Our hotel was (and is) intended for lesser judiciary and civil servants though its future seems to be uncertain, especially with all the privatisation that is going on. The management can no longer count on the financial support it used to receive from the government and it may have to close or be run within a more commercial framework. It is a prime site, quiet because the road ends here, with an established garden and well within walking distance of the most popular beaches and the town centre. It is such an interesting walk as far as sound is concerned; I’m going to record a complete circle into town and back. L has become fascinated by the polychrome paving stones and wants to film them – a sequel to the ‘Yellow Brick Road’?

Though not without it’s attractions initially, the final price seems pretty steep. On the other hand they bring to mind descriptions and postcards of the Butlin’s holiday camps in England of the fifties, before the advent of cheap Spanish holidays, when the all-inclusive prices were calculated at the average weekly industrial wage and included child care facilities.

This is definitely beach country. M tells us that he came down this way with his wife on their honeymoon. The places they went to, one of them Tsarevo, were only small villages then. It is a booming little resort now, with a small funfair and numerous half-built hotels. Further along the road we pass a Roma settlement and some factories.

This morning after breakfast we set off south, down the coast towards the Turkish border. We drive by a number of communist era ‘holiday villages’ cheek by jowl along the road, some more generous in their accommodation than others, all painted uniformly, though each ‘village’ is in different colours, perhaps signifying their company allegiance. They remind me of a summer we spent in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, near Schwerin in 1993 where, through friends, we had lodgings for a few nights is a similar facility—it was the closest I came to experiencing the omnipresent concerns of a system of government that organised all your time…

The town itself is a fishing town, with a substantial harbour. It was an active port during the Ottoman period when its population was mainly Greek. In order to visit the EVN office we have to drive through the local Roma settlement with its unpaved roads. The segregated position of the Roma is an issue we will have to spend some time on, if not now, then when we return next year. In the EVN compound, amongst the debris of expired electric meters, retired control boxes and the like, there are two boats, run aground on new economic conditions and stranded in the vegetation. There is also a canoe beached on the forecourt.