Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
exiled royals, King Simeon and his family. Crowds pressed to see the pictures. I thought it odd at first, but
you can imagine what it would be like in Britain if the royal family had been banished forty years ago (now
there's a thought for you) and people had been denied any official information about them. So suddenly now
the Bulgarians could see what had become of their equivalent of Princess Margaret and the Duke of
Edinburgh and all the others. I had a look myself, rather hoping to discover that King Simeon was now
managing a Dairy Queen in Sweetwater, Texas, but in fact he appeared to be living a life of elegance and
comfort in Paris, so I declined the invitation to sign a petition calling for his reinstatement.
Every evening I went looking for the Club Babalu, a nightclub where Katz and I hung out every night of
our stay. That wasn't its real name; we just called it that because it looked so much like Desi Arnaz's Club
Babalu on I Love Lucy. It was like something straight out of the early 1950s, and it was the hot spot in Sofia.
People went there for their anniversaries.
Katz and I sat nightly in a balcony overlooking the dance floor drinking Polish beer and watching a rock
'n' roll band (I use the phrase in its Bulgarian sense) whose enthusiasm almost made up for its near total
lack of talent. The band played songs that had not been heard in the rest of the world for twenty years -
'Fernando's Hideaway', 'Love Letters in the Sand', 'Green Door' - and people our age were dancing to
them as if they were the latest thing, which I suppose in Bulgaria they may have been. The best part was that
Katz and I were treated like celebrities - American tourists were that rare in Sofia then. (They still are, come
to that.) People joined us at our table, bought us drinks. Girls asked us to dance with them. We got so drunk
every night that we missed a dozen opportunities for sexual gratification, but it was wonderful none the less.
I so much wanted to find the Babalu again that I looked all over the city and even strolled out to the train
station, a long and unrewarding walk, thinking that if I retraced the route Katz and I had taken into the city, I
might kindle my memory, but no such luck. And then on a Friday evening, as I was strolling past the
restaurant of the Grand Hotel for about the twentieth time that week, I was brought up so short by the sound
of tinny guitars and scratchy amplifiers that I actually smacked my nose against the glass in turning to look. It
was the Club Babalu! I had walked past it again and again, but without the awful music I hadn't even noticed
it. Now suddenly I recognized every inch of it. There was the balcony. There was our table. Even the
waitresses looked vaguely familiar, if a tad older. Happy memories came flooding back.
I went straight in to order a Polish beer, but a guy on the door in an oversized black suit wouldn't let me
enter. He wasn't being nasty, but he just wouldn't let me in. I didn't understand why. You get used to not
understanding why in Bulgaria after a while, so I continued with my walk. About twenty minutes later, after my
nightly circuit of the dark hulk of the Nevsky church, I ambled back past the Grand and realized why I had
been denied entrance. They were closing. It was nine-thirty on a Friday night and this was the liveliest place
in town. Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn't a country; it's a near-death experience.
I was lucky that I could retreat whenever I wanted to the luxurious sanctum of the Sheraton, where I could
get cold beers and decent food and watch CNN on the TV in my room. I cravenly took all my meals there. I
tried hard to find a local restaurant that looked half-way decent and could not. Sofia has the most unlively
bars and restaurants - plain, poorly lit, with maybe just a factory calendar on the wall and every surface
covered in Formica. I did stop once at a place out near Juzen Park, but the menu was in Cyrillic and I
couldn't understand a thing. I looked around to see what other people were eating, thinking I might just point
to something on someone else's table, but they were eating foods that didn't even look like food - all gruel
and watery vegetables - and I fled back to the hotel, where the menu was in English and the food was
appealing.
But I paid for my comfort with a twice-daily dose of guilt. Each time I dined in the Sheraton, I was glumly
aware that I was eating better than nine million Bulgarians. I found this economic apartheid repugnant, if
irresistible. How can you have a country in which your own citizens are forbidden to go into certain places? If
a Bulgarian was by some miracle of thrift and enterprise sufficiently well-heeled, he could go into two of the
hotel's restaurants, the Wiener Caf← and Melnik Grill, but the entrances were on a side street. You couldn't
get to them through the hotel. You had to go out of the front door and walk around the corner. Common
people couldn't come into the hotel proper, as I could. Hundreds of them must walk by it every working day
and wonder what it's like inside. Well, it's wonderful - to a Bulgarian it would seem to offer a life of richness
and comfort almost beyond conception: a posh bar where you could get cocktails with ice cubes,
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search