Bulgaria has a lot to thank tourists for. They bring money, popularity and business to the country. Although Germans and Russians have been holidaying in this picturesque country for years, the real boom began in the early 2000s, when millions of Balkan and Western tourists flocked to the country to sample wines, laze on beaches, hit the slopes or cruise the cities.
The first time I arrived in Bulgaria my luggage went missing for two days. I ended up staying in a hotel with a stain the shape of Switzerland on the floor, and the towels were the size of beer mats. As it turns out, the missing and subsequently ransacked luggage, was the fault of a major Italian airline and the hotel, well, that was just down to my poor judgement. Almost everything else has been a pleasant surprise and I've enjoyed getting the hang of the place.
Bang! And your life has changed forever. A loved one has been taken from you by the statistic that Bulgarians don't care about, the rampant killing that goes on by motorised maniacs. Imagine if you turned up at your workplace to find everyone was dead and also in every nearby workplace until the deathtoll reached 1,000. You would be shocked, horrified and angry and that is the area that annoys me most, Bulgarians don't get angry about the stupidity that passes for driving on their roads.
One of my favourite ways to surprise visitors to Sofia is to take them to the springs beside the old baths and ask them to hold their hands under the running water. Hot water straight from the source is a novelty for most of us. A cooling mist of water sprayed from around the canopy of a restaurant on a hot summer's day is another sensory pleasure that I experienced for the first time here. Walking in the snow in the hills above Pernik just before Christmas I was dazzled by the glittering surface of the fresh, powdery snow, whose crust had frozen overnight.
A year ago, Roma divas shook Sofia with heart-wrenching songs. No, it wasn't a Goran Bregovic concert, but a meeting of the Roma Inclusion Decade. It represented a musical and ideological triumph for the politically correct "Roma" in their battle against the pejorative "Gypsy". It was also a lofty moment for George Soros, who pledged to help the Roma cause and take on prejudiced locals. "Like me?" I think as I search my bag for my purse. Damn! My purse has been snatched!
The Bulgarian State Railways have to ban smoking on all trains, Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiev decreed after a fire in the Sofia-Kardam overnight train in February which took nine lives. A burning cigarette end was one of the possible causes of the tragedy.
Bulgaria, a beautiful country with a friendly and hospitable population, fits most expats' description of their ideal host nation. Most of us have been welcomed into our neighbours' homes to be fed on local produce and plied with lashings of rakiya. The lack of a common language is no barrier to these people's generosity. Yet as Bulgaria competes for a larger percentage of foreign tourism, you wonder how many visitors actually leave this pleasant land with warm memories of a kind, generous nation always happy to help.
"You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.” Some people actually can. They are not alchemists, they are Bulgarians.
The years of Communist rule and frequent economic crises, when the expression “Sorry, we haven't” was used 1,000 times more often than “Marxist materialism,” cultivated the Bulgarian ability to make profit or gain even from thin air, in actual defiance of the Conservation of Energy Law.
"This day will never come again. So I will spare no expense or effort on it,” says a middle-aged woman while her daughter is trying on dresses that cost as much as the annual income of an average Bulgarian family. An hour earlier the two bought gold jewellery and expensive shoes and argued whether it would be better to hire a limousine or a second generation Porsche Cayenne. The mother is wearing an old raincoat and cheap shoes that have been to the cobbler's more than once.
He loves the Bulgarian tomatoes, red wine, sunny weather and the good-looking people. He doesn't like the bling fashion, the potholed roads, the grey, crumbling buildings and the fact that Burgas airport shuts in the winter. Oh, and one other thing - he's gay.