I am one week into a trip that includes:  Israel, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey. I have been very bad at updating the blog, and I think its mostly laziness, but also because I usually update my blogs on the plane, but we have a car and driving along the coast of Eastern Europe as opposed to flying.

I am now in Bulgaria in our third beach town, and after leaving Romania we realized that we are the only Americans in these two countries. They all love Americans so this is fine, but they have such low self-esteem about their country that we constantly have to defend us being here, since people are incredulous as to why we are vacationing here. It seems like we are the first Americans here since the liberation. I keep explaining we threw a dart at the map and it landed there, and they shouldn’t be expecting an invasion of Americans any time soon, but we represent the travel advisory committee, and representative of our Country, and if they are nice enough to us we will spread the word and they will have tons of Americans visiting.

I had a funny story happen to me last night. I walked into a small elevator with an elderly couple. The couple looked about to be in the high eighties pushing ninety. The husband was tall even after shrinking but hunched over. He had blonde hair with really blue eyes, he was looking down and looking very serious and he looked either German or Swedish and maybe a former Nazi. His eyes were closing and he looked completely unaware of his surroundings. Suddenly he lets loose a squeaker! His wife looks up mortified at him, as he broke the silence creating an awkwardness that was palpable.  He looked down oblivious and I thought he might be deaf or just senile and didn’t know that his fart cloud was sucking the air out of the elevator. He then drops another bomb this one, piercing the air breaking the sound barrier in the process. His wife was looking embarrassed and looked like like she was looking for a hole to climb into. At this point he slowly lifts up his head and looks at me, and lets out the biggest smile from air to air, as if to say, I know what I am doing, I am too old to care, and you’re very welcome, because no matter how old you are “farts are always funny”.

Varna, Sunny beach

So we left Romania, and entered Bulgaria. It mostly felt the same except the woman were prettier, snobbier, and everyone seemed depressed. When pushed for the reason everyone was so miserable we were told they are poor, last I checked our poor people were happy. There is no happier person, than a large fat woman, with five kids, no man, eating in McDonalds, and joking around like only they could, and not a care in the world. We were in a beach town and were surrounded by German kids. The entire club consisted of kids’ ages 13 to 18 and we couldn’t have felt creepier. I never knew creepiness had a physical feel to it, until hung out in that club. We had no idea where the adults were in that town, it felt like the pied piper was on his way somewhere with his flock and this was a stop on the way. The mafia controlled everything, and money talks, true everywhere but more so in those countries. The hotels were all five stars, and I kept stealing coffee from the executive lounge for their awards program called “Level” and I kept explaining the a- I was on the level, and b- I was on level 8 they can check the computer. They are not used to people breaking rules but I kept taking drinks acting like I don’t understand which was frustrating for them but very fun for me.

We went to Sunny Beach another beach town, a lot more fun and touristy, and very close to varna a big city. We went to some clubs, the weather was really bad for a few days, but we spent one day go-carting and going on a dune buggy off road which was heaps of fun.

There were many gypsies all over, and they were all looking to hustle, and panhandle very aggressively. Seems like, gypsies are shady all over the world. It’s a bit biased but all stereotypes are shrouded in truth.

Sofia

The big city is Sofia and we had a great time exploring the city, taking a walking tour and seeing the history of one of the oldest cities in the world. It was quite amazing to find out that although the Bulgarians were allied with the Nazis, the king lied to Hitler and saved all the Jews by slowly sneaking all 50,000 of them out of the country, while claiming he needed them for work. We messed around with the guards, molested some statues (you can see all that in the pics) and mostly enjoyed it thoroughly.

What have I learned?

I learned you have to leave home in order to miss it. You need the rain to appreciate the sun, especially if you are on the beach.