Well, it's been a few weeks since I was last on, and I'm blaming this squarely on the knee injury I picked up on the first day in Bulgaria. It's...ahem...far too painful for me to be sitting on a comfortable chair in my own front room and type. (This would actually be a good excuse not to go to work as well.) I'd also like to pretend that it's been because I've been so busy since I got back, but even though I made it to a fantastic showing of Les Miserables on Thursday evening, I haven't even had poker as an excuse.
Bulgaria...a strange country. In fairness, I saw only a very small part of it (mountains and ski resorts all look the same after a while) and my expectations were a little coloured by the things I'd heard and read. The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, which is fast becoming my bible of things I'd like to do and places I'd like to go, had an interview with one of those tedious Pop Idol types who had rated Bulgaria as the worst country she'd ever been to. Likewise, my work colleagues were warning me that on leaving Sofia airport, I could expect the bus to drive through a massive gypsy encampment. Scenes from Snatch ran through my mind, though the combination of a dreary day and delayed flight meant that I conspired to forget to notice it, if indeed it was there at all.
In terms of its landscape, Bulgaria had much in common with Britain, or any other northern European landscape. Sofia at night looked much the same as any former Eastern Bloc city, which is to say gunmetal gray buildings at perfect ninety degree angles, and half-scared people hiding behind small curtains in endless rows of flats. The way in which it differed greatly from the familiar is when you swap the city for the country, where dilapidated towns and villages seemingly composed entirely from rust are sinking into swampy marshland while signs for luxury apartments (not yet built) tempt canny foreigners into investing their hard-earned Euros.
The Bulgarian currency seems robust, the tourist trap mentality of those living near the resorts was plainly alive and well and the people we met seemed genuinely friendly and pleased to have us there. Overall, travelling abroad fills me, as it always does, with a surge of pride for blighty. We may moan about the bureaucracy, the climate and the way that things always seem worse than they were a year ago but I honestly could not imagine leaving the country of my birth for ever. I'd miss the drizzle, the low quality newspapers and those strange people who hang around the Tesco Metro after 9pm for no good reason. Yes, it's good to get away, but it's even better to get back. As long as it's not a weekday.
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