[I don't have any digital pictures from my trip but I found a few to give you an idea of what a beautiful country Bulgaria is]
It was a kind of surreal feeling sitting there in such a familiar place realizing I really was not sure what I was getting into. I never had any doubts about going but I remember the old military saying, hope for the best but plan for the worst. In my mind the worst-case scenario was Ralisa and her friends would not show up at the airport to meet me for whatever reason. Then I would be stuck in a strange city knowing only a few words of the local language alone. I figured I would manage this somehow if it happened. I also talked to another close friend, Ward, who had enough money to come get me if necessary. Ward would not have left me hanging there. He had always come through whenever needed. If we spend time listening to our fears, letting them grow uncontrollably we would never get anything done. I wasted no time on worrying about being kidnapped, shot by drug running terrorists or falling and bumping head. All these are possible but I thought highly unlikely. I spent the last day before I was to leave cruising around my hometown in my rickety old 1963 Cadillac. Somehow I realized I would not see it quite the same way again after his trip. I knew this trip could be a life-changing event and in many ways it was. It is not necessary to chronicle the entire trip day by day but rather share the feel of what was going on and what I was learning. Let’s pick the story back up at the airport on that warm afternoon.
I walked with Ralitsa, Vladi and Ganadi outside into the late afternoon sun. We piled into it Ganadi’s car, an older small Russian model. It was a faded yellow and looked like it had been around the world several times. Ganadi had named it “ The Yellow submarine” after the old Beatles song. Shortly after getting in the car Vladi asked me about my impression of his country so far.
“Does this look like Ghetto?” His question caught me a little off guard.
“No man,” I told him “It reminded me of Southern California.” which was true.
The weather was perfect and the dry hills around Sofia reminded me of being in San Diego. This explained the brown look from above. One could easily tell some of the people may have poor but it felt nothing like a ghetto. There were no bars on windows, small angry groups standing around and guns seemed to be very rare. In fact this may not have been the case but more on that later. During the time I was there, that funny car did great carrying the four of us all over the country. I'll never forget the trip and especially the first road trip in “The Yellow Submarine.”
Not too far out of Sofia as we were getting to know each other, we began to talk about the end of the Cold War how much things had changed.
“Just a few years ago Paul, if the police caught us with you in the car, we would all be going to jail.” Ralitsa said.
“For a long time.” Vladi added.
After all, at one time I was a “bad guy” American. I'm glad things changed. I thought it was really cool to go to a place not many others here would have gone to. The people there looked similar to me, your basic white people. If I did not open my mouth, I think I could pass for a local. Looking back on it I guess my new friends were not sure what they were in for either. What would they do had I turned out to be an American asshole or needed much more help than they had bargained for? Knowing what I know now, they would have still taken good care of me but we would have had a lot less fun.
Two hundred miles on a well-maintained interstate are not the same as two hundred miles across Bulgaria. At first it looked like we were taking a modern highway but that changed quickly. We got twenty or thirty miles out of Sofia and the road quickly narrowed to just two lanes, one for each direction. The road was not bad just small and curvy. It took over half the night to get back to Varna. Along the way Ralitsa pointed out some gypsies and told me how the government was still working to get them to join the modern world. They were very, very poor and even a little dangerous was the impression I got. We stopped at a roadside café to get a bite to eat. I ordered a chicken taco. It was good but there was only one small piece of chicken under much lettuce and cheese. Soon we were the only people on the road.
“Not many people travel at night.” Ralitsa told me. On the road there was only us, and the occasional large truck.
There was a bright almost full moon and countless stars over black mountains. It was one of the most beautiful nights I had ever seen. Here I was riding along in the middle of an unknown foreign country in the middle of the night with three strangers! Man, what a scary, nervous and exciting feeling. Around one or two in the morning we finally arrived.
We had to wake up the owner of the hotel to let us in. It was a small locally owned hotel called the Acropolis. I don't think it had too many rooms but it did have a nice restaurant. My room was up a small flight of steps that was not too bad to negotiate. The room itself was large and quite nice. Best of all, there was no tub to deal with, just a nice large walk in shower. I called Ward first to let him know I had made it and was being well taken care of by my new friends. There was no need to mount a full blown extraction operation. I admit being in the middle of a strange new country for the first time on my own unnerved me a little. The first night I did not sleep well. Were some dudes going to crawl in through the open window and get me?
The next morning Ralitsa, Vladi and Ganadi came to pick me up. We spent the first day tooling around Varna. The streets are narrow and there is a fair amount of trash like most any sizable city. The other drivers seemed sane enough and the rules of the road seemed pretty close to what we have here in the United States. I was there in late summer and it was very comfortable in the seventies with little or no humidity. Varna is a truly beautiful city dating back to ancient Greece and Rome. It is a combination of old classical and Soviet style apartment and office buildings. The traffic consisted of almost anything you can imagine on wheels from people on bikes, donkey drawn carts, large trucks, SUVs, small old cars and a few very expensive BMWs and Mercedes throw in for good measure. The only bad thing was getting stuck behind ancient diesel city buses. When they would start to move from a traffic light or accelerate a huge black cloud of diesel fumes would engulf The Yellow Submarine. Ralitsa told me the old buses were “donated” from rich western countries. But there is so much more to any city than roads and traffic.
The food was fantastic! I think Greece and Bulgaria share the same cookbook. Lunch and dinner always started off with a shopski salad. This consisted of delicious ground white cheese over lettuce and vegetables with a tasty olive oil. The other essential for each lunch and dinner was Rakia. This is the national drink of Bulgaria. It is very strong like vodka but unlike vodka tastes damn good. I come from a family of drinkers, have many drinking friends and a long history of drinking. I consider myself able to handle my booze for the most part but quickly realized I was now among true professional drinkers. I think any of the three of them could have easily drunk me under the table, including Ralitsa. Fortunately, I was not unwise enough to try.
Vladi warned me. “Paul, rakia is very strong.. Drink slow.”
I took my host’s advice seriously. They were doing a great job of helping me and the last thing I wanted to do was make their job worse by getting too drunk to walk. So I had a shot of rakia and switched to Astika, a local beer. Ralitsa, Vladi, and I would get a nice buzz going but not Ganadi. Now don't get me wrong, he liked to drink as much as the rest of us but Bulgaria has no tolerance for drunk driving. Getting caught there means a minimum two-year prison sentence period. They do not have Nixon vacation style prisons either. Many places we ate and drank were outside. Stray cats would wander around looking for handouts. I found out they could pick up English pretty fast. Fortunately, only gave one or two cats small handouts. Later I was told by one of my hosts it was pretty offensive to give food to stray animals. Bulgaria is a poor country and not many can afford to eat in restaurants. One should not waste food on strays when there are people barely scraping by. Those who do are the real “bad guys”, Mafia types who flaunt their cash but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
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