THE BULGARIAN TOWN OF POMORIE - A LOT OF MUD, LITTLE SEA
In late July - early August 2011, my wife and seven-year-old daughter spent a vacation on the Black Sea in the Bulgarian town of Pomorie (Pomorie, Pomorie), which is located near Burgas. The text below is about how we lived in Pomorie for 12 days, and about our impressions of the city and its inhabitants.
PREPARATION: TRAVEL COMPANY AND COMMENTS ON THE INTERNET
We decided to take care of the purchase of vouchers in advance and went to the travel company, from which in 2009 we went to Bulgaria in Albena, back in May. An employee of the company, after listening to our requirements regarding the place of vacation - a quiet place where you can relax with a child - offered us several options. One of them was the Interhotel Pomorie (IHP) in Pomorie, which we eventually chose. We were told that it was quiet there, the sea was splashing right under the window of the room and the girl would not be bored.
Most of the reviews about Pomorie found on the Russian Internet coincided with the words of a travel agency employee.
The authors of the comments wrote about a quiet town, an old but quite decent hotel, a large number of catering outlets and places for walking and entertainment. A solid positive, in general. The photos were encouraging too.
Just in case, I went to Google, read the reviews in foreign languages that I understand. And everything was quite worthy there, we attributed minor remarks to the fact that "all people are different, you can't please everyone. "
TINA VIEW ROOM
Arrived in Burgas with a slight delay due to the fault of the airline. At the airport, we and two other families were met by a representative of the travel agency. By minibus we reached the old part of Pomorie, which is located about 20 kilometers from the airport.
We settled without any problems in the old building of the hotel, which, if you look at it "in profile", looks like the bow of a ship going out to sea.
Our room was on the first floor, which is a basement floor, since the main entrance to the hotel from the street is on the third floor. On the same ground floor there was also a laundry room, from which damp linen was often drawn into the corridor.
The room has two beds, a folding bed for a child, a bedside table, a coffee table, a couple of bedside tables, an ottoman, a TV, a refrigerator, and a rather spacious closet in the corridor. The bathroom is adjacent, with a bathtub.
The balcony, on which there were a couple of plastic chairs, went directly to the sea, which lulled around the clock splashing and rustling below. The view to the left was very good - the sea with the mountains on the opposite side of the bay on the horizon and bulk carriers or boats of the local sailing club visible in the distance.
But the view on the other hand was rather poor.
To the right, under the pillars of the building, long-standing deposits of construction debris were gray, closer to the center, the shore was "decorated" with mud thrown out by the surf and empty bottles, rubber slippers and other rubbish entangled in its green mess.
Nobody removed Tina, so she calmly dried, disturbed only by gulls and black cormorants with long viper necks swarming in the rubble of marine vegetation. Despite the large amount of marine flora, permanently rotting and drying under the balcony, the miasma from decaying algae did not really bother us. Only a couple of times, and only at night, there was a slight stench in the room.
IF YOU WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT, EAT IN A HOTEL
Several times we went for breakfast, which was included in the price of the hotel. As far as one can judge from the reviews on the Internet, the monotony of food in Bulgarian three-star hotels has long become a byword.
But even against this background, the so-called three-star restaurant of the IHP hotel distinguished itself by incredible bad taste and dullness in every sense of the last two words. For almost two weeks, the breakfast menu imposed by the institution has not changed even once. All the dishes were prepared outrageously monstrously and were a set of products that some mediocrity living in the kitchen tried to compose according to recipes they knew alone. These mysterious ratatouilles managed to ruin even an omelet. I was especially shocked by the paucity of the assortment of vegetables and fruits, which were represented by tomatoes, peeled coarsely chopped cucumbers, blackened sliced pieces along with the peel, bananas and terrible unformatted oranges.
After tasting the culinary delights of the IHP restaurant a couple of times, we didn’t go there again.
