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Mick Devine Euro Blogs Mick Devine Euro Trek 2006

Travellers Advisory - Black Sea Not Black! 07.26.2006

Varna, Bulgaria's vacation hot spot. A lot of people come here, most of them yesterday. This is no backwater. No Black Water, either. I went swimming in the Black Sea yesterday and it was green. Huge disappointment. Lonely Planet didn't mention that. I'm ensconced in a hotel that makes me bleed internally, it's so luxurious. I mean, they put wrapped chocolates on the pillows. The minibar actually has STUFF in it. The lift doesn't go CLUNK and the shower not only has a curtain, but it drains. Does it get better than this? Well, yes. I'm way out of the centre and all the noise, but only five minutes from the beach. Women take their tops off on this beach, which is not always interesting. Boys up to, oh, age eleven, take EVERYTHING off, which is never interesting. Especially when they bend over in front of me to pick up something. Now there's a holiday snap. So it's hard to know where to look. Everywhere women walk past with butt-munching bikini bottoms, 14 to 84. Beached mammals recline in a blackening torpor on blankets, covering only their eyes. And Man Boobs, everywhere, waving in a phantom breeze. What is it with huge bellied men and Speedos? And I thought the Pro Women's Volleyball Tour was arresting. The water is warm. And salty. Extremely salty. Like swallowing a hundred Mr. Salty Pretzels if you happen to catch a wave, as I did. Nearby you can wash off all that salt with the free-flowing mineral water from the hills. It stinks to high heaven. I'm told that's the mineral content. It leaves one with a dilemma; salt or stinky? An existential conundrum if ever there was one. (And there likely wasn't, since it's existential.) The beach runs for a couple of kilometres from the town centre out past my hotel. Restaurants line the shore. They're never full. Despite the crowds, you can eat anywhere, anytime in Varna. Just avoid the Banitsa. These are greasy breakfast treats - apple, spinach, cheese, fried in grease and then with a careful applique of grease added on top for the culinarily inclined, or maybe they just inject it back into the crust if it squirts out, as it does when you close your teeth on the suckers...one of these artery cloggers put me down for have a day. I was forced to drink not one, but two cappucinos, and to rest immobile in a cafe deck chair, averting my eyes from the sundry silicone distractions parading down Knyaz Boris street (formerly V.I. Lenin Blvd.). My body can't quite believe what I've done to it the past two and a half months, but it's trying to tell me something. Fortunately I'm deaf in one ear. I think resting is far harder than working, not least for the unwelcome consciousness it brings. Photos soon - I've added a bunch to the Smolyan, Mokra Gora, and Greece entries already. Please write and confirm, indeed, that I exist.

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