Eurotrip Day 1

Like many of you, I have cousins. Unlike many of you, one of mine, Dot, resides in Bulgaria - Sofia to be precise. This came about when her boyfriend, Graham (for ease of separation between the two Graham's in this story I will be referring to this Graham as Gray), decided to follow a path in diplomacy and so, armed with a modest sprinkling of Bulgarian words and a few Lev, they eloped to Eastern Europe. Much to my delight, they then decided it was time to get married. Obviously I was thrilled for them, but mostly pleased that this meant heaving the might of the Tomalin empire, along with the Glen clan and myriad UK-based chums, out to Bulgaria for a long weekend of festivities to celebrate their nuptials. It is from this fine weekend that I am recently returned, and upon which I base the next few posts.

Day 1: Travel to Bulgaria

Having received the invite some months ago, I had managed to navigate the treacherous waters of booking a hotel room and forking out for low-cost airline tickets on the same flight as my sister Fran and her fiancé Graham. This meant placing ourselves and our luggage in the hands of the good folk from WizzAir. My hopes that 'Wizz' described a sort of simple, uncomplicated and easy-going travel experience were dashed almost immediately. Following a high-speed taxi chase to the airport (for no apparent reason other than that the taxi driver obviously felt that two hours leeway was not long enough to check in for the flight) I was ready to offload my luggage at the check-in desk. With my old and trusty rucksack in tow I was told it would have to be checked-in at the oversize luggage desk, only for it to be whisked onto the conveyer of standard dimensionality. A short, sharp exclamation from the check in attendant did nothing to ease my nerves, nor did her supervisor's nervous questions about what was in the bag. He assured me that it would be fine, and that the baggage handlers would remove it if they thought it was a problem, which wasn't quite the solution I was hoping for.

Airport security always makes me chuckle (see here!), but I failed to get frisked and was disappointed to see that my sister's hand luggage, that can have been no bigger than a piece of toast, was randomly selected to be searched. Unfortunately, it was randomly selected behind a German family who had clearly paid little attention to which particular items were verboten. Several bags were packed inside larger bags, all of which had to be unpacked. Having surrendered half a department store's worth of cosmetics, they checked the x-ray image to reveal that they were harbouring wine glasses in the bag, and something that looked suspiciously like a gherkin. This cost us another twenty minutes of waiting, and when they finally checked Fran's bag I wondered what they possibly expected to find. Images of Mary Poppins floated briefly into my mind, but there were no hat stands or lethal weapons and we were allowed to continue.

At this point Fran and Graham confessed that they had purchased priority boarding to ensure that Graham could get a seat with extra leg room. This meant I got to wait with the common folk whilst they swanned forward and sat in comfort. When it was finally time for me to board, I went straight to the plane's back entrance assuming, naively, that the plane would fill from the front backwards. Apparently low budget airlines operate a free for all policy, where the weak and infirm are systematically rooted out. Finding an inoffensive seat right at the back, which I assumed was immediately above the black box and therefore the safest place to be, I was delighted to see Graham advancing down the isle to inform me that they had managed to save me a seat, right at the front. This necessitated a long crawl back up the isle, but was worth it for the extra half inch of knee space.

The highlight on-board was listening to the safety announcement, given in English and Bulgarian, that moved monotonously between the two languages so that it was impossible to tell where the English ended and the Bulgarian began. Clearly the strain of having to give the same talk repeatedly, presumably within a certain time limit, was too much for the steward. At one point during the announcement he actually held his head in his hands and, I like to imagine, wept inwardly. I contemplated whether he was actually a flight attendant, or perhaps was really an undercover Bulgarian Secret Service agent who had been given an embarrassing assignment. The flight itself was uneventful, taking off and landing in the dark.

Having arrived, the Sofia airport experience was considerably better than the Luton one. As it was 2am in Sofia, the staff had clearly decided that the best thing to do was throw everyone out as soon as possible and go to bed. The sleepy customs man barely glanced at our passports, and our luggage was the first to arrive at baggage reclaim. In fact, mine was the very first bag, presumably because worried baggage handlers had carefully placed it atop the pile in order to keep it safe from ordinary-sized cases. We barely had time to ask what sort of idiot would be present at the airport at this time of night before we bumped into Gray, who had arrived, as we thought, to greet us. But he sheepishly confessed that there were other more important people on the same flight and we would need to get into a taxi. He did at least have the grace to organise one for us, and we wound our way through the empty streets of Sofia to the hotel.

Once arrived, the desk clerk said she had a room for Fran and a room for me, looked awkwardly at Graham, and asked diplomatically which room he would be using. We were directed to the lifts, which were made by a company called Shindler, and were proudly shown how the room key cards would automatically direct the lift to the correct floor. This seemed too good to be true - no need to waste precious energy pushing a button! Then I collapsed into bed and passed out.