Passing through the lobby of the hotel, where Russian-speaking old men and women from Russia, Ukraine, Israel and God knows what other countries spent time talking between medical procedures, I repeatedly heard grandparents, whose voucher included three meals a day at the hotel, lament about the tastelessness and monotony of not only breakfasts, but also lunches and dinners.
UNCLE KOLY'S VENUS AND GREEDY LAZY AXEL
Now about where we ate.
We ate at Uncle Kolya's.
Uncle Kolya was about 45 or 50 years old, literally at the walls of the new IHP building, he rented the Venera restaurant, which is opposite the Polar Bear establishment. Uncle Kolya's food was delicious, brandy (grape vodka) diluted with water in moderation, the service was very good, the prices were quite reasonable.
In the restaurant, it was not at all a pity to leave a tip for the waiters, especially since almost every time a glass of raki and buffalo or something else sweet for the child was put up at the expense of the restaurant. Alas, next year the tenant of "Venus", in the courtyard of which there is a vulgar statue of a girl of obviously dubious reputation in the fountain, will be another person. Uncle Kolya decided that there were no prospects for business development in Bulgaria for him, and he left for Germany, where he intended to open a Balkan restaurant. Let's wish him good luck.
Unlike Uncle Kolya and his waiters, who, even with a hangover, to satisfy all the decent desires of customers, rushed around the tavern as if stung, in other Pomorie catering establishments that we had the misfortune to visit, the staff treated visitors extremely philosophically.
Especially indicative is the case that took place in a restaurant on the embankment, which, if I am not mistaken, is called Yavorov Boulevard. About five minutes after we entered the completely empty hall, a dubious body rowed up to us. Reading the tag on the young man's frail chest, I realized that things were bad.
"Pervolyainen", - the surname of the Finnish pilot Axel shot down by Stalin's falcon from the famous Soviet television series "Secret Fairway" immediately came to mind.
Axel from the Pomeranian restaurant, I think, would be strangled not only by the true Aryans from the crew of the Flying Dutchman, but also by the patient, unhurried residents of Suomi.
The young man not only brought tasteless food to the table for a very long time, but also tried to automatically set aside almost a whole lev for tea when issuing an invoice (the local currency, the rate is fixed, one euro is equal to 1.95 Bulgarian lev).
This creature, unable to explain itself either in Russian or English, argued its actions by the lack of surrender. Apparently realizing that for us his bleating is not an argument, the poor boy soon nevertheless brought the missing change. But this degenerate left a bright memory of himself.
RAKIA, WINE AND DISGUSTING BEER
Drinking brandy (accent on the second syllable) in Pomorie is better than a local spill from Black Sea Gold or Black Sea Gold in Bulgarian. There is a store from the company in the central square, the assortment is also presented in most local stores. The selection criterion is simple - the more expensive, the better.
The situation is similar with wines. One has only to remember that the Bulgarians do not drink semi-sweet, and even more so, sweet wines, believing that the addition of sugar can only indicate the low quality of the raw material.
As elsewhere, prices in hotel shops are much higher than in the city.
Bulgarian beer is rubbish, especially bottled. I found imported beer in Pomorie in the old town only in one supermarket, where there was an average German lager in a glass of half a liter. What is sold under the name of multinational brands like Heineken is local liquor bottled under license. Abominable.
In a couple of places there is Staropramen on tap, you can drink it, but it is not Czech, definitely.
Establishments called "biraria" have an extremely indirect relationship to pubs. These are just eateries or restaurants, which will definitely have draft beer, and nothing more.
HOW TO GET TO THE SEA
The prehistory of such a question, which I asked a representative of our travel agency on the second day of my stay in Pomorie, was as follows.
On the day of arrival, the sea was rough and lifeguards hung out red flags on the beaches, indicating the danger of swimming.
(There are three flags in total, in addition to red there is yellow, which indicates that you can swim, but be careful, as well as green, which indicates that everything is fine and you can safely splash around for your pleasure). In the evening, leaving my wife and daughter to settle in the room, I went to look for the nearest beach.
