Sunny Beach , Bulgaria
I was growing tired of the monotonous life I been having at home after my one year trip, so when Ahmad, the husband of my ant called and offered me to join him on a five day vacation to a beach resort at the black sea in Bulgaria, I jumped on the opportunity , the fact that the whole package cost 300$ including flight, hotel and meals, made my decision all the more easy. The trip started on the wrong foot as we were told that the flight was delayed by six hours, the last thing you want to hear after not sleeping most of the night, and arriving at five in the morning to the airport, anyway when one pays 300$ he knows it is going to be a charter flight, and such delays is the risk one takes when buying such cheap deal, I found my self a sofa in the airport and fell a sleep for a couple of hours, woke to have the free breakfast we were given as compensation by the airline, then went back to sleep on the sofa again, it is blessing to have the gift to be able to sleep anywhere, which I do.
At least there where no more delays, but it was a rather small plain, and small planes tend to shake more than the bigger plains, specially during landing, the landing maneuvers were also more steep than usual, all this made me feel quite nervous during landing, but the landing went fine, we then had to fill a form with rather confusing questions, but eventually passed immigration, and were quickly hauled to the hotel by a bus, during the trip a Bulgarian young guy gave us a briefing in fluent Hebrew! At arrival at the hotel our passports were taken away, and they were not to be returned until we leave, we also were given hand braces showing we are guests of the hotel, with color indicating hour food and drink privileges, anyway I was very uncomfortable with all this strict control, and I was not the only one, many people expressed their displeasure with such procedures, I wonder if this mentality has to do with communist history of this country, anyway after the initial disgruntlement I kind of got used to this brace, and learned to appreciates its advantages when ordering food or drink.
The hotel is in a resort called sunny beach, near the city of Bourgas, it is huge, I estimate it has at least a thousand hotel, with more being constructed, hosting hundreds of thousands of tourists, I would not be surprised if the number exceeds the million, and that's just this one resort, there are more resorts spread around the black sea, the resort also contains enough restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, amusement parks and souvenir shops to serve all these tourists, the resort seems to be most popular with Russians, Israelis and Europeans, specially German and English, it is needless to say it is a very touristy place, most Bulgarian there are not local residents, but workers in tourism jobs, coming to earn there living, I would rather have a more authentic experience when traveling, but I don't mind a few days of beach vacation every one in a while. So what is attracting so much tourists here, well first the usual things, the sun and the beach, but I think no less important the cheap prices, although Bulgaria have joined the EU, the living standard gap between it and the west of Europe remains significant. The resort has a promenade stretching seven kilometers along the beach, lined with restaurants, bars, hotels, clubs and souvenir shops, and we would often go walking along it, going into some bar or restaurant, to watch the world cup games, drink a bear or eat something.
After taking it easy the first evening, I decided to do some walking around , more in the style of my traveling in south America, I took Ahmad, and walked with him along the southern section of the beach, one strip of the beach was a nudest section, and some people goggled us when we walked with our clothes on, as all other nudest beaches I visited before, most of the people who were there I would really prefer to see dressed (I hope I am not offending anyone here), but one would be hard pressed to find any young women with pretty breasts on one of those beaches. When the beach ends, a promenade start, circling a hill, and in the end reaching a bridge that goes to the fishermen island of Nessubar, an island that maintained some of its old walls and houses, and now completely turned into a tourists hub, with cafes, restaurants and more souvenir shops, despite the complete touristy nature of the place, It remains beautiful, specially because some of the old structures have survived, at the old gate at the entrance to the island, the Simpsons where awaiting us, four persons dressed as the Simpsons, greeted people there, there was Bart, Homer, Lisa and the mother, I took some very nice pictures, with them, unfortunately they were lost with the rest of my pictures!! Shopping is cheap there but most of the stuff are fake , we were incredulous when one shop owner, showed us two indistinguishable bottles of perfume (
Amor Amor) and told us that the first was fake, and sells for 12 Lev, and the second with original and cost 45 Lev, after testing the two bottles, we noticed that the smell from the fake one fades quite fast, and almost disappears completely after a minute, while the smell from the original lasted for the rest of the day, on one amusing occasion, I saw to shirts next to each other, exactly the same , except for the labels, one said Boss, and other Armani. I found out that there was a bus going between the beach and the island and back, and used to go back to my hotel, and the next days I just used the bus to travel around between the beach and the resort, much cheaper than taking a taxi, but the taxi drivers were rather disgruntled to see us turn them down and get on the bus instead. Many of the shop owners were rather annoyed us well, as Ahmad tried often to haggle over prices, and one shop owner complained to me, and asked me why Israelis keep doing that, well I guess we come from a haggling culture, and they don't , it is a kind of cultural clash, that seems to generate much disgruntlement.
