9/09/2008

How to ruin a perfectly fine place

Last July I travelled to Bulgaria, as a friend of mine was holidaymaking over there and I thought it would be fun to drop by. After sleeping off the hangover from the Gentse Feesten (see previous post) I continued on to Brussels and Paris and took a snail munchers flight (Air France, the bastards that took over our national pride, the KLM) from there to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

The beautiful Bulgarian countryside

After arriving in Sofia, I took a train all the way across the country to Burgas in order to end up about 40 clicks south of there in the holiday resort called Sunny Beach. The fact that the place only had an English name should've been a sign on the wall, but after the travel ordeals from the days before I didn't quite put 1 and 1 together.


Did I mention it was beautiful?

Sunny Beach is an absolutely fucking horrible place. It's filled with cheap apartment complexes and resorts, aimed at the package holiday people from Holland, Britain, Scandinavia and, sadly, Russia. Now those people aren't usually the friendliest, civillized people but this was really something.

Delapitated Soviet-era industries are found throughout the countryside

Upon arrival, I went out with my friends to a place called "the Flying Dutchman". Uh oh.
The place was filled with Dutch working-class proletariat aged 16-23 gulping down huge quantities of lager. The joint played only the worst of the worst of Dutch-language music and of course everybody sung along until their lungs bursted. Now I'm no clubber, or good at drinking for that matter. That being said, I quickly realised I had to get drunk and stay drunk in order to retain at least some appreciation of the place.

Sign in Sunny Beach, "be happy in Bulgaria". Sure, any other place in Bulgaria would do just fine.

How unlike the rest of Bulgaria.

The group of people I visited took a package holiday and were flown in by charter flight to Burgas airport. By taking the train across the country I got a view of the real Bulgaria that most people at Sunny Beach don't even know existed.
The countryside is beautiful, with endless sunflower fields, mountains, sleepy villages and old fashioned sheperds who actually wove as the train passed by. Truly another century.

The sunflower fields

Apart from that the countryside is also poor as hell. In Georgia I've seen a horse cart once. In Bulgaria it seems to be the preferred method of transport.
I seriously don't know what this country is doing in the EU. It seemed poorer and less developed than the Ukraine or Georgia.

NOW I'm feeling at home :)

The Sunny Beach resort was filled with gypsies and other kinds of scum trying to rip off western tourists. Literally everybody tried to rip you off with something there. Taxi's were even more expensive than in Holland. In Sofia taxi's are metered and charge 0,70 Lev for a kilometer (about 0,35 euro's). But in Sunny Beach you'd pay 30 Lev for a three mile ride down to the clubs (about 15 euro's).

Interior of a really cool beach club in Sunny Beach, for some reason most western tourists went 'downtown' to the clubs instead of this chilled-out place with waitresses straight out of a fashion magazine.

Some 2 days after my arrival we went to a place called the "Heineken House". The name sounded alarming but I chose to tag along anyway. The name didn't say too much - it was exactly as I imagined it to be. Hordes of drunken Dutch, Dutch beer and Dutch music. Geez.

My 'fellow' countrymen enjoying their holidays at the "Heineken House"

After three days I had enough and went out. The last day was nice actually, going to the beach located a mere 800 meters from the apartment building (for some reason the people at the apartment hadn't found this beach in the 10 days they were there already). I love the Black Sea. It doesn't have any decent waves, but the water is very warm and slightly less salty than other seas making it excellent for swimming.


The beach, with a view on a peninsula with a semi-authentic town

Taking a domestic flight from Burgas to Sofia with a stopover in Varna I connected to the AirSnailmunchers flight back to Paris, in order to miss my connection at CDG and not being helped a single inch further by the airline staff. When I informed the flight attendant (some really creepy French dude) that I was about to miss my connection he just said 'ai ai ai' and continued walking down the aisle.


Now this is what Bulgaria looks like

Air France, I will never set foot on any of your crappy flights again. And keep those paws off KLM.

Just for the record, and for the sake of not pissing off the group of people whose hospitality I enjoyed; I really did have fun. Definately a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Good to experience it once, but I'll never do it again.

1 comment:

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