Trying to find a place to swim led me to a terrible despondency. The nearest beach, where instead of sand was half-worn, but, nevertheless, shell rock sharp enough for the feet, was located next to the hotel "America's Prix". Further along the coast there were solid stones, from which I would never allow a child to swim.
As it turned out the next day, it was impossible to swim on the beach near the hotel named after the anonymous Pindos - right at the shore the bottom was rocky, with pits, sharp stones and boulders in the water.
The first beach of the twelve-kilometer strip of public sand for relaxation was green at the edge like an old knee wound - there was much more mud on it than under the balcony of our hotel room. At the same time, the presence of seafood in the surf zone did not bother either the beach staff, who actively collected five levs each for being under the wretched metal umbrellas repeatedly painted according to old scraps, or vacationers of various nationalities. Beach users either stepped over the rubble of green rubbish, or selflessly raked passages in it leading to relatively clear water.
There was practically no mud on the second beach. Its absence was more than covered by the presence of people, the number of which clearly exceeded the capacity of this strip of coast when it was used as a place of rest.
Children, mattresses, deckchairs, half-eaten boiled corn, cigarette butts, caps from beer bottles and other items extremely densely covered the sand, obviously not the first freshness.
On the next beach, the situation has not changed dramatically.
The fourth beach differed from all previous and subsequent ones by old fragments of logs sticking out of the shore, which once, apparently, represented the lower part of either a pier, or some other coastal structure. Most likely, phallic symbols in the form of black chipped logs, up to the waist of a sexually mature man, erected from water and sand, somewhat scared away the vacationers, who were much smaller on this beach. The advantage of this piece of coast, on which we later rested, in addition to relatively less crowded, can be attributed to a good seabed, with the exception of a segment with firebrands sticking out of the water, of course.
The next beach would be simply magnificent, but literally ten meters from the water's edge on a beautiful sandy bottom there were concrete remains of a rather large-scale structure, through which the vacationers who settled on this stretch of coast bravely climbed to reach the "big water". "Nah, " I immediately remembered my favorite German preposition and went further along the shore.
Further, in the community of Pomorie, one could see a couple of times five-leaf umbrellas against the backdrop of devastation and about five free beaches, vile and untidy, like a morning bum at three stations in the capital of our great motherland.
It was pointless and lazy to go further, so I got out of the shore onto the road and went back. A strip of asphalt ran along a unique salt lake, either on the UNESCO list or some other international organization.
So that vile vacationers do not spoil the world heritage monument, the reservoir was fenced off from the road with concrete pillars about two meters high with barbed wire carefully stretched between them.
On the opposite side of the lake, which stank of bird excrement and other "sulphurous whirlpools", stretched camp sites built back in the years of the "damned socialist past" with rows of collective foot-washers and toilets and showers suspicious from the point of view of sanitation. These complexes of buildings, according to the signs attached to the half-rotten gates, were recognized by the Bulgarian authorities as hotels of the "one star" category. Among the inhabitants of these squalor, I especially remember an uncle of about fifty years old, who washed himself under a shower, arranged for some reason right at the outer fence of one such hotel.
In order not to embarrass the people with his extravagant nudism, the peasant, as far as possible, covered his nudity with disposable cellophane tablecloths stretched on rusty rods.
CENTER OF DESTRUCTION AND EVERY EVENING FLUID "FIRST"
The city of Pomorie itself is quite unpleasant for its general slovenliness, unkemptness and total laxity. The walls of many houses are not plastered, from other dwellings something vile strives to pour on the head, gaps and holes gape in the balconies and roofs. The pavements are covered either with old, crookedly laid tiles or with the same badly worn, cracked asphalt.
The center of the evening "cultural life" is a pedestrian street in the city center. The influx of people who want to stare and show themselves by 21.00 local time reaches a clearly excessive concentration.