During one of the evenings I went to a strip bar with my companions, Ahmad his boss who was traveling with us, I am not really fond of these places, and went in reluctantly, I tried to make the most of it, and since I was really eager for an opportunity to chat was a local, I decided to buy one of the show girls and drink , just to hear her story, which was rather interesting, she was new there, a colleague student, trying to make some easy money during summer break, this would prove to be my only conversation with a local during my trip, I did visit more bars during the next few nights, and had a chat with a couple of Russian girls, rather I tried to have a chat, but they spoke very little English, and I spoke no Russian what so ever. Our hotel had a casino, and again I joined my companion reluctantly to the casino, I took only 100$ with me, which I lost quickly at the roulette, I did return at my last night again, but this time I had only 15$ with me, I managed to make it 45$ at the slot machines, and went with to the Roulette table, only to lose it again, the numbers that I decided to bet on , just would not come out, and I just kept betting the same numbers in hope they would, my luck was definitely not with me. Everyday an impressive street performance was held in front of the casino, to attract people to the casino, there was some sexy young dancers, and some acrobatic performances, one was a show of flexibility by a girl, another was a man balancing bottles and other stuff on a thin stick, the other was a women dancing with rings, all very impressive, but the most dazzling show , was with a boy performing an dancing act between two human sized dolls, the boy was inside the dolls and you don't see him until the end of the performance, from inside he makes the dolls move around in a very natural dancing movements, anyway I am unable to show you any pictures or videos of these shows, in fact it was during filing this show that something went bad with camera, this is first time I tried to take long movies with my camera, and it seems it was too much load on the memory card, it broke down, wiping all the photos and videos I took during this vacation, I lament losing the pictures I took with the Simpsons the most.
The vacation is no match to some of the great times I had in south America, but it was a good change of atmosphere, helped me think things over, and gave me something to write about, it is just a shame I can't put any pictures to accompany this text.
At least there where no more delays, but it was a rather small plain, and small planes tend to shake more than the bigger plains, specially during landing, the landing maneuvers were also more steep than usual, all this made me feel quite nervous during landing, but the landing went fine, we then had to fill a form with rather confusing questions, but eventually passed immigration, and were quickly hauled to the hotel by a bus, during the trip a Bulgarian young guy gave us a briefing in fluent Hebrew! At arrival at the hotel our passports were taken away, and they were not to be returned until we leave, we also were given hand braces showing we are guests of the hotel, with color indicating hour food and drink privileges, anyway I was very uncomfortable with all this strict control, and I was not the only one, many people expressed their displeasure with such procedures, I wonder if this mentality has to do with communist history of this country, anyway after the initial disgruntlement I kind of got used to this brace, and learned to appreciates its advantages when ordering food or drink.
The hotel is in a resort called sunny beach, near the city of Bourgas, it is huge, I estimate it has at least a thousand hotel, with more being constructed, hosting hundreds of thousands of tourists, I would not be surprised if the number exceeds the million, and that's just this one resort, there are more resorts spread around the black sea, the resort also contains enough restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, amusement parks and souvenir shops to serve all these tourists, the resort seems to be most popular with Russians, Israelis and Europeans, specially German and English, it is needless to say it is a very touristy place, most Bulgarian there are not local residents, but workers in tourism jobs, coming to earn there living, I would rather have a more authentic experience when traveling, but I don't mind a few days of beach vacation every one in a while. So what is attracting so much tourists here, well first the usual things, the sun and the beach, but I think no less important the cheap prices, although Bulgaria have joined the EU, the living standard gap between it and the west of Europe remains significant. The resort has a promenade stretching seven kilometers along the beach, lined with restaurants, bars, hotels, clubs and souvenir shops, and we would often go walking along it, going into some bar or restaurant, to watch the world cup games, drink a bear or eat something.
