Bourgas, Bulgaria
14 September 2000
I just got back from Sunny Beach, Bulgaria (it’s called something like Slunchev Bryak in Bulgarian, and it’s near Bourgas). It only cost me the price of the cheap charter flight from Moscow because (1) Drago’s parents treated me to everything, and (2) it was a moot point anyway since stupid me, thinking, “Oh, it’s Eastern Europe, they’re all pretty much the same,” brought only rubles with me, and the exchange desk lady in Bulgaria looked at me like I was nuts when I tried to exchange them for Bulgarian Leva. Apparently they are now tied to the Deutschmark and will have nothing to do with the ruble. My last line of defense, the good ole ATM card, was also useless--no ATMs for hundreds of miles.
But despite currency and tourism ties with Germany, the economy is so depressed that Drago’s parents, who both have high-level government jobs, pull in about $10,000 per year combined. They live quite well for Bulgarians and have a newish Ford car and three apartments. Hotel rooms were around $4 for a single person in a room, and the room Drago and I got, with a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and balcony, cost around $16 per night. Of course they charge much more if you are foreign, but this was a mainly Bulgarian hangout, and I kept my mouth shut and they didn’t ask questions.
I flew into Bourgas and met Drago and his parents at the airport. Drago gave me a rose and a hug and introduced me to his parents, Irina and Mitku (short for Dmitri), and their two poodles, Sophia and Assia. His mother was very quick and expansive, and his father liked to make sly jokes. Both had quick, intelligent eyes and a wicked sense of humor. They spoke only a little more English than I spoke Russian, which wasn't much, so Drago translated for us. We were able to laugh at each other’s jokes, which speaks well of his translating abilities and how funny his parents were.
These are some of the differences I noticed between Bulgaria and Russia. One, the language. Russian and Bulgarian have a lot in common except for the most common words, so everyday speech is hard to understand for Russians. In Bulgarian, yes is “da”, no is “ne” (or usually, “ne ne ne”), and thank you is “merci” which is strange at first. I think they are the only country in the world that shakes their head “yes” and nods their head “no”. It’s very confusing. And they don’t take rubles. And all I’ve seen of Russia is the biggest city, so I don’t know much about the countryside, but the countryside of Bulgaria is largely agricultural and good for raising goats. About 1/3 of it is mountainous. I saw the beginning of the Balkan Mountains at the seaside.
Every restaurant has a little band of a guitar and keyboard and someone singing cheesy American songs like Sweet Home Alabama or Mambo Number Five or Love Me Tender. And it's all in surprisingly good (but occasionally strange) English.
I found out that Bulgarians love Alf and Perfect Strangers. Apparently when the Bulgarians dub over Perfect Strangers, Balky doesn’t have an accent anymore, so they assume he’s just the dumb American and make fun of him. They don’t realize the whole reason we think he is funny is because he is from some bass-ackwards Eastern European goat-raising country no one has ever heard of.
People dress much the same in Bulgaria as in Russia, but not as understated or formal (and I guess I was at a resort town most of the time, so I can’t say much), but everyone wears jewelry, and people seem to enjoy being noticed and dressing well. The younger women are gazelles, very tall and skinny, especially the dancers at the restaurant we went to. And I ate more feta cheese in three days than I’d eaten before in my entire life, which is apparently normal there. For breakfast one morning I had only a big cake of feta covered in another kind of cheese with tomatoes and cucumbers on the side. It was tasty.
The weather was close to perfect. It was about 65-75 degrees, and the Black Sea was a crystal blue-green and warm enough to swim in. The waves were less than two feet tall, but enough to body surf a little. We jumped in the waves and walked along the beach and rented a pedal boat and took it out to where it was 8 feet deep or so and dove off it. It was really fun to walk along the beach and people-watch. Old women, young women, old men, young men, big people, little people, kids and teenagers, all proudly displaying their bodies of all shapes and sizes (speedos for men and topless women were the norm, as well as completely naked if you were under five years old) was a nice contrast to Americans, who apparently feel more of a need to hide.