The action is reminiscent of the May Day demonstration in the USSR, only the announcer's announcements in the "swearing" type are missing, such as "There is a column of workers of the Leninsky district. "
Construction is going on all over the city, especially in the neighborhoods adjacent to the coast. Building houses for sale and hotels. Most of the ads for sale are in Russian, prices per square meter by Moscow or Moscow region standards are tender. At the same time, two questions constantly arose in my head - whether the investors of this commercial architecture will rebuild infrastructure facilities, especially roads, and whether they will make new beaches for those who buy square meters in Pomorie. During my stay in the Black Sea town, I did not have confidence that positive answers would be given to both questions.
WHERE TO GO WITH A CHILD
In the so-called "amusement park" on a pedestrian street in the city center - a race track with Soviet-era cars, "vomit swings" of a suspiciously creaking Extreme unit, a carousel for the smallest, trampolines, a shaking booth of the Virtual Flight attraction.
On the seashore, from the entertainment for children - large inflatable balls for walking on the water. They are operated by a couple of lazy young men who work exclusively from 09.00 to 14.00. After two in the afternoon, even an attempt to give the retarded boys more than the price list does not lead to anything. Their laziness knows no bounds, stupidity too.
SALT CALCULATION UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF RARE BIRDS
The only scientific and cultural, and in general, universal object in Pomorie, which caused exceptionally positive emotions, is the Nature Center on the Salt Lake (Pomorie Lake Visitors' Center).
A wonderful exposition dedicated mainly to the birds that live on a unique lake, a new well-equipped building, built with money and, apparently, under the control of the European Union, friendly employees who speak foreign languages well. Visit - you won't regret it.
The center is located next to the Salt Museum. This institution was created with the money of the municipality. The exposition in it is "C grade".
But what surrounds both objects cannot be called otherwise than a mess and garbage can. The territory of the former salt mines and some kind of industrial zone is littered with construction waste from all over the city and polluted with all sorts of rubbish beyond measure. Going to the salt museum and nature center from the embankment along a bumpy dirt road among piles of broken bricks, rusty fittings and other rubbish is simply disgusting. You can, of course, approach from the side of the stadium, where the road is at least paved.
But the view will be the same - an industrial landscape that has undergone large-scale destruction.
On the territory of the salt museum there is also a "mecca" for lovers of self-healing with mud, which is formed in the Salt Lake as a result of massive active defecation of rare birds protected by the international and European community. This substance is considered extremely useful in the treatment of many diseases.
In one of the former salt evaporators, adherents and neophytes of calotherapy, and this is how this procedure is called in Bulgarian, not only shove the smelly black mass into bottles, jars and other containers, but also smear the decomposition products of microorganisms in certain places or over the entire surface of the suffering and not very tel. Then homosapiens of various sexes and ages, similar to chimney-sweep devils, roam the neighborhoods and beaches in anticipation of the effect of the "treatment".
MYSTERIOUS NOSTALGIA FOR A BED IN THE ATTIC
In my opinion, a holiday in Pomorie is a product exclusively for domestic use. Residents of other regions of the country who come to the city willingly rent beds in attics, in garages and under sheds, cook merrily on the street in shared kitchens and drink wine at night in the nooks of the master's courtyards among the corroded Soviet "Volga" and "Moskvich-2141". Either their mentality is like that, or the longing for the "cursed past" is stuck, or pathological frugality cries out, or something else ....I can’t explain this phenomenon, and I don’t need all this, I’m not an ethnologist.
I just think that in our time, when for relatively little money you can have a great time in fairly remote corners of the blue ball, spend money and a precious day of vacation on a dull pastime in an unsettled Bulgarian outback, the inhabitants of which have not yet learned or are too lazy to work for tourists, is not entirely reasonable.
At the same time, I do not at all call for a boycott of Bulgaria as a holiday destination in general, because there are places in this country where you can have a wonderful vacation. You just need to choose these places more carefully : -).
