After breakfast the first thing we do is investigate something we glimpsed last night through the bushes – a large open-air swimming pool. Or rather what used to be one, with associated changing cabins, bar, kitchen and sun-lounger space. The kitchen equipment has been dismantled, the sunshades disrobed, the whole complex is overgrown; the downward steps leading into the place are almost closed-off by jungly bushes. Insistent young trees have forced their way through weaknesses in the paving stones, years of autumn leaves huddle in the corners of the building and, round the pool itself, the starting blocks resemble tombstones for a collapsed social system, memorials to the days long gone when holiday accommodation was allocated, their position in the hierarchy of the Communist Party or collective enterprise determining their entitlement to holiday destinations and degrees of luxury.
The road we now take eastwards leads through Harmanli which has one of the hump-backed bridges I like so much, this one from the 16th century. There are also the remains of a caravanserai and a dead cinema. |
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After a quick coffee we are back on the road heading north-east to Elhovo and I drop into a reverie as the kilometres slip by while L films. Elhovo turns out to be a quiet town of about 20,000 people. We have a cup of  coffee next to the municipal hotel, which is closed and looks desolate, an impression underscored by the fact that the walls carry only a few posters but many of the obituary notices typically found in all sorts of public spaces such as on bridge supports, factory walls, bus station walls etc. They are never removed, they simply fade away, and when they congregate at bus stops, for example, they give the appearance of having spontaneously generated families with all age groups represented from great-grandmother to three-month-old baby. |
