Bulgaria: Simple twist of fate

Simple twist of fate

By David Owen

Another great poem from Mr Zimmerman as featured on his 15th studio album, Blood on the Tracks, may seem an odd choice for this adumbration (isn’t ‘blog’ such a banal term?) regarding our current reconnaissance trip for our September Bulgaria tour. 

One of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren was born in Kent, turned down the future George V and married the future King of Romania. Fate determined that she would build a palace on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast which still stands today. The pictures of this lady remind one eerily of the face of Queen Elizabeth II.

So is fate a factor or just coincidence? Two events have already had your author scratching his follicly challenged head.

On our third night on recce, our next hotel informed us that they would have no water for most of our two night stay. They were willing to allow us to cancel but we went ahead with the first night while Tereza searched for alternative accommodation. She found a country house pension with a French-speaking waitress, a piano playing owner and the best zucchini fritters this side of Istanbul: an ideal Kudu lunch spot.

On the next day, visiting a great fortress, we found an ideal parking place outside a restaurant which we rejected for lunch. After our actual lunch in a bistro which could have featured in the Adams Family and our visit to the aforementioned citadel, we returned to our car which was wearing a none too attractive boot. So, while waiting for the local traffic police to free us we forced ourselves to have coffee in the said restaurant. They also had no water so widespread was the cut-off but I experienced coffee frappe for the first time and again it’s an ideal Kudu lunch suggestion. It cost £8 to release the car and the kind man underlined that if we put our receipt in the car window we could park for the rest of the day.

So Kudu research is both strange and fun. For all the planning that Tereza does and the steps we walk each day (easily over 10,000), sometimes the best places are those that randomly occur.

And Bulgaria: at the end of our first week, we can safely say

•        The food is excellent, especially fish and shellfish
•        The wine is palatable, though too much Syrah and Merlot for my taste
•        The roads are uncrowded and easy with only a few total morons
•        The people are welcoming
•        The language is indecipherable, but fortunately most people speak enough English
  
  

Join in September – we’ll welcome your company and your views.
17th - 29th September 2024

And fate: I only have to remember my chance encounter with Tereza on the Faroe Islands to know that fate does play a part.