Bulgaria has been named the world's best-value tourist destination. Not only that, but the food is delicious, you can smoke everywhere and even the rabbits are special. Tanya Gold on her heavenly holiday in Varna
Tanya Gold The Guardian, Monday April 21 2008 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday April 21 2008 on p12 of the Comment & features section. It was last updated at 00:04 on April 21 2008. I have taken a holiday to the year 1977. I am in bare, square room in a concrete block, staring past a hungry seagull, out at a vista of cranes, ships and grey water. On the streets outside, everyone is wearing black leather jackets and smoking high-tar cigarettes. Somewhere, Night Fever is echoing.
According to a study by Teletext, this is the best-value holiday money can buy. As a tourist destination, Bulgaria has Spain in a headlock, and has beaten France to a pulp. With the Euro stronger by the day, the Bulgarian lev looks ever more appealing. And then there are the prices. A Bulgarian pint of beer is 49p. A Bulgarian Big Mac is £1. A Bulgarian hotel room is £45. A desirable Bulgarian holiday-home is £12,000.
So what is it like, this former eastern bloc paradise on the Black Sea, squashed between Romania and Turkey? I have come in low season, and I land in Varna, the biggest city on the Bulgarian coast. It looks like Paris spliced with Cardiff - part pleasure resort, part port - all concrete towers, battered villas and barking dogs. It is full of traffic jams and dental surgeries. The men look like James Bond baddies. The women look like Rita from Corrie. They have dyed red hair, and they smoke.
My hotel is a tower block with a neon sign, overlooking the sea. It looks like a council office and smells faintly of cabbage. The carpet has a burst eyeball motif, and the television shows Desperate Housewives in Bulgarian and adverts for inflatable saunas in German. It also shows the Bulgarian version of EastEnders, which seems identical to our EastEnders, except that all the men wear black leather jackets and all the women have dyed red hair. And they all smoke.
The following morning, I go down to the sea. The Black Sea sits in the middle of eastern Europe like a big, fat radioactive lake. Four of the world's most polluted rivers flow into it and all the dolphins have died in protest. The Bulgarians have honoured the lost dolphins by placing statues of dolphins everywhere, but it's too little, too late. I ignore the fact that after I last swam in the Black Sea I had an ear infection for two years, and plunge in. And plunge right out again. It's not cold. It's arctic. It's a block of ice pretending to be a sea. The dolphins weren't poisoned. They died of hypothermia.
So I go to the swimming pool next to the beach. It looks fine, except there is no water in it. There are men in it instead, drilling holes and smoking. When I squeal in disappointment, they wave at me and shout, "There is another swimming pool next door." I wander over, and it is so lush and gorgeous it doesn't look as if it is in Bulgaria at all. It has a piece of mown grass next to it - possibly the only piece of mown grass in Bulgaria. I approach the ticket booth. "Please may I swim?" I ask. "Only," says the woman, blowing cigarette smoke into my eyes, "if you are a member of the Bulgarian national swimming team. Are you a member of the Bulgarian national swimming team?" She grinds out her cigarette in triumph.
I cast my net wider. I take a taxi 15 miles north to Golden Sands, the premier resort on the coast. This is where the bargain hunters will flock in the summer, like big, pink, lager-drinking birds. Golden Sands looks wonderful in the brochures, full of happy Germans and giggling Romanians playing inter-former-eastern-bloc volleyball and toasting each other with cocktails. But today, out of season, Golden Sands does not look like a resort. It looks like downtown Basra, but with forgotten inflatable toys knocking against piles of rubbish. It is also empty. "Welcome to Golden Sands," says my taxi driver, dumping me outside a building site. The shops are shut and the amusement park is deserted, apart from a small group of Bulgarian hoodies, doing the international hoodie skulk.
It is a bit like turning up 200 years after human civilisation has been wiped out, to have a holiday. There is a mini Blackpool tower - as if they started to build it and got bored - and a very communist-sounding Ministry of Cocktails. Golden Sands is full of swimming pools - rectangular pools, square pools, round pools, pools in the shape of bananas, pools in the shape of question marks. But none of them have any water in them. Instead, they have leaves, or men drilling things. Even though it is 24C (75F), the men are all in leather jackets and smoking. So there is no functioning swimming pool on the Black Sea coast, unless you are an Olympic standard swimmer. I spend the rest of my holiday swimming in the bath.
But there is always sightseeing. I go first to the Varna Museum, which sits in a creaky Gothic house by the sea. When I arrive there are five people standing outside, smoking. I explain I would like to see the museum and they jump for joy. They are the staff. "Do you really want to see the museum?" they scream. "Are you sure?" I am obviously the only visitor they have had in recent memory. Ana shows me around. She keeps touching me, as if to check I am real. I want to ask if I can smoke but I know I am being ridiculous. You can smoke everywhere in Bulgaria.
