Storyline: 2024 Fall trip to Europe
The reason for this short visit was very sad.
(The four photos from the mountains are given to me by Vanya, curtesy Ivo and his friend. Ivo’s last photos.)
Sofia is the city of my youth. Many good memories. During the years Alex has felt comfortable in it to the point where he is better in navigating around what to me is the new and changed city. I still have memories from the past of streets and places that do not exist any more.
I mentioned in previous posts that this hurried-up and not well-planned trip was to see my friend Vanya. Last time we saw her in 2018 was just a few months before she lost her husband Krasi. The loss was long expected and she was psychologically prepared for it, not that one can ever prepare for the loss of a loved one. But to suddenly lose her adult child, her elder son Ivo, was, to greatly understate, a shock.
Ivo was an avid mountaineer. He would go hiking every weekend and every free day he had. On a perfect sunny day, according to Vanya, Ivo and a friend of his headed up to a peak of Stara Planina (or The Balkan Mountains as it is known in English).
The Balkans are not very high mountains. The highest peak is Botev Peak at 7,795 feet (2,376 m). But they can be tricky and impassable in places.
As far as I understood, the hike was near the village of Opletnya, about an hour from Sofia in the Vratsa Balkan. It was a day trip. Since Ivo was living with Vanya, she was expecting him for dinner. Instead, her younger son and his fiancée showed at the door with the devastating news. It is not clear how, but Ivo slipped on a rock and fell to his death.
His friend called the Mountain Rescue service. It had taken the team 10 hours to locate them. The friend didn’t have any coordinates of Ivo’s relatives and Ivo’s backpack with his ID was gone in the gorge. With only a name in his hands, I’d say the police had done the most sensitive thing they could. They found two people with the same family name. In Bulgaria everyone upon their birth receives a unique identification number, something similar to the Canadian social security number.
This unique identifier contains the date of birth and a code for male or female. From the two people with the same family name, one was younger and a male. The other was a 71-year-old woman. So, they called the younger, his brother. Makes perfect sense. If this was his brother or other relative it was better for him to deliver the news to the mother.
And so, following this long after midnight call (I called her around 2am their time because she was awake) the day after she received the horrific news, we decided we’d visit her.
That’s how we ended up in Sofia. After six years of break. I rented an Airbnb apartment in the center on the pedestrian part of Blv. Vitosha, close to a metro stop. Aside from Vanya, I have one more friend left there: Milan. He surprised us waiting at the airport. It is some half an hour from the airport to the centre by Metro. He walked us to the apartment. First thing the next day was to see Vanya.
She met us at the nearest mall and then we went to her apartment. I haven’t been there in the last 30 years or so. And it was Alex’s first time.
Since Krasi and Vanya thought the apartment is too small for guests, we always met and spent long evenings at a restaurant. Yet I was really surprised how small the apartment was (and from Diana’s descriptions over time, I was surprised how large it was – A). In my memory their apartment was spacious with the bonus of central heating.
But this was in comparison to the cold house we used to live in. It is all relative, isn’t it. That day she took us to a Chinese restaurant nearby. Lovely meal. Totally different from what we have here. But I wanted to take her to the restaurant where Alex first met their family over a 5-hour dinner in 2004. It has changed name and owners, but thanks to Vanya, we even managed to sit at the table next to the one in 2004.
It was nice for Niki (her younger son) and his fiancée Iva to join us. We again had a 5-hour or so dinner. As always dinners there are not for eating, but for socializing. The restaurants are full with people getting together with their friends. And although the prices have gone up quite a lot, the salaries of younger generation have also gone up and they are enjoying the lifestyle of not cooking at home.
Bulgaria used to be the cheapest place to eat out. It was cheaper to eat out than to buy groceries and cook at home. Not anymore. The explanation was that the prices have jumped up, since Bulgaria is expected to join to euro currency next year. Good for the young, but not good for the retired people on fixed income.
We also had memories of Milan taking us to a brewpub selling live beer in 2018. So, we tried to see if it was still open. Milan’s memory is unfortunately aging and even after I sent him photos from the place he could not remember where it was. But Alex did! I knew the street, but though the location was at a different place.
Alex brought me to Luciano’s pub; we took the address and sent it to Milan. He joined us with another friend, Violeta and his daughter Teddie, who was fluent in English, so Alex had a translator other than me. Also, Niki and Iva surprised us with their English. Niki made company to Alex over the long dinner, so I could spend more time with Vanya.
Milan also saw us off to at airport and that’s when he told me he had some surprise health issues. Luckily, they caught it on time. With Alex’s and now Milan’s health on shaky ground, we don’t really know when and if we’ll see my friends again. And it is not just health issues. Not to be pessimistic, but with all the geopolitical situations, who knows what tomorrow will bring? I do hope, though, that we can visit Bulgaria one more time, properly planned and stay a bit longer. Time will tell.
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