The Wild East

"It turned out he seemed to be the local drunk."

Tuesday 7 July
After the previous nights entertainment, we were back on a mundane train to Koprivshtitsa, a medieval village in central Bulgaria.

The station was a solitary building in the forest, in the middle of nowhere. There was a bus with a friendly driver to take the tourists, who numbered about 7 (including me and Mark) into the village, 10 miles away.
The interior of the bus was plastered with posters of girls in bikinis. Women's lib hasn't caught on here…yet. Taylor, looking worried, commented on the fact that the driver never had more than one hand on the steering wheel, and would often turn round to talk to the passengers, but the roads were quiet (though very bumpy).
A deal was struck and we had some cheap accommodation for the night.

A late breakfast costing 70p was eaten at a local café. There was a table full of Germans next to us. MT remarked on the similarity between a man with a moustache and a notorious former German leader.
He had invited himself onto a table of other Germans. He was explaining exactly where he had been in the world (Cambodia, China…) and proving he was much better than everyone else.
MT was getting increasing irritated by his attitude, and I was fearing a Faulty-towers scene arising:

"You started it!"
"No you started it! You invaded Poland!"

We began a walk round the village (past a dead dog lying in the river) and into the forest.
It was time for a drink.
An old man (whom I presumed was a waiter) beckoned us over to join him. When we had sat down he pulled over a chair to chat with us. It turned out he seemed to be the local drunk. He was kicked out of the premises as the management feared we would be scared off without buying any drinks.
He stumbled back again a few minutes later, and was chased away again by a crowd of Bulgarian women on the next table. But he still remained visible, and in good spirits, occasionally waving to us.

As we were returning to the house the sky was ominously black, and a storm was approaching.
We didn't make it, Mark was eager to shelter under the bridge over the small river I suggested we head for a small porchway. About 2 inches of rain fell in 45 mins (about 3 days-worth in Manchester), the roads became rivers and the river rose 1m, almost totally filling the void under the bridge where MT had suggested we could have sheltered. The dead dog was washed past us, much to Taylor's amusement.

That night we made some more friends. Having made the mistake of feeding a dog a scrap of meat at mealtime, we were lumbered with the bloody things for over an hour.
They were absolutely stinking.

The next day we returned to the bus stop. There was another backpacker (who had a striking resemblance to Russel Aitken[!]) who'd also been to Bosnia, back in the days of '99, an intrepid traveller, though by the sounds of it, things haven't changed much since.
The bus was full of gypsies, an entire family of about 20 who made an incredible din. The bus driver was worried he wouldn't get paid and Taylor and I avoided them: we didn't put it past them to descend on us en masse and relieve us of our possesions.

We got a local train to Karlovo. A relaxed Taylor for once let me choose which carriage we would sit in.
I made a bad choice- it was Dimitri's carriage.

Dimitri was a friendly man aged about 70, who couldn't speak any English. He quickly took a shine to us.
I was continually given presents.
The first one was a timetable for Czech Airlines from 1994. Taylor returned the kind gesture by handing him a plum however this only seemed to make matters worse as next I was given a newspaper clipping of some chess problems, then was a 1976 map of an unknown Bulgarian town.
He was adament that I accepted them, so I returned the favour by giving equally useless presents, such as an empty Coca-Cola bottle from Croatia, and a postcard from Belgrade.

Next Dimitri showed us the plane he flew in WW II (we think), then we think he explained that he was a chess Grandmaster. Dimitri got off the train at our stop.
He sat us down and got some coffees, which we were able to pay for, since we didn't want to bankrupt him. Then he began to speak to us in more depth. We managed a semi-intelligent conversation with a phrasebook and some patience.

It stuck me that Dimitri was a little bit loopy (Mark realised this after about 5 mins) but we couldn't get away from him.
In fact he stuck to us like glue, and got increasingly annoying. He gave us a guided tour of Karlovo, we were exhausted from carrying our backpacks we stopped in a square containing a statue of an unknown hero. By this time MT was concerened we'd miss our train so we headed back while Dimitri would stop in gardens standing on peoples fences to pick fruit off their trees, and steal flowers to place over his ears while grinning quite manically. Taylor and I exchanged glances at the fruit, I'd already eaten it but MT took a mouthful and his face dropped. He spat out the remnants in a pot of flowers and discreetly disposed of the rest of the mystery fruit. (I never felt any side effects from it).

We could see that people avioded Dimitri on the street.
All the while he was giving me more and more presents- the next was a babies bib! We all got on the train to Plovdiv.
We were now seriously worried that we would be stuck with Dimitri for some considerable time. He was continually walking up and down the carriage looking for an interpreter, and eventually he found a nervous 12 year old boy who he cajoled into sitting with us. The boy translated that Dimitri was a chess Grandmaster, a fighter pilot, a fomer government minister, a general in the military, a top engineer…..

Dimitri got off the train in the middle of nowhere to his little home probably.
You couldn't help but feel sorry for him really, even though he was a serial dreamer. Probably all those years spent in a grey communist totalitarian state, never having met a non-bulgarian, and then wild-capitalism and grinding poverty would be enough to drive anyone over the edge.

The boy's father had joined us by now and as we talked they were much less oppressive. Father looked particularly academic. He began to explain how absymal the Bulgarian economy was, and how things would take years to get back to levels of even 1989 standards.
The train pulls into Sofia station early that evening...

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