BACK IN SOFIA, after an identical whipping of the Medicals, I slept soundly ahead of the crucial Varna clash.
The apartment was filled with sunlight when I awoke. As my alarm hadn’t sounded yet, I guessed it was nearly nine. I showered, kitted up, and was about to leave for the game when I glanced at my watch. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. I was three hours late for the match. My alarm, and the opportunity of a large score before lunch, had failed to rouse me.
I bolted to the ground faster than Mr. Mubashir fled the bridge over the Bosphorus. Reaching the AstroTurf, I found it deserted. I wondered if we were playing elsewhere.
I discovered Saif relaxing at the campus café.
“What happened?” he asked.
I had slept through the entire match. A National Championship match. I’d never missed a game in my life, but Bulgaria does strange things to a man. I apologized and took this as a sign to move on.
I DROVE OUT of Sofia, guided by a Lebanese gas station owner. He said there was no other way I’d find my way through the signless, potholed suburbs.
The road east took me between wooded hills, sunflower fields, and rows of abandoned factories. Families sat on sofas under bridges. Slim teens in Gucci shades gathered beside collapsing tower blocks. It was as though the cast of The O.C. had been plucked up and deposited in South Wales.
I reached Veliko Târnovo, once Bulgaria’s capital, and cruised up its vertical medieval streets. As I scoured for a room, I experienced a haunting flashback from my previous visit.
I had tried to come to Veliko Târnovo by train on a backpacking escapade two years before. Fighting cramps, I sat with teenage skinheads and babushkas in a smoky carriage. At every stop they assured me, as did the conductor, that Veliko Târnovo was just a little farther. I kept checking my map and scratching my head. The journey should have only taken a few hours.
After eight and a half hours, when I had given up hope, the train pulled into what looked like an oil refinery. Piles of sulphur lay exposed on the ground. The platform sign read “
.” It looked a little short of lettering. Every passenger prepared to alight. I asked again if this was Veliko Târnovo. The skinheads and babushkas cackled as they stepped out. I scrambled through my guidebook for a translation of the station sign. I discovered I was in Burgas, at the end of the line. I’d overshot Veliko Târnovo by 124 miles.
It took me two days to backtrack. (Remind me never to pick up a Bulgarian hitchhiker.) I caught the last bus on a Sunday north from a grotty town called Sunny Beach and arrived in Varna at midnight. I showered in the town fountain and bedded down for the evening on the beach. Next morning I would take the train to Veliko Târnovo.
For cover on the beach I constructed a shelter out of four parasols. I looped the poles through my bag straps. It was the most comfortable night’s sleep of my trip, until four in the morning, when I awoke to find a man straddling me.
“Hi!” I said, confused.
“Huh?” replied the fat bloke with blond highlights.
“Hi!”
He looked irritated and slipped away. I didn’t think anything strange of our meeting and fell asleep again.
It was daylight when I saw the big man again, this time with a mate from one of the all-night beach bars. They began dismantling my shelter to get at my backpacks. I sat up in my sleeping bag, watching them. They stared back but continued while we each figured out what to do. Then the pair dropped the third parasol and traipsed off. It began to pour.
I arrived in Veliko Târnovo, in even heavier rain, at eight in the morning, carrying all my worldly possessions on my back. I checked at the tourist info stand and found my train didn’t leave for Bucharest till midnight. As my budget had been blown by the extra days of traveling, I had no choice in the meantime but to beg.
Begging in Bulgaria is tougher than it might sound. Ever the entrepreneur, I believed my best chances lay in begging for services rather than hard cash. I trawled the streets looking for hotels listed in my guidebook. I relayed my woes at each front desk and asked kindly for a shower. The receptionists spared me no charity. I was turned away like a criminal every time.
In the final hotel, the receptionist nodded her head like everyone else that day. As I turned to leave, a Yorkshireman boomed across from the restaurant section. “Go on, give ’im ten leva from us! Put eet on our bill! You can’t be goin’ round without mooney, lad!”
But I didn’t want money; I wanted a shower. Nevertheless, I accepted this offer gratefully. It might prove a powerful bargaining tool for the remainder of my afternoon. Now I could rent a shower.
“D’you want a piece of cake?” asked my rescuer. “’Ere you go.”
I sat with the man and his wife and gobbled up my first meal in two days. “We’re joost ’aving a party to celebrate our new ’ouse,” said the Yorkshireman. “We bought it after watching A Place in the Sun. Say, is that a cricket bat sticking out your bag?”
I pulled my bat from my backpack and handed it over. “I take it everywhere,” I said.
The Yorkshireman stood up and practiced his backlift and forward defensive. “That’s the one thing we’ll miss ’ere,” he lamented. “That and me granddaughter. We’ve got ski slopes, Roman ruins … but no bloomin’ Bulgarian cricket!”
RATHER THAN PAY a babushka ten leva for a shower now, which, incidentally, I did after my cake last time, I scored a whole room. It smelled of stale bread and overlooked Veliko Târnovo’s river-loop gorge and ruined fifth-century citadel.