After that we met Drago’s parents for dinner. We went to an outdoor place where they sold traditional Bulgarian dishes, and I had some lamb. Drago’s parents ordered me a shot of rakia and some red wine (rakia is Bulgaria’s national liquor, made with things like white grapes. I think it’s stronger, and definitely more tasty, than vodka) (and don’t worry, Mom, I am of legal age in these enlightened parts), as “I Know this Much is True” and “What a Wonderful World” played in the background.
We had planned on going back to the room and then out for a walk, but after getting up at 6:00 in the morning to catch the metro to catch the bus to catch the plane, travelling and swimming all day, and drinking an albeit small amount of alcohol, I passed out as soon as I hit the bed, so the day was over. But it was an awesome day.
Friday morning we woke up and had breakfast with his parents and the poodles and talked about various things. We swam on the beach some more and then all drove to the ancient island town of Neseber (Neh-SEH-ber). It was an old Byzantine fortress town, and there were still remnants of ancient temples and walls and a small ancient church that was being used as a local art gallery. There were shops all around and people trying to sell things like silver necklaces and traditional headgear and wooden spoons and fruit. His parents found out that I wanted to find a nice silver necklace since they were so cheap here (In America, you pay for shipping, taxes, rent for the store, labor, craftsmanship, utility for the store, etc. In Bulgaria, you pay for the silver, since the other stuff is not expensive because “time is not precious in Bulgaria” as Drago says. I notice that about Russia, too. When people make $140 a month, and they get paid regardless of how well they do their job, lines don’t move fast and nobody really cares). They wanted to buy me a silver necklace, but I felt bad because they had done so much for me already. And of course, you all know me, I couldn’t find just the right one, and didn’t want to spend their money on something I didn’t like, so I put it off until the next day.
After the island town, we headed to the Bulgarian restaurant that we couldn’t get to the night before because it was too crowded by German tourists. Tonight we heard there was going to be a cultural show.
Since we were only four sitting at a table for six, a German couple was put at our table to fill the remaining two seats. They were kind of awkward and didn’t talk much, while we’re talking up a storm, but we finally chatted with them a little. They spoke only German, and everyone spoke just a little French, Spanish, etc., so there were a lot of languages flying around trying to get ideas across, not very successfully.
By the time we’d finished our meals of baked crockery bowls full of feta cheese and tomatoes and sausage and spices, a lot of other foods I can’t remember, and our red wine and rakia, it was time for the cultural show to begin. The warm up act was a Bulgarian woman in a tight black dress singing Patsy Cline's “Crazy”, then a round of “Stand By Your Man.” I thought, well, it’s somebody’s culture anyway. Maybe it’s Oklahoma Night at the Bulgarian Inn.
Then a couple of Bulgarian men in traditional dress came out and danced around while twirling red napkins and kicking and whistling as the accordian sang. Soon two women came out, and they all performed kind of a dance narrative which reminded me of something we’d see at Silver Dollar City in Arkansas, except it was Bulgarian.
Then, to continue the night of high culture, four tall skinny women came out in beaded bikinis and huge feather headdresses and pranced around as the synthesizer bleated out the theme from the original Star Trek. Following that inspiring act was an embarassingly bad plate spinner, then the four girls danced again, this time dressed like devils, then a contortionist came out who must have been born without ribs because she could do really bizarre things. Then the girls came out and danced with some other costumes, then the plate spinner came out and did a fire blowing show that would not be allowed anywhere in America due to fire codes. Little pieces of fuel would hit the ground and burn for a while before they burnt out. Then the girls again, then some Bulgarian clowns who were just bizarre, there’s no other word for it. Then the girls danced again and that was enough culture for one night.
