Bulgaria Revisited

Well, I have arrived at last at my Bulgarian mountain bolthole. I must say that it feels pretty good, sitting here with a fire crackling away in the battered old woodstove and a glass of rakija to warm my insides. Outside the early evening sky is irredeemably gloomy and there are clouds of dense white mist hanging low over the hills that enclose this end of the valley, blurring the bare tops of the beech and oak trees picketing the slopes. According to the thermometer on the wall the temperature out there is a neat minus four degrees, which apparently is about average for this time of the year. It’s worth noting, too, that the air is absolutely still and there is not a sound to be heard anywhere. This could take some getting used to.

I enjoyed an excellent journey here. Drinks were served on the plane, so I arrived in Sofia in good shape. I had learned from previous experience that one doesn’t employ any of the shady-looking taxi drivers hovering around the airport exit. Instead one lines up at a desk where a representative from a reputable company phones a taxi for one. I did this only to discover a slight hitch – namely, that in my haste in booking a room at Athens airport, I had neglected to note down the address. Thus when the woman behind the desk, who had the kooky good manners and big, dyed red hair of a character on an American sitcom, asked me where I wanted to go, I had to admit that I didn’t quite know.

The woman knitted her manicured brows. But then I said that I recalled the name ‘Ivan Vazov’, whereupon her brows unknitted and her eyes lit up. ‘I think you’re staying at my place,’ she said.

While I waited for the woman to book me a taxi, I checked my emails using the free airport Wi-Fi. There, among several other emails from Airbnb, I found directions to the apartment that ran to five paragraphs and exhibited a sinister complexity reminiscent of a sixties-era spy novel set behind the Iron Curtain. I didn’t exactly have to knock three times anywhere, or remember a code or a password, but, even so, I left the airport feeling as though the night had taken a decidedly rum turn.

The run into the city proved straightforward enough. But when we turned into Ulitsa Ivan Vazov and began bumping along an unpaved, dimly lit street lined by tall brownstone buildings, the atmosphere immediately turned noir-ish. Peering through the windshield and mumbling to himself, the driver eventually located the arts supplies shop called ‘Sunflower’ that was mentioned in the directions. But this was only the initial clue and from here, what’s more, I was on my own.

The trail ran hot and cold, and involving passing through creaky gates, knocking on wrong doors, and traversing areas of total darkness, before I finally found myself climbing a winding staircase to the second-floor ‘Be My Guest Hostel’ – this, too, had been mentioned in the instructions. My knock on the scarred and poster-bespattered wooden door was circumspect, as befitted the tone of the evening. So I was somewhat disappointed when, moments later, the door opened to reveal, not the Third Man, but a trio of young backpackers drinking beer and playing some kind of board game. They greeted me as backpackers in the initial stages of inebriation will – with grunts, hesitant grins, and, in the case of one fellow, the civilised offer of a beer. More importantly, they were able to provide me with the key to my apartment, which turned out to lie behind the black-painted steel door downstairs.

Open opening the door I stepped into a funny little place. The apartment had been advertised as sleeping six people, which it may well have done – there were indeed half a dozen foam mattresses arranged on two separate mezzanine floors, one at each end of the long, narrow, and exceedingly high room. One of the mezzanine floors had a nautical theme, enclosed by a plywood barrier in which portholes had been cut and being otherwise equipped with a mast and rigging and a canvas sail strung across the ceiling. The effective was impressive and I was quite taken with it, but I decided against sleeping up there after noticing that the floor was accessed by a ladder. This, I calculated, might prove tricky after half a bottle of wine or so.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because I haven’t mentioned that the apartment was quite dark until, venturing inside, I switched on a couple of lights. That’s when I noticed the empty pizza box and a full ashtray which someone had left on the kitchen bench. It was a nice touch, lacking only a handwritten note saying, ‘Hi, welcome to Sofia. Enjoy your stay!’

But maybe whoever had left that stuff was in a hurry? It’s always helpful, I find, if you can keep an open mind about such things.

Speaking of hurrying, I was feeling pretty keen to locate some food and drink. My budget had taken a hammering in Athens, so I decided to eat in if possible. To that end I retraced my steps back into Ulitsa Ivan Vasov and set off along the footpath in search of some kind of shop. I passed a couple of inviting bars and a nice-looking restaurant offering, as the menu posted outside informed me, delicacies such as leek and potato soup and roast lamb. It sounded like just the thing on an icy winter’s night, in an unfamiliar city, but… ‘Get behind me, Satan,’ I murmured, just loud enough to be overheard by a pair of fashionable young women clattering expertly along the non-existent pavement in knee-high boots, who gave me a puzzled look before striding on with a shake of their immaculately coiffed and expensively perfumed heads.

I continued, undaunted, to the end of the street, where I bumped into a young man carrying a glossy yellow plastic shopping bag with something written upon it in red. Curious, I asked him whether he knew if there was a supermarket nearby. Without hesitation he pointed down the street.

People are surprised when they learn of the enthusiasm with which I enter supermarkets these days. What they don’t realise is that if you live predominantly on remote islands or in lofty mountain eyries, as I tend to do, simple things like finding a wide range of food assume a heightened significance. This was my first encounter with Billa, Bulgaria’s premier supermarket chain, and I’m not ashamed to admit that it was love at first sight.

In no time at all, wandering ecstatically down the shop’s spotless and well-organised aisles, I filled my red plastic trolley with serrano ham from Spain, brie cheese from France, olive oil from Italy, Kerrygold butter from Ireland, yogurt from Greece, sardines from Russia, and, just to show I had nothing against the Bulgarians, a bottle of mavrud red wine from Asenovgrad on the edge of the Rhodopes. By the time I reached the checkout – staffed, I might add, by an unimpressed-looking matron – I had stars in my eyes.