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CARGO SOFIA - BELGRADE Ventzislav and Slavco used to supply Serbia with Bulgarian toilet paper and Germany with Turkish mushrooms. They were living on six square meters in front of 40 tons. Where goods used to be stacked, there is the audience sitting now, looking back at the city from a cheap driver's perspective. Ventzislav and Slavco ride Cargo Sofia - Belgrade; a converted Bulgarian truck carrying stories instead of goods, a mobile 47seats-observatory trained at cities like a microscope. A European project by Stefan Kaegi for Goethe insitut Sofia In cooperation with Theater Basel, Hebbel-am-Ufer Berlin and others Long distance drivers They have their first names written directly under the windscreen; they are sitting 2 meters above the level of the street and have 500 hp under their right foot. They have seen all countries of Europe but they know the cities only from signposts. Regional differences for them boil down to the fast food restaurants by the roadside toilets. They all sleep in their driver's cabs in the same roadside parking lot, they communicate via radio link or GPS, however if they doze off waiting in the queue at the Nickelsdorf, Korosczyn or Kapikule customs theircolleagues overtake them from the left. Long distance drivers used to supply the East with jeans and porno magazines and the West-with Bulgarian tea and Polish vegetables. In the enlarged European Union they are the nomads of cargo transport: they no longer have tents and not yet internet, but they work and live on less than 6 mobile square meters in front of their 40-ton freight. Trucker magazines and country songs glorify them as the road cowboys. A poll of the Institute for Auto Safety in Munich reveals that less than 25 per cent of truck drivers use safety belts. According to latest ADAC surveys 350 get injured and 20 die annually in road accidents involving trucks in Germany, Although they are submitted to the indications of the automatic speed limit device, the GPS navigator, the toll acts and the requirements of the forwarders: time is money and there should be no empty runs. Paper, meat or steel pipes - all cargo is term-bound. The customers only order when they need the goods. The motorway today has become the biggest storehouse of Europe. 2,6 million trucks and 178 thousand truck tractors were cleared as fit for the road in Germany in 2002, plus 674 thousand trailers and 221 thousand semi-trailers. By 2015 truck traffic is expected to increase by another 60 per cent. By that time the European market will include 540 million. In that space there will be free movement of goods by trucks, ships and trains. Only at the outermost borders will the well familiar sign TIR (Transports Internationaux Routiers) seal the trucks for the eyes of customs officers. The road maps will then be replaced by GPS systems, and - who knows - the truck drivers by autopilots who will automatically keep the safe distance... Nomads on motorways Since the 1960 s when the socialist regime in Bulgaria forced the last nomad Roma to adopt a settled way of life the media has presented them as a social problem of the agglomerations; allegedly, they would try to make fires in their flats or breed horses in their living rooms. True, the prefabricated blocks of flats offer little space for their cultural identity, as it is known to Europe - the circus, the music, the temporary. Nonetheless, after the end of the cold war they continue to live a settled life. At the same time, a discourse about the nomadic is emerging in Europe from Deleuze to antiglobaiism. In No-Border-Camps and freetrade agreements the situationist ideals in the distribution of space find expression in a new vocabulary. The time of the horse, the tent and the cart seems to be over. The modem nomads sleep in hotels or in the backseat of the driver's cab. Sofia is located on the transit stretch halfway between Belgrade and Istanbul, Since 1994 the former Bulgarian company SOMAT belongs to Willi Betz GmbH & Co which has the largest automobile park in Europe. Even in the cold war years the two companies maintained cooperation across the iron curtain,Today they together dominate the transport for the Middle East and together they own over 9000 trucks. In December 2004 President Parvanov personally inaugurated the company's new logistical center in Sofia.