Ana says things such as: "The people of Varna organised different types of exhibitions for light industry and technology." And she shows me relics of everything that has ever happened in Varna. By the time it is over I feel that a small piece of my brain will remain here for ever, next to the "exhibit" that is in fact just a dead woman's shoe. The caption on the piece of my brain would say, "British Tourist 2008". Then the staff arrange a cocktail party in my honour. "We will now have a drink," says Ana as a happy-looking colleague opens a bottle of wine.
I stumble out and go to visit the Ethnographic Museum. They open it especially for me, but they forget to turn the lights on. I am trapped in an exhibition of Bulgarian peasant costumes in near darkness. The dummy peasants glare at me, their eyes glowing in the void. I scream, and flee.
To calm my nerves I go to the zoo at the edge of the Pleasure Gardens. Again I am the only customer; the staff outnumber me six to one. The zoo has lions, tigers, bears and, strangely, rabbits. "Why rabbits?" I ask one of the attendants. "Rabbits are normal and do not belong in a zoo."
"They are special rabbits," she says, lighting a cigarette. "Special Bulgarian rabbits."
After admiring the special rabbits, I decide to eat their relatives. Bulgarian food is marvellous. The tomatoes really taste of tomato. The rabbit really tastes of Thumper. You can almost hear the lambs bleating as you tear their flesh. And the names are marvellous too - one dish of aubergines is called "Burst Priest". But Bulgarian restaurants are strange. The staff stare at you when you go in, as if they are incredibly surprised to see you. "I would like dinner," I say, and the waiter looks at me as if I have announced, "I am an alien queen from the planet Zog and I come in peace to the great land of Bulgaria to sample Burst Priest."
In Bulgarian restaurants you never eat alone. As you pick up your cutlery a man picks up his musical instrument and dances over. Each Bulgarian musician plays 10 musical instruments; only nine and he would be really letting himself down. So it only takes four Bulgarians to produce a full orchestra. As I eat my starter he is playing a flute. By the time I start my main course he is on the violin, then the xylophone. By dessert he is caressing a zither. And something strange is happening to me. I am starting to love this dirty town.
I get lost a lot in the tumbled streets, looking for the Museum of Bulgarian Spoons. But I discover that Bulgarians love to give directions. It is a sort of national pastime. It goes like this - you approach one and ask, "Where is the Museum of Decommissioned Nuclear Weapons?" They look intensely interested; some of them even drop their cigarettes. And they stare at your map, deliberate, phone a friend and draw in passers-by to join in the discussion. And then, eventually, after pondering your problem for half an hour, they turn to you with mournful eyes and say, through reams of fag smoke, shrugging, "We don't know".
Eventually, I find the British expat community. They have been hiding in O'Neill's, a subterranean Irish pub in central Varna, next to a strip club. There is an ancient Bulgarian doorman standing outside, in a red doorman's uniform (possibly stolen from the Ritz) and a St Patrick's Day themed hat, complete with clover motif. I give him a large tip for opening the door, which is clearly a mistake, because he grabs the note and sprints into the strip club to spend it.
O'Neill's is run by Michael, who came on holiday to Varna two years ago, and stayed because he could open his own bar so cheaply here. "Varna has the potential to go crazy and become a top tourist destination," he says, indicating his three customers, who are slumped over pints of Guinness and watching television. What is so wonderful about Bulgaria, I ask. "Cheap flights, cheap food, cheap accommodation and cheap beer," he says.
Michael introduces me to the regulars, Tom, an unemployed Irishman, and Dave, an east Londoner who used to be a builder but is now in property development. I ask Dave if I can interview him about the appeal of Bulgaria. "Be-have!" he screeches. Then he relents and explains, rather mysteriously, that, "in London everyone bothered me. No one bothers me around here." Tom slurs, "I never have an ounce of trouble here either. I love it here. The people are all lovely."
After O'Neill's I check out the local nightlife. And I discover that bouncers are as horrible in Bulgaria as they are everywhere else. They too go to the International School of Shaving Your Head to Scare People in Leisure Situations for Fun. The bouncer in the Black Sea Casino - catchphrase "Irreproachable Service, Pleasant Atmosphere, This is the Place for Your Business Meeting" - shouts at me when I ask how much it is to enter (£1.20). Inside, in a casino inspired by Joan Collins's boudoir, the local gangsterati are playing poker and smoking. There is an air of menace. They stare with intense concentration at the roulette wheel. The doorwoman is fast asleep, with a cigarette in her hand.
It is all so empty, and seems so far from everywhere I know. And I love it. If there is an opposite to the Groucho club, it is Varna. There is something wonderful about this country that feels like the edge of the world. I don't have a black leather jacket and I only smoke 40 cigarettes a day, but I still I feel I belong. If you want to come somewhere where nobody will find you, come to Bulgaria, where it's always 1977 - and great value too
:loveu:
))))??? ОК спирам с "манипулацията" и обявявам ден на отворените врати във всички луксозни панелни блокове строени в периода 64-92г. Всеки един човек сам може да ги посети - те са навсякъде около нас и да прецени дали "манипулирам" как бих могъл да го правя след като това не е тайната вечеря, а нещо, което всеки сам може да види