The band soon began playing more cheesy American dance songs, and we all went out and waltzed and did some swing and two-step with all the German couples. We also danced to a couple of slow songs, including “Wonderful Tonight,” and then went back to the hotel.
We slept in the next morning and then walked along the beach and swam some more. After that we drove to a nearby fishing village, which Drago said was sort of like his high school home town of Haskovo. We went to the town center, which was somewhat more westernized and had shops and cafes and things. Towering above the children's store was a large, unfinished building which Drago said was being constructed when Communism fell. Because of inefficiences and other problems, many buildings during the Communist regime took several years or even decades to build. When Communism fell during the construction of this particular building, no one cared or had the money to finish it or destroy it, so it was still sitting there, half finished, a monument to the Soviet system and its legacy.
I finally found a silver necklace I liked in a booth run by one of the street vendors in the square, and they bought it for me along with a little aquarious pendant. We went to one of the cafes and had coffee and Bulgarian cakes of all sorts and talked. One story Drago told was of the vicious mean smart dog he used to have, another poodle, who was master of the house for a long while. She protected her masters viciously, and she would also attack strangers for no reason, but she was such an interesting and smart dog that they kept her around. Then one day grandma came to visit. She got in the car, in the front seat where the dog usually sat, and the dog was quite indignant. She stood before the intruder and growled a warning that she had better get out of the doggy seat. Well, not only did she not get out of the seat, she tried to shoo the dog away! The dog, appalled, bit Grandma about five times up and down her arm until she ran from the car screaming. She wasn’t hurt too badly, but you should have seen Drago and his dad laughing at the cafe.
After that we walked to the older part of town. First we walked to the fishing port, where a few people were fishing with various homemade sinkers and bobbers. It reminded me of fishing on grandpa’s pond using sticks for poles and bobbers. An old green boat was moored in the distance, and under its Bulgarian name in huge letters it read “UNITED COLORS OF BENNETON.” I had never heard of the place before, but apparently it is a clothing store giant much like the GAP. I wondered who the hell they were advertising to. It seemed crazy and led me to believe that all this expansionist imperialist capitalism will have to reach saturation soon, and that seemed to foretell a bleak picture for the interestingness of the world of the future.
We then walked to the more residential part of town and found some houses with the distinctive Bulgarian look of having an upstairs that juts over the downstairs and out over the street. Some houses looked like they were made of spit and splinters while others were relatively new and nice. We passed some old women who were rapidly picking white grapes from vines and putting them in big buckets, and I asked Drago if they were making wine. He asked the women in Bulgarian, and they said, “Ne, rakia.” Later we also passed some Gypsies chopping firewood close to some old Byzantine ruins. Many people are wary of Gypsies in Bulgaria and elsewhere, and Drago hesitated to pass them (probably also because wood chips were flying), but they stopped their chopping and signalled for us to pass. I noticed that many of them had very dark skin and hair but pale, sometimes light blue, eyes.
Later that night we had Bulgarian food again and the requisite red wine and rakia, and his parents told me a story about their methods of learning English. More and more kids today are exposed to English words and the Latin alphabet, and now the graffiti is replete with many “F**K YOU”s. Drago’s mom said, “Yeah, all the walls say ‘f**k you’ now, all of them, ‘f**k you, f**k you’ and I’m hoping they will learn more so they can write more, and that way I can start learning the alphabet better.” It was pretty funny.
And that’s about it for my taste of the good life in Bulgaria. The next morning we got up and took one more swim in the Black Sea and tried out some local water slides for a couple of leva each. I slid down once on my stomach, but the joints in the slide kept bumping my hip bones, so I tried to lift them up, but then it kept hitting my knees and so on. Oh well. Drago and I saw a lot of dead jellyfish washed up on the shore as we walked along the beach, huge and clear and substantial, but apparently they have shortish tentacles and don’t sting too badly. Soon it was time to meet up with his parents and go to the airport. Drago and I said tearful and lingering good-byes, and I flew away once again.
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