Newsletter from
Bulgaria
"The local time is
nineteen twenty and the outside temperature is minus eleven degrees.”
There is a sharp intake of breath all round the plane. Minus eleven!!
Good grief! I cant remember when I last experienced temperatures that
low. In Portugal I have largely been spared the whole grisly business
of minus anything, but over the past few weeks we have had night after
night of frosts, some of them quite severe. And by severe I mean down
to about minus two. In some areas the orange trees have been
devastated. Mine are okay, but the lemon trees look pretty sick and the
bougainvillea has been reduced to a skeleton. The bananas have all had
it, but they keel over when the temperature hits minus 1. But minus 11
is from another planet.
We stand on the runway. The snow is piled up around us in great drifts.
Oh shit! Why didn't I stay at home?
The country at first looks just the way I remember it from the
communist days. We rattle along this great highway (a grand dual
carriageway), which gradually thins down to a single carriageway, and
then stutters into a wonky pot-holed country track. How many times in
the old days have I zoomed along wonderful highways only to wonder a
couple of miles further on what on earth had happened, and where had
the rest of the world gone. We swished thru puddles, we sloshed thru
piles of snow, we skidded on mirrors of ice, and ended up on another
dual carriageway on the other side of town outside a flashy hotel.
There's a central building, another building containing a bar and a
restaurant, and lots of nice little houses dotted around in the snow. I
am in house number 6. I sloshed and skidded my way across the road, and
(according to the map) a lawn and a pond. I couldn't tell the
difference. I was panicking. I remembered old Bulgaria, and how cold
were all the hotels. And I remember the restaurants where I couldn't
understand a thing and the only way we could order food was to wander
round the kitchen lifting lids and peering into pots, and sniffing the
contents. (I'll have some of this pot, and a little of that pot, and
what the fuck is in this pot?? Jesus it smells awful!)
I opened the door and was met with a rug of warm air round my face. Hey
this is nice. I looked round the hall for my door. I had been given a
peculiar hightec key which consisted of some electronic screwdriver
which I poked onto a black pad and some whirring took place and green
lights flashed, and then I opened the door. Inside was warm,
deliciously warm: a nice big double bed, chairs, table, en-suite bath
with shower, etc, heaters everywhere, t.v. and a picture window giving
onto the mountains to the south.
Half an hour later after some serious slithering and sliding we were in
the restaurant. The menu was in cyrillic and English. I started with a
vodka. Bulgarian vodka is rather nice. I really must have another. I do
love vodka. It's a pity you cant get proper vodka in England or
Portugal, only that tasteless mixer muck.
Yes, it really is good, I’ll have another. My friends have ordered a
rather nicely cooked fish covered in a mushroom sauce. I have chicken
in a sauce of honey and raisins. The food is splendid, and there is
enough to feed a regiment. The girl who takes the order is
extraordinarily pretty, the room is deliciously warm, the wine is
rather good as well, and then someone suggests we have some rakia, and
I have another vodka, because I really had better stoke up before
braving the ice to get home again. The bill comes to about £6.
I'm going to like Bulgaria. If I can hack the ice, that is. And if
another waitress smiles at me like that I shall really have to have
that face-lift and hair job. Actually, if I drink much more vodka I
wont need a hair job. It feels thicker already.
I retire to watch t.v. As I dont own a t.v., it is rather a novelty
flicking from station to station. The German movie is a bit slow. CNN
is a bit boring. Bulgarian channel 3 is totally incomprehensible, and
there are ads on the other. The Chinese channel is showing the New Year
celebrations. There are fireworks everywhere, and the show ends with an
amazing water display with fireworks whizzing round in circles on the
surface of the water.
The next morning I pull back the curtains. The sky is an irridescent
blue, and the sun has just risen above the mist that lays across Sofya,
and is spreading a warm glow right across the mountains at the bottom
of my new garden. It's one of those scenes that you absolutely must
photograph, and yet you know a photo will just not catch that glowing
magic.
Breakfast isn't quite the same quality as the meal last night, but I
try a little bit of everything, tho I really do wonder why the egg is
that strange blue color. Ham, various cooked meats, various cheeses and
small bowls of yoghurt, some stodgey bread, some ghastly western
breakfast cereals, fruit juice and milk, yukky tea and yukky coffee,
pressed veggie stuff, and pressed milky stuff -- not sure about
that......
And then it's back on the coach for a trip to the ski resort of
Borovets.
Thru the mountains, past a large lake, there is ice everywhere, fir
trees are covered in snow, mountains are covered in snow. Houses are
hidden in the trees, and then a massive hotel, with icicles hanging
down from the roof: great thick chunks hanging down past seven stories.
To the south a large glazed area with swimming pool and jaccuzzi, and
towering over the pool, the terraces, and the galleried bedrooms, the
ski run filled with people tacking from side to side down the
mountainside. The skis are cheap, the coffees are cheap, the chairs are
covered in fur drapes, there is a loudspeaker in the corner blazing out
an old rock number. Down below are kids hooking up to the ski lifts.
