The metaphor for the Balkans as a "crossroad" contains the intention for the diversity and melting of different conventions – cultural, religious, and national in it. During the "long 19-th century" the Balkans became the hot zone of Europe – the place of creating of new states, new revolutions, and new mythologies. "A period of national enlightenment" is that label for the 19-th century is. Modern Europe discovered the Balkans as its childhood – little population, abnormal and strange situation, one huge empire, different order and values. It was the romantic dream of Europe for "pure" and "virtuous" people, with authentic folklore and close to nature way of life.

On the other hand the new Balkan states discovered Europe, they recognised themselves as Europeans and tried to "normalise" themselves using the power and influence of the History as one heroic narrative, Literature as a canon of Great examples and mythology as ethnogenesis. We can read the main elements - continuity of the state, kingdom, special mission to protect the Christianity, self-sacrifice, etc. - in the "new mythologies" of Greece, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria. The impact of Reason and rationality was very strong too. The ideas of French Revolution about freedom, equality and brotherhood were used in the discourse of ideology of the national revivals in the most of the Balkan countries. They tried to create their project of modernity as Europeans.

At the same time the main constitutive events for the new Balkan nations were discovered and used in creation of the canons of national History and Literature as institutions. The efforts to be like the "others" - "Great powers", "Big Brothers", "Djado Ivan" (Russia is presented as Grandfather Ivan) were directed to "win" economic, religious and political independence. Well-educated in Western Europe and Russia young people came in their home places and became founders of the modern education and media. In these ways the project of Balkan modernity was imported in the future national states.

The process of emancipation of Balkan nations was connected with the process of self and alter-identification. The borders between Balkan’s states also were created. The images of "otherness" had different dimensions. On one hand it were "Great powers" and Turkey and "our neighbours", on the other. During that dynamic process of identification the common Balkan patrimony and memory were forgotten or not used in the political language and discourse of ideology but in everyday life it was still alive.

Here I'll try to notice four possible stories, to create short narratives about the time, urban life, images of otherness and language and literacy. These topics are some of the main topics of narration about Western European language of the project of modernity and it’s realisation on the Balkans.

1. Time and Times.  My story about the time and times on the Balkans can start with the story about the Clock tower. The big surprise, which we can see in the travel reports of the Western people, is the absence of clocks. There weren’t clock towers in "Edrene" and "Carigrad" even in 17 century and nobody used watch. The big surprise for them was that somebody, somehow, sometime build clock tower – the only one in the territory of Ottoman Empire. So, the modern time came to Plovdiv before the capitals. Despite the fact that the clocktower is a sign of modernity, it measured the time for the prayers at the beginning of its existence.

The natural and agricultural time of the villages, the technological time of manufactory, the religious time of the Christianity, Islam and Judaism were involved in the time of the Empire. It was Oriental time with different calendar, different holidays and different dynamic. That time didn't need clocks to be measured, that time was oriented to the past, to the Beginning, to the Creation. The times of different religions in the Balkan area divided the day and the week in different ways, but all of them separated the time on sacral (for prayers and God) and profane (human). The urban time was different from the rural time. In the town co-existed technological and the time of official calendar and in the villages the natural time continued to have primary role.

The national times were born in these conditions of diversity of times. They had to give teleology and direction of one main Time, the Time which can be recognised by the Universal History of Europe, even by the World's history. That time was oriented from the past to the future, it was dynamic time of changes, which has to compensate the long sleepy period, the long period without one common History. If we try to read the Bulgarian literature from that period, for example, in the terms of time, we'll find that the most frequent words are - "it's time", "wake up!", "deadline", "last moment", etc. It's the eschatological model for the end of time, the expectation of the Great day of Freedom or Judgement.

The melting spot for these different times was the Balkan town. From the very beginning the town was open - to the time, to the space, to the ethnical diversity (in the Balkan case). My second story will be urban.

2. The town is crossroad. The town is the place and stage of changes and communications. The institutions, industry, services and market are in the town. The division of the time, created by modernity, on working and spare "came" for the first time into the town. The precondition for that change was specialisation of the labour. The space was also more strict divided on public and private in the urban zones of the Ottoman Empire. The common place for the different people, for different identities, for strangers and locals, the townsman and villagers was market place.

The market places and urban square on the Balkans can also have their own micro-history. They played very important role for communication and modernisation not inside and outside the borders of the Empire. The market places had their own organisation - subordination of the function of different subjects, some kind of ethnic specialisation of the crafts for example Turkish, Armenians, Jews, Bulgarians, Albanians etc. Here I’ll accept market place as place for trade, services and crafts. Usually inns surrounded those kinds of places for strangers and travellers. They were created on the roads and on the crossroads.

The social relations are the most visible into the market place. The urban centre with the market place, the inns (caravan sarai), the temples and the buildings of urban autorirties and places of entertainment forms the public space of the town. Here is the stage of public opinion, news, information, and technological innovations. One of the most important characteristics of modernisation is specialisation and division of the labour.

The public space was man's space. The access of the women to it was forbidden, they were excluded from the public life - the separation between public and private space was very strict in late 18 and early 19-th century.

The real power of the women was in the private life – at home and household and in the specific structure the Balkan's family. The women kept the tradition and supported the continuity of the patrimony. The status of the women also was changed with the processes of emancipation, especially from the end of 19-th and the beginning of the 20-th century, but her image as householder, mother and live tradition remained.

3. The story of ethnicity, neighborhood and identity. The question of the Balkans identity appeared with discovering the Balkans as the Other Europe. The question of identity became important for the Balkan population in the centuries of the so-called "national revivals".

The project of modernity provoked the efforts of creation and building the national identities of the Balkan’s population. On one hand it was change in the geographic map of the region, and a real process of creation of the borders and reorganisation of the space, on the other. The citizens who lived in the "global" Ottoman Empire didn’t know the borders. All of them were "millet". They knew their different nearer and more distant neighbours. The independence of the new states brought their new neighbourhood. The images of "others" had different connotations and marks, they were evaluated in different ways. Turkey remained villain, the other Christian states were brothers. That brotherhood was destroyed by Balkan wars.

An important mechanism for creation of self-identification is turning to the past and composing the ethnogeneological myths. For the Christians the origins of the ethnos were found in the Universal "Genesis" of the mankind – in the Holly Bible. Another version is to look for them in very ancient civilizations and to stress on the continuity and glorify the past. Any Balkan new nation tried to find its own unique identity as creating the positive image of it and ignore and even reject the importance of the "others ".

The most important marks of ethnocentric national identity of the new Balkan states were the language, the religion and ethnicity. The contributions of those ideas were possible because of modern education and communications.

4. The story of the new Balkan languages, education and literature. The attempts for unification of the dialectical diversity of the Balkan languages were preconditioned by need of language for education, on one hand, and battle between different ideas about creation of identity, on the other. In the Greek case the modern language was based on ancient past, the choice of Serbia was contemporary level of the language, in Bulgaria it was compromise between past and presence. Romania made her choice for the Latin alphabet as a sign of belonging not to the Balkan but to the Roman family. In the beginning of the 20-th century Turkey also made its "European choice" – it choose Latin alphabet too. Those changes were linked with the changes in policy of religion.

The modern literature was born in the schools. In Bulgarian case the firs teachers were the firs poets and novelists. The creation of the National canon of literature was in a pedagogical framework and background. The national canons appeared after the independence re-thought and re-wrote the past. They created their lists of national heroes and events, they included only Great examples and events and glorified their own History.

Meglena Zlatkova