A True Bulgarian Break

Two years ago I wrote about a Bulgarian Holiday Weekend on the cheap which is published in my book 'Simple Treasures In Bulgaria'. We couldn’t really afford it then and the same applies here. It was more about just getting away from the day in and day out routine of work as cheaply as possible. This happened again this last week.

Galia had a week off and we spent the best part of that in the village location living off all the homegrown produce we had worked to hard to grow. We were to spend three nights by the Black Sea Coast; Galia had booked up campus style apartment for 12 leva per person per night. This was the cheapest we could find that had a self-contained bathroom facility. Three nights was all we could afford with 20 leva for gas in the Lada. The whole package came to 90 leva for the three nights plus and extra 10 leva for bread and beer that covered the three nights there.

There were no other overheads as we brought all our own home produced food and drink with us and filled up a 10 litre plastic bottle of spring water from one of the village communal springs en route to the coast which was just over 100 kilometres away. The use of the electric was all included in the 12 leva price. We even brought our own rakia and home grown herbs for tea.

After the time in the village we left for the coast and just over an hour later everything went to plan and we had a fantastic time relaxing doing absolutely nothing other than laying in bed or on the beach with the odd work to work our food off in the evening. The apartment was clean and airy and had a small balcony that we could sit out on in the warm evenings with a slight breeze cooling us off.

I don’t mean to sound condescending but it was great not to see any British in this particular location that I will keep secret. It is well known by Bulgarians and frequented by many other Eastern block country nationals, but none from Western Europe and boozy Brits I’m glad to say. Throughout our time there we saw no police, not one single family argument, absolutely no one drunk, just a complete cordial time on a beach that was packed to the hilt. There was no more than half a metre between each plot on the sand and all very happy with the situation. The politeness and respect for everyone there on holiday was quite emotionally stirring. My previous experiences of seaside holidays in the UK have all been the exact opposite experience, certainly not at all relaxing with aggressive people and troublemaking the norm.

In our time there we helped in with trying to contain costal forest fire along with hundreds of other Bulgarians, sighting a UFO and attending a free live pop concert by one of Bulgaria’s top bands called ‘Signal’.

We returned knowing that another holiday done of a budget of under 100 leva cannot be foreseen especially with increased gas, electric and water charges coming up here with earning decreasing as each month goes by right now. Not just for us, but most others here and a winter that will be hard for us all. It feels like a challenge we are facing and to be quite honest everyone is worried how many of us will get through it. The biggest worry of course is the cost of fuel here and is forecast to be worse that last winter with Russia cutting off our gas supply.

The break we had was what we needed and we enjoyed every moment.