There are narrow streets with shops selling everything, from warm hats
to silly postcards, from designer shades to crummy plimsoles. There is
an internet cafe where I catch up on my work for the equivalent of
about sixty pence. There are chickens on a spit cooking. There are
restaurants everywhere with drinks and food for pennies. I think I will
stay forever and learn to ski.
But I am here to think about starting a business. I am here to consider
making money. I look at the plans for the new ski-runs, and the areas
which may be up for development. I look at the old fish farm in a
clearing among the trees. Yes, I'll invest. I love it. It will be a
monumental success. Count me in.
On the way back we get out to take photos of a lake while the wind from
the north savages across the ice and bites into the skin. Five minutes
further down the valley we stop at a restaurant. It is a small
establishment huddled between the hill and the road, surrounded by
trees draped in snow. Inside is a wonderful log fire, roaring from a
great inglenook fireplace, at the back of which is a three-sided
radiator, which feeds the whole house. The logs give out a great burst
of heat, and I settle down to a meal of trout cooked in a local sauce,
more vodka, more rakia, and a bottle of very tolerable white wine. Did
I mention that I like Bulgaria? I'm enjoying it so much I ate pudding
without noticing what it was, but it was nice and went very well with
that glass of sweet wine, which was topped off very nicely by that
extra vodka. Which one did you say was the best? ---- Ah that one.
Okay, I'll have that one...... Ah yes, definitely another rakia. After
all it is bloody cold out there. We need all the fire-water we can take
on board.
Then we drive to the airport where we board a small airbus to take us
to Varna. The airport is like something out of a Graham Greene novel.
There are square offices, looking decidedly commissarish. There is that
strange not quite right look to everything. There is a short length of
carousel, except that it isn't a proper carousel, but a simple twenty
yard length of moving elevator, and if you haven't grabbed your bag
before it gets to the end it will just fall off. Outside are more piles
of snow. This is the first snow for over a hundred years, they say. But
it is four feet high in great swathes and heaps, and the temperature is
so low no-one will admit to us what it actually is. And we have come to
look at a holiday seaside resort called Sunny Beach!
We get stuck behind a stranded car that cant get out of a snow drift so
some of us get of the coach out to push.
The hotel is old. I am sure I have stayed in it before. It has that
great big Russian entrance area where people used to stand about and
ogle each other in the old days. And where girls used to come,
pretending they were delivering messages, And where men used to stand
about outside waiting to sell something, but they weren't allowed in.
I go up in the lift. I walk thru my room onto the tiny balcony, and
then shoot back in again. I have been here before. I remember that
balcony. I was on the fifth floor and the door slammed on me so I
couldn't get back into my room. I spent the first ten minutes of my
time in Varna screaming for someone to rescue me. This time I am on the
tenth floor with the temperature in double digits below. I wedge the
door and look down across the town to the Black Sea, which is seriously
black in the dark. Somewhere out there is a harbour where I first
entered the town on an American privately chartered yacht, with George
from Interpol in Istanbul, and his latest American girlfriend.
Bloody hell it's cold. I come in and bar the door, turn up the heating
and use the loo. Goddamn, it still leaks. There is a stream of water
all across the bathroom. I swear it's the same bloody plumbing from
back in the sixties. I peer into the corridor. There ought to be a big
wrestler of a woman sitting on a chair; the floor-watcher, but there is
no sign of her, or even of a chair. The watchers have gone but the
plumbing remains.
We go out for a meal. We have only gone fifty yards, huddled into
gloves, sweaters, great-coats, scarves. "Shall we go back? I cant
handle this."
"Let's go just a bit further."
"I cant take any more. I've frozen up."
There is an argument. My face feels as if layers have started peeling
off. We should be moving. We will freeze to death if we stop moving.
"Here's the restaurant" someone shouts, and we rush in. There are loads
of girls dressed all in red with short skirts and short socks, showing
those obsessively naked, very cold legs. I stare at the cold legs. They
are inherently sexy, and yet they are also as sexless as milk bottles
as on old friend of mine once said. I stare at the legs of frozen milk
topped by bright red skirts, as they bustle round with menus.
Even in this fast food joint where I choose a salad the food is
splendid and very tasty, and the vodka is jolly good.
Back in my hotel room I watch the cartoon channel, and catch up on some
seriously out of date Scooby-Doo. Then I channel hop and find some
absolutely appalling movie dating back to the fifties. It is in black
and white and is all about the virtues of this cooperative where they
manage to get a brand new tractor. The lead girl drives a motorbike
that looks like the stuff of legends, and the lead boy cycles along on
a push-bike. But the real star is the new tractor. An hour of this
stuff and I am ready to believe anything. At four in the morning I
finally stop fiddling with the buttons, and crash out.
The breakfast is not something one can look forward to, but it is
adequate. Then it's onto the bus, and off to Sunny Beach. The sun tries
to battle its way thru cloud. The temperature fails to go uphill, and
after a lame attempt, it slides back down again.
