Drinking Rakia in Nesebar, Black Sea

An account of a holiday and the return to Bulgaria for a travelling Bulgarian.

Rakia and tradtional accompaniments are first on the menu as memories of Bulgaria are relived!

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Weekends or weekdays..... life never stops in BG. The restaurants and bars are full, the food is really great. All the things I loved to eat and grew up on I've had the opportunity to taste again, various salads with grated fetta on top, a multitude of choices for the meatlover: grilled delicacies and spit roasts, a selection of exotic seafood from the Black Sea and much more.

A standard 'small' drink is 50ml here, but the locals always order the 'standard' large of 100ml, served with a glass full of ice and a bottled mixer of their choice. Yes, they certainly can hold their drink around here. In some clubs it's possible to order 'hard' alcohol by the bottle, and the account is charged to the table. Many of the clubs which my cousin took me to had paid dancers breaking up the decor. In some of the exclusive ones, to sit at the bar you needed a reservation.

Weird. But Iveta, my cousin, was 'in the know', so it was no problem to secure a spot in these 'elite' clubs, prop ourselves at the bar for the night and watch the action unfold around us.

Nesebar, the old town

I had the pleasure of showing my Swiss friends, Beat and Jeremy, around Sofia for a weekend and we went bar-hopping. Apart from visiting quite a few hot nightspots, we even made it to a Chalga club. I loved watching the expression on their faces, puzzled looks of surprise.

After some typical sight-seeing around Sofia, Beat, Jeremy and I headed to Veliko Tarnavo (the old capital) for a day before making our way down to the Black Sea.
To be continued........

.......We stayed in Nesebar, in the old part of town, dating back to the Byzantine period. It was originally an island, but these days it's connected to the main land via a long channel built over the water.

There we stayed in a 2-storey greek cottage style house, where we rented a two bedroom apartment with a large balcony. We spent the next 5 evenings chatting away on our balcony, sipping fine Rakia (known as 'grapa' in English). We polished off a couple of bottles of 'Peshterska' Rakia (the name means 'from the cave'), as well as, a bottle of green apple flavoured Vodka. It was brilliant.

Nesebar, the old town

But the fun didn't end there. In the mornings we would rise to the sound of ........ Bag pipe solo, the seagulls, then stroll down through the busy streets of the old town and walk along the narrow way over the sea and to the beach. There we would sit down at the same cafe' every morning for a serving of hot pancakes and fresh coffee.

By about lunchtime, we'd made our way along the beach to the end, where we'd set up just meters away from the bar. We'd spend the rest of the day lazing about catching rays and going for the occasional dip in the water. About mid afternoon we would shift to the bar for a few beers and Beat would throw down a few Rakias, as well. Ha!

We would proceed with a couple more coconut oil tanning sessions, then wait for the lifeguards to disappear around 5pm, so that we could swim out into the water as far as we wished. At dusk we would make our way back through the cobble stone streets of Nesebar, watching the sky change colour, knowing there was still quite a bit of Rakia left in our room.

After a few refreshments we'd head out for seafood, before returning to the room for some more Rakia.

Nesebar, the old town

Jeremy and the bag pipe guy... one on one day we'd do it all over again. Muy bueno!

By chance we discovered there would be a huge beach party called Metropolis (i think), which was going to take place on Saturday night, the same night we were leaving. We thought we'd try to change our bus tickets back to Sofia for the Sunday morning, to arrive back in time for Beat and Jeremy to take their flight to Switzerland. It was going to be a close call, but for those who feel lucky, things always work out fine. Right! So, luckily, we managed to secure our new seats.

We went to the party, it turned out to be a huge beach concert with bands starting off the night, and then the DJ sets to close off in the morning. I took photos of the most memorable bands, which you can view below. Both Gravity Co. and Ladytron played songs in English and some in Bulgarian. They were really great.

We were due to leave the party at 5am, so we could get our bags and head to the bus stop, but we managed to catch some of Sasha's DJ set. The last two hours of music we heard

View from our balcony

On the way back along the beach and from the balcony of our apartment. The sound was so loud it could be heard across several kilometers of sea water.

After spending 6 hours on the bus back to Sofia, the lucky ones felt pretty unlucky. My Swiss freinds' flight was at 4pm and at 2.30 we were still driving through a mountain range outside of town........

Surprisingly, one out of our three brains was still functioning, Beat's. We convinced the bus driver to drop us off near the airport on the way into town. It was 3pm when we hopped off the bus and caught the first taxi to the airport. A 10min ride and we arrived just in time for their flight. The perfect ending to a perfect holiday.

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Many thanks to Zoe Malinova for donating her story.

More of Zoe's travel adventures can be found at this link: http://www.travelblog.org

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