Category — Sea and coast

Just over a week ago Erica and I unlocked our front door at 3.15 a.m. having driven from Gatwick airport. We’d just returned from a wonderful week’s holiday with Angela Tidswell, a UK Baha’i who lives near Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. Our flight from Varna, Bulgaria’s third largest city and tagged as its Black Sea capital had been delayed by two hours. By the time we got home, it was 5.15 a.m. for our bodies (Bulgaria is two hours ahead of the UK) and we’d been up for around 21 hours.

Angela and husband Robert live in Ossenovo, an agricultural village north of Varna.

The village of Ossenovo in Bulgaria. The Black Sea is in the distance.

Valley View, the Tidswells’ house

Bulgaria was an interesting experience. The country is clearly “behind” in European terms. There is marked poverty, attitudes in government offices, museums, shops and restaurants still sometimes have echoes of the communist era. And there is a considerable degree of corruption - it is not unknown for the police to stop drivers to try and get bribes off them.

Driving habits are alarming - we rented a car and were overtaken on blind bends in a torrential rainstorm; we even experienced double overtaking - we were in the middle lane of a three-lane, single carriageway, road overtaking a truck, when we were overtaken by a van driving in the lane reserved for traffic coming in the other direction. One always has to keep an eye open for potholes (and when I say potholes I mean craters that would wrench your wheels off if you drove into them) even on major roads. And so on and so forth.

But there’s so much on the positive side of the account. Some stunning beautiful countryside, generally friendly people, wonderful fruit and veg, tremendous historical sites, and the Black Sea coast. Oh and lots of other things too.

We had great fun meeting some of Angela’s friends. Marina, the 80+ year old retired ENT surgeon with the tremendous voice and the great fund of stories of an eventful life, who lives across the road (Angela lives on the picturesquely named Street 14 in Ossenovo). The Baptist pastor whose family had been sent into internal exile and had suffered the most terrible abuse and discrimination during the Stalinist era because they persisted in remaining Christians; his father spent years in jail and in camps and was severely tortured, as were many other Christian pastors in those days.

We also met English couples who’d braved the intractable and complex Bulgarian bureacracy and law to buy some of the cheap (by our standards) properties that are for sale in Ossenovo and elsewhere in Bulgaria. In fact, we kep tripping over Brits who had bought property in the Black Sea region or were thinking of doing so - and there were plenty of estate agents and property ads directed at British would-be buyers. Quite an irony really, when you think of the panic there’s been here in the UK about Bulgarians flooding into the UK after 1 Jan 2007.

Perhaps the prize visit was with an elderly Bulgarian couple, both in their 80s, peasants - and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense - who have a simple house and a huge garden in which they grow a profusion of grapes, tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, apples, pears, maize, cabbages… Angela took us there to buy eggs. The old lady insisted that we come in and see her house. She spoke no English, but we learned that her name was Kalinka.

We removed our shoes as we entered and then Kalinka conducted us through each of the four rooms, showing off the simple furniture and opening every cupboard with a flourish. She must have spent a lifetime collecting the blankets and bedding that seemed to be stuffed into every closet - and of these she was inordinately proud.

We followed her as she hauled herself up the stairs, stopping only to indicate a plastic bottle of brown fluid that she seemed to want us to drink. We demurred, fearing that it might be the local (rather strong) alcoholic beverage. She bent down, picked up the bottle, removed the top and took a swig. And then she handed the bottle to me. What could I do? Gingerly I put the bottle to my lips and allowed some of the liquid to touch my tongue. I needn’t have feared. It was nothing more than some sugary manufactured drink. But we’d accepted her hospitality and we’d sealed our friendship.

Afterwards, Erica and I agreed that the house was just like those that had belonged to our crofter friends in Shetland in the 1970s - except that the Shetland houses were on one floor only.

Things are changing very quickly and will doubtless change even faster as Bulgaria’s EU accession date approaches. The infra-structure will have to change and Bulgaria will have to deal with the endemic corruption, the power of the Mafia and organized crime, air safety and food hygiene. (Eating out in Bulgaria is not always the world’s greatest gourmet experience!) There’s no doubt that that the way of life lived by Kalinka and her husband - both capable of tending their animals, a huge garden and of doing bits of ploughing for others in the village - will eventually disappear. More and more of the houses will be bought by foreigners and the village will become other than it is now.

For us, the highlight of our trip was a visit to the summer palace that had belonged to Queen Marie of Romania in Balchik. Balchik, a port town on the Black Sea coast north of Varna, was part of Romania from 1913 to 1940.

Queen Marie is of great interest to Baha’is because she clearly recognized Baha’u'llah, Founder of the Baha’i Faith, although she could not formally become a Baha’i because she was part of the monarchy of an Orthodox country. It was wonderful to see one of her letters about the Bahai Faith photocopied and framed on the wall of one of the rooms of the palace. (To call the building a palace is really to overstate the case - it is nothing like Buckingham Palace, but is, rather, a modest beach residence surrounded by beautiful botanical gardens.

The ticketing arrangements for the palace and the gardens tells you a lot about Bulgaria. You have to buy tickets for both the palace and the gardens. You cannot get into the gardens without a ticket for the palace and vice versa. However, the tickets for the gardens and the tickets for the palace are sold from two booths in entirely separate locations.

As you descend the hill (lined on both sides with stalls selling the most appalling tat - Queen Marie would be horrified, were she alive today) towards the gates into the gardens, you see a ticket booth. You buy tickets (3 pieces of paper, costing a total of 5 leva, per person) and head down to the gates. There are at least five officials hanging around at the gates to check your tickets. One of them shakes her head and tells you that your tickets are only good for the gardens. You have to have another ticket for the palace. Where do we buy tickets for the palace, we ask? She waves vaguely up the road. We turn and look carefully. Ah yes, there’s the booth, tucked in to one side of the road, in amongst the tourist trash.

In possession of another piece of paper each and a further 5 leva per person lighter (that’s about 2/6 in real money) we humbly approach the gate again. This time, we are admitted. It’s taken visits to two booths, the work of some 7 people, 4 pieces of paper per person, and two approaches to the gates to get in. But it’s worth it! Wonderful to get a sense of Queen Marie and to think of the doughty Martha Root visiting her here in this very spot.

Whatever it’s shortcomings and difficulties, we’ll almost certainly visit Bulgaria again. Next time we may go to the mountains.

Have a look at my photos of Bulgaria on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bulgaria, Black Sea, Varna, Baptist, Queen Marie of Romania, Balchik, Baha’u'llah

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Originally uploaded by John Barnabas.

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Thunder cloud over Akka, taken from the Dan Panorama

Originally uploaded by John Barnabas.

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Originally uploaded by John Barnabas.

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Originally uploaded by John Barnabas.

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Originally uploaded by Steve Roe.

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