Bulgaria
Varna: A Rest By the Beach
After an extremely ambitious travel schedule from Berlin to Bucharest, Caleb and I both needed a rest. Caleb tends to need about 11-12 hours of sleep to function well. I have farming and trip documenting to do, as well as a few other home related household tasks. Stephanie has been a great help in coordinating some of those things while I have been gone, but it still takes some time and energy. Another thing I did not really consider is that it takes a significant amount of time not only to plan out our visits at each stop, but also to investigate and work the logistics for each travel leg. Somebody has to decide where to stay, how to get where we are going, and then to get the reservations made and tickets bought. Some attractions also require tickets. Then, after you have planned and coordinated all of this for multiple destinations, you still have to keep track of where you stored all of the information, how to access the tickets or reservations, and whether or you have already paid, or just booked the stay. It’s a lot to keep track of. All of this takes away from the time you have to enjoy what you have come so far to see. This is why a trip like this is probably best allocated about nine months, rather than three and a half. But three and a half was what we had to work with.
Fortunately, there isn’t all that much to see at Varna, Bulgaria. It is a resort town on the Black Sea coast. Bulgaria has gained a reputation as an inexpensive European beach destination. The two most famous resort areas are Sunny Beach, near the town of Burgas, and Golden Sands, near Varna. I chose to spend a few days at Golden Sands. It was billeted as the more family oriented destination. Older visitors prefer Golden Sands. Sunny Beach is the busier, party destination. If I had it to do over, I probably would have gone to Sunny Beach, not because I wanted to party, but because there is also a major Byzantine city and fortress you can explore while you are there. The resort area looked a little bit nicer as well.
(Continued)
Golden Sands was a relaxing stop. Our AirBnB was less than $40/night, but this was partly because it was about 2 miles from the main resorts. There was another beach nearer our room. In fact, our beach was less expensive and less busy. Many of the beaches here are free to use, but with a caveat. Resorts and restaurants have claimed nearly all of the area right in front of the actual coastline. They have placed umbrellas and beach chairs all along there that you must pay about $6 to use. “Fine,” I thought, “I don’t need a chair. I just came to take Caleb swimming.” I found a couple of places where you could set your own towel, but they were behind all of the chairs and umbrellas so that you couldn’t keep an eye on your belongings. This as fine if you had nothing with you but a towel and shoes, but if you brought your wallet, phone, and keys, it wasn’t a completely stress free beach visit. We figured this out and tried not to bring anything we really had to keep an eye on.
After getting into the water for a few minutes, I quickly lose interest with beach swimming. I love swimming, but I always have done it for exercise. If there are no lanes and ropes, my swimming timer expires quickly. Caleb didn’t mind spending hours at a time splashing in the waves. Before too long, we worked out a system where I would assign him an area to stay in, then walk up and down the beach and the shops exploring. The system worked well, and we were never unintentionally separated.
One day we went to the main resort area of Golden Sands. They of course had a lot fancier shops selling more expensive trinkets. There were small imitations of the London Eye and the Eiffel Tower. Caleb thought these were quite silly, having recently seen the real things. I found this area a little more attractive, partly because there were a few more things to do. Caleb preferred our local beach, as the water access was better and the undertow was not so strong. We went to Caleb’s preferred beach most of the time.
We enjoyed the Bulgarian cuisine. In most areas we had been to recently, the food had only modest differences from one place to the next. This trend continued. We began to see more Middle Eastern food influences as we neared that part of the world. There had been a medieval Bulgarian kingdom, but for centuries Bulgaria was ruled by the Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire was broken up after World War I. Bulgaria then was involved in the almost perpetual Balkan conflicts of the 20th century. Eventually, they suffered the same fate as the rest of Eastern Europe, being dominated by the Soviet Union from World War II until the end of the Cold War. The long period of Ottoman domination left a positive mark on Bulgarian food. We especially like the Burek, a light, flaky pastry that can be filled with any number of savory meat or cheese fillings.
(Continued)
Bulgaria introduced us to Balkan bus etiquette. All of the major bus companies promise air conditioning, good WiFi, clean toilets, and the ability to freely eat on long bus trips. The task of cleaning the buses apparently falls on the drivers. The drivers, then, almost always come up with some way to prevent use of the lavatory. Either they fill it with freight to the point that it’s unusable, or they just keep it locked. They post signs everywhere forbidding eating, and verbally threaten you if they see you bring food aboard. They have a more difficult time enforcing that one. We have been on enough buses in this part of the world to see, now, that these food and bathroom practices are about universal. We have not seen WiFi on a bus since Slovakia, either.
The Bulgarian bus company did have one other interesting feature – a small compartment behind the steps leading to the middle of the bus that I first thought must be for carrying pets. It was just big enough to lay down in. It was really a kind of below-the-deck cave. It turned out this was for the spare driver. On long trips, the drivers are time limited, so they switch out, and the off duty driver is relegated to this cave to try and rest. It doesn’t seem very restful. In one case, an irate German woman had missed her stop. She had apparently asked the driver to let her know when she was supposed to get off. It was a full bus, and the drivers were switching off. Somehow this notification did not happen and the German lady had now passed her stop and was now traveling away from her intended destination. She began yelling in ever increasing volume at the driver. Eventually, the irate lady was sent back to the driver in the cave, who must have been the captain of the drivers. She continued yelling at him until everyone in the bus was uncomfortably aware of her issue. She screamed at him that he must call a cab at his own personal expense to take her back where she wanted to go. He tried to calm her. Eventually, he barked something back at her in Bulgarian. She then laughably yelled at the off duty driver to calm down. Eventually, the captain driver ordered the bus to stop and opened the side door. He beckoned the lady off. She was now reluctant to go. The driver told her he had called her a cab. She tentatively marched out and stood by the side of the Turkish equivalent of an interstate to wait for her cab. I have no idea if a cab had been ordered or not. He may have just told her this to get her to voluntarily dismount. It was what she had demanded, afterall. I don’t think there was anyone on the bus who was sad to see her leave, whether or not she had a cab coming.
In some ways, Bulgaria reminded me of Costa Rica. It isn’t quite as cheap as it should be, but it has some nice beaches. There is plenty of poverty right next to some very nice resort destinations. Bulgaria has no cloud forests or volcanoes, but it is a pretty nice discount beach destination. I would have preferred a few more historical sites. We would have plenty of that sort of thing in Istanbul, however. For now, we needed to get caught up on our rest and I needed to catch up on work. It was a good stop.
