III movie), and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi:
In other news
Yesterday I had a first of sorts; it was the first time I auto-parked a car. I’ve been hearing about the feature for a while now, but had never seen it in practice. We met up with my friends from the Bulgarian EV association to check out a new model, as we usually do when the dealers have something new, and this time it was the quirky Honda e:
I had given a thought when I was getting my e-Golf in January, as it was available for order from the same dealership, but it was considerably more expensive and I’d have to wait until summer to get it. Now that I tried it out, I’m happy with my choice. The Honda e is a really advanced car, kind of a concept showcase of new technology. But with a EUR 40,000 price tag, and featuring only a 32 kWh battery (my Golf has 36 kWh) with basically unusable trunk and back seat (it’s a really small car), it’s just not worth it. It does have an incredible full-length dashboard with touchscreen displays, as well as displays replacing the side and overhead rearview mirrors. And of course, it auto-parks:
Aside from fun nights at the lakeside opera and geeking with fancy new EVs, with our Vitosha team, we managed to select a few promising early-stage startups for the next edition of our Vitosha ACCELERATE program of investments and go-to-market acceleration. Once we finalize and sign the term sheets, I’ll be happy to share stories about the projects and founders that got us excited. In the meantime, I did a little write-up on one of the more impressive startups that we had in our previous Vitosha ACCELERATE batch, called GridMetrics, who are working on the challenge of improving the energy efficiency of large industrial plants. I was astounded about how much energy actually goes into delivering our daily basic needs, like water and food, and how much of it could be saved by implementing AI and digital-twin models. Check it out:
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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