I feared for the residents of this pleasant town. English estate agents had popped up all over the hill, thanks to programs like A Place in the Sun. It was attracting a mixed crowd. As I sat in a restaurant, scoffing omelette and quaffing tap water, sixty-year-old Pam and Craig fae Greenock at the next table were giving two Bolton newcomers a rundown on what to expect from the region.
“Listen!” said fat, balding Craig, spitting as he spoke. “This place—Bulgaria—is wonderful. Ah came oot the pub here in the dark wan night, pished, and fell doon a pothole. Ah smashed a’ ma teeth oot. Now, how much d’ye think it wid cost me fer a new set o’ teeth back in Scotland? Eh? How much?”
Craig wouldn’t let anyone else answer. “Aboot a grand, aye? Well, let me tell you …” He thrust out a finger. “Here in Bulgaria, fer a whole new set o’ teeth …” He opened his mouth and his new set nearly popped out. “It cost me two hundred quid. Two hundred! Ah’m no jokin’. Magic!”
Pam nodded and stroked Craig’s arm. Craig continued. “This place has cul’ure. Back home, ballet is just fer mincers. Oot here, yer mannie on the street goes to ballet, and he’s no’ necessarily a mincer. It costs £2 for a show. Just £2!
“Ah’m full o’ cul’ure, right? Ah went tae see the oldest piece of gold in the world in Varna. Ah said, ‘That is shite! Whit am ah payin’ fer? That’s fuckin’ tiny!’ It’s aboot the size o’ a postage stamp, right? But then ah went and read up aboot it. Ah went back tae see it. Ah said, ‘See you, ah’ve seen yous twice!’ That, my friends, is cul’ure.”
No one in earshot could draw breath before Craig was off again.
“And whit am ah gonna do back in Greenock? Sit on a dead man’s chair, sipping tea? Ah can dae that in Bulgaria, by Christ. How many bags o’ Tetley’s did we bring back, Pam?”
“Six thousand, dear,” said Pam.
“Six thousand!” echoed Craig.
He put his arm around the Bolton man’s wife.
“A’right, darlin’?” he whispered.
He took her hand and planted a long kiss on it. The Bolton couple didn’t react.
“Ah have irritable bowel syndrome,” continued Craig, after dropping the hand. “Since ah’ve come tae Bulgaria, ah’ve no had the shites. Well, ah take that back. Maybe twice. But back in Greenock it wiz every day. Why do ah no have the shites here? Because the food is grilled. Su-perb! There’s nane o’ them preserva’ves or wit ya call them.”
Craig saw me looking over and included me in his next bit.
“Another great thing. The yogurt here cures ma bad breath. Ah tell yous, this place cannae be beaten. It’s fuckin’ paradise!
“The only bad thing,” said Craig, “the only wan, is if you’re a criminal. They put rapists in wi’ thieves an’ drug dealers here, wi’ only a hole in the floor fer yer mornin’ shower and shite.”
I envisioned living here with Pam and Craig. They would come around to my house every night, telling these same stories till they got pished, fell over, and smashed a’ their teeth oot in a pothole. Yes, Bulgaria was a wonderful place. Until you got toothache, appendicitis, or neighbors like Pam and Craig.
I SET OFF next morning for the Black Sea. If memory served me correctly, it was like Blackpool with Russians. It was where Skegness swingers bought timeshare. Still, I was compelled to return—not to see the oldest piece of gold in the world (after all, that wiz shite)—but because Varna had an all-native cricket team. Granted, they were currently on the other side of the country, engaged in the National Championship in Sofia. But by visiting their town I could pay homage and heal old travel wounds.
A two-lane motorway led to Varna. Every motorist drove on the hard shoulder because the legal lanes shredded tires quicker than the “Kitchen Wonder.” I veered onto them only to overtake donkeys and tractors running on their final pistons. In the country of the Trabant, the Škoda was king, I thought. Then a Lada powered by sunflower oil overtook me. I turned purple with envy.
Near the coast, the sky turned purple, too, from industrial plant emissions. I steered away from the chimney stacks and beach apartments of Varna and took the country back roads to Zvezditsa (or 
on the rare signpost). As there was only one shop and a goat in the square, I believed the seven hundred residents would know the whereabouts of a youth hostel run by a young English couple in their village. Not even when armed with the street name and number could they hazard a guess. I began to think I’d be sleeping on the beach again.
Mercifully, I stumbled across Gregory’s Backpackers by early evening. It was only five miles from Varna, but those five miles had taken me another two hours. I parked the Škoda outside the white gate and staggered in under the grapevine.
The hostel was full for the first time in its history, said the nice proprietors. I collapsed on a leather armchair.
“You’re joking, right? I’ve just driven for six hours. Can I pitch a tent out the back?”
A stranger called over from one of the computer terminals. “I’m sorry. Did you say you came by car?”
I turned to see the man. Who would have thought, in an eastern Bulgarian village, I’d run into another international cricketer?