After taking it easy the first evening, I decided to do some walking around , more in the style of my traveling in south America, I took Ahmad, and walked with him along the southern section of the beach, one strip of the beach was a nudest section, and some people goggled us when we walked with our clothes on, as all other nudest beaches I visited before, most of the people who were there I would really prefer to see dressed (I hope I am not offending anyone here), but one would be hard pressed to find any young women with pretty breasts on one of those beaches. When the beach ends, a promenade start, circling a hill, and in the end reaching a bridge that goes to the fishermen island of Nessubar, an island that maintained some of its old walls and houses, and now completely turned into a tourists hub, with cafes, restaurants and more souvenir shops, despite the complete touristy nature of the place, It remains beautiful, specially because some of the old structures have survived, at the old gate at the entrance to the island, the Simpsons where awaiting us, four persons dressed as the Simpsons, greeted people there, there was Bart, Homer, Lisa and the mother, I took some very nice pictures, with them, unfortunately they were lost with the rest of my pictures!! Shopping is cheap there but most of the stuff are fake , we were incredulous when one shop owner, showed us two indistinguishable bottles of perfume (
Amor Amor) and told us that the first was fake, and sells for 12 Lev, and the second with original and cost 45 Lev, after testing the two bottles, we noticed that the smell from the fake one fades quite fast, and almost disappears completely after a minute, while the smell from the original lasted for the rest of the day, on one amusing occasion, I saw to shirts next to each other, exactly the same , except for the labels, one said Boss, and other Armani. I found out that there was a bus going between the beach and the island and back, and used to go back to my hotel, and the next days I just used the bus to travel around between the beach and the resort, much cheaper than taking a taxi, but the taxi drivers were rather disgruntled to see us turn them down and get on the bus instead. Many of the shop owners were rather annoyed us well, as Ahmad tried often to haggle over prices, and one shop owner complained to me, and asked me why Israelis keep doing that, well I guess we come from a haggling culture, and they don't , it is a kind of cultural clash, that seems to generate much disgruntlement.
During one of the evenings I went to a strip bar with my companions, Ahmad his boss who was traveling with us, I am not really fond of these places, and went in reluctantly, I tried to make the most of it, and since I was really eager for an opportunity to chat was a local, I decided to buy one of the show girls and drink , just to hear her story, which was rather interesting, she was new there, a colleague student, trying to make some easy money during summer break, this would prove to be my only conversation with a local during my trip, I did visit more bars during the next few nights, and had a chat with a couple of Russian girls, rather I tried to have a chat, but they spoke very little English, and I spoke no Russian what so ever. Our hotel had a casino, and again I joined my companion reluctantly to the casino, I took only 100$ with me, which I lost quickly at the roulette, I did return at my last night again, but this time I had only 15$ with me, I managed to make it 45$ at the slot machines, and went with to the Roulette table, only to lose it again, the numbers that I decided to bet on , just would not come out, and I just kept betting the same numbers in hope they would, my luck was definitely not with me. Everyday an impressive street performance was held in front of the casino, to attract people to the casino, there was some sexy young dancers, and some acrobatic performances, one was a show of flexibility by a girl, another was a man balancing bottles and other stuff on a thin stick, the other was a women dancing with rings, all very impressive, but the most dazzling show , was with a boy performing an dancing act between two human sized dolls, the boy was inside the dolls and you don't see him until the end of the performance, from inside he makes the dolls move around in a very natural dancing movements, anyway I am unable to show you any pictures or videos of these shows, in fact it was during filing this show that something went bad with camera, this is first time I tried to take long movies with my camera, and it seems it was too much load on the memory card, it broke down, wiping all the photos and videos I took during this vacation, I lament losing the pictures I took with the Simpsons the most.
The vacation is no match to some of the great times I had in south America, but it was a good change of atmosphere, helped me think things over, and gave me something to write about, it is just a shame I can't put any pictures to accompany this text.
posted by DiagonalMind at
1:38 PM
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