We stop at a cafe. The vodka is really rather nice. I dont understand
why everyone else is drinking crummy coffee.
Sunny Beach does not look good. No doubt in ten years time this will be
the new Benidorm. Today it is rather sad. The beach is drab and cold
and empty. The town is deserted. There are builders everywhere. The
apartments look fine, but they are all cold and sad. This is not the
time to look at property. It is also rather expensive, and the wind is
cold, and my feet are freezing, and something tells me that another
hundred yards will kill me if I dont have something hot.
Oh please show me to the next vodka bar. Dont ask me why, dont ask me
why. Just show me to the next vodka bar. Or I will surely die. I will
surely die. Instead we go to see another set of apartments. Kurt Weil
would not have approved.
One of the girls who got thoroughly pissed last night, and came home
seriously late in the cold after not eating her dinner, got up rather
late, and missed her breakfast. She is standing by another apartment
block, and then suddenly she keels over, her legs shaking as if she is
overacting some death scene. I stare at this, and suddenly wonder if
people who suddenly die really do shake their legs like that, and
wonder if she has actually died. Surely one doesn't die of alcohol
poisoning that fast. I guess she has run out of heat, and has no energy
left after not eating for 24 hours. She is carried off in an ambulance
to the local hospital.
"Hey Mark, you'll be losing a few more of us if we dont get a meal
pretty soon."
We go to look at another apartment. I get out of the coach. I stand
looking at the building; at the coastline; at the hills. I am not just
cold, I am actually aching with it. I get back on the coach.
An hour later we pull in at a restaurant in a little town on the
isthmus to the south of Sunny Beach. It looks promising. It is warm,
the waitresses look sweet, the food is bound to be good, I'm sure there
are simply gallons of vodka behind the counter. I shoot off to do a
speed-trip round the old town taking photos seriously fast before the
darkness closes in around us. And then back into the restaurant for a
ridiculously late lunch. It must be five o'clock by the time we tuck in
to some locally caught fish. It is delicious. Are all the meals this
good in Bulgaria? The wine is okay, the vodka is really rather nice.
The loo is a hole in the floor. (No, I've got that wrong, the hole in
the floor was at the restaurant yesterday, and if you were foolish
enough to lug at the chain the water shot out and went all over your
shoes if you didn't jump pretty damn fast.) Today's loo is blocked. The
water keeps gushing out, and fountains over the edge, and all across
the floor. I turn the stop-tap. Later someone complains that the flush
doesn’t work. But how can you flush a bowl full of bog-paper? And,
ah... I see, that was the lady's loo I used. In that case where is the
gents? And the light doesn't work either. Oh never mind, can I have
another vodka.
It is very late by the time we get back to Varna, but there is plenty
of time to go down the main street for an evening meal. Just opposite
the previous evening's restaurant is a rather nice one that everyone
had turned their nose up at last night. I sit down by the roaring fire.
The rakia arrives. There's one thing I will say about the Bulgarians,
they really do have this keeping-warm thing down to a fine art: mucho
logs, and mucho fire water. Hurrah for the communist planning. And
hurrah for the capitalist twiddly bits. I enjoy the meal so much, and I
try everybody else's as well, and everybody has an amazing meal. The
liver is cooked in a delicious sauce. Pudding is not really necessary,
just pour out another vodka, darling. Hey, that looks nice.
And then we go on to the girlie bar.
I haven't been to one of these places since I was signed to Fresh
Records. It is at the bottom of the regulation set of seedy steps, and
there is this seedy guy standing by a door with peep holes in it. He
lets us in. (But will he let us out again?) There are small tables with
a few chairs and benches along the walls. In front of the tables is a
slightly raised area where the girls are prancing around. Two of them
appear to be totally naked and crawling around on hands and knees
licking each other. The girls at the tables are whooping in
encouragement. It is all terribly silly, or terribly exciting depending
on how much rakya you have drunk.
The girls come and sit on our laps and go into the dancing routine. It
is all rather sweet and nice, but somehow not really sexy, after all,
this isn’t like it was in the pop music business way back when. This is
not a private party where anything goes. This is all rather public and
the girls can only do this here, and that there, and the whole business
is a bit too ordered around the simple old fashioned pastime of
frisking the customers for money; lots of money.
It is three o’clock before I finally trudge through the snow back to
the hotel and lay on the bed to channel-hop. How the West Was Won with
every Hollywood actor on the set, followed by more cartoons. It is
almost daylight before I finally fall asleep for half an hour before
getting up again for breakfast.
Back into the snow. Back to the airport. Back to Sofya. We are looking
at more apartments, and getting less and less enthusiastic. Everyone is
looking forward to lunch, and more rakya, and more vodka. I wonder if I
would drink less vodka if it wasn’t so cold. I wonder if you can drink
limitless amounts of vodka if the temperature is low enough.
And then we are skidding and sliding back to the airport, and a long
flight back to the UK. And for some ridiculous reason I have to drive
all the way to Sunderland, and there isn’t a glass of decent vodka
anywhere in sight.
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