“Have you noticed all the car washes?”

We were on way on through Kranevo in the fifth hour of a drive from Kiten on the southern Bulgarian Black Sea coast to Kavarna. Indeed, the number of signs reading Avtomivka boasting the services of high-pressure hoses and foam seem to have multiplied this year.

“It’s for the mutri,” J said, “they like their cars washed every day or two to keep them gleaming”.

It’s true. It seems to be part of Bulgaria’s gangster subculture that the lumpishly ostentatious luxury vehicle recklessly shouldering its way along hazardous blind-curved coastal roads should not only be seen to be beyond the law, but also plainly separated from the common herd by its cleanliness.

Even in Kiten, our base for the past 10 days of excursions along the southern coast, the principal patrons of the Avtomivki were shiny black luxury vehicles. While also of German make, our somewhat humbler drive advertises our honesty by its beige dustiness. It is clearly the mode of transport of two professional observers of the passing seaside scene and their six-year-old apprentice.

As noted in the previous blog in this short series, another trademark among the lesser gangster types is the anchor-chain grade of neckwear, silver-coloured, or for all I know, indeed silver or platinum. I do not engage this type of person in conversation, and nor would I approach them with assay equipment, lest a test of the metallurgical merits of their jewellery have disappointing consequences for us all.

Like very large jellyfish, when it comes to gangster types, we know that they are there along Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, but we prefer to avoid them.

“Do jellyfish have eyes, Mummy?” our six-year-old asked yesterday. No, she was told, but perhaps we should have said, yes, they do, dark and soulless ones, set above baggy pouches and wrinkled slightly against their own cigar smoke. I have seen one or two light up pre-dinner cigars.

We know they are there, and so do the proprietors of most establishments, or at least the kind outside which the sleek slug trails of Bulgaria’s gangster types may be seen. One such establishment, a trendy cocktail bar on the shore at Lozenets, offers 1970s vintage French wine at 1700 leva (and the price is quoted in leva, yes, not the equivalent about 850 euro). While the rest of us are content with mojitos and such, only the insecurely desperate to impress could possibly place an order for a bottle of that stuff as an idle tipple while crinkling patterns in the sand with one’s tootsies.
Far be it from me to suggest that there may be a link between such people and dirty work at the crossroads with European funding (given that I need not bother, because Olaf went on record making precisely such a suggestion), but it may be a relief to the French wine industry to know that cash from Brussels may be, by however meandering a route, be lending them a hand.

By the way, speaking of European funding, I do wish that at the point that Bulgaria again is deemed worthy of receiving such financial assistance unencumbered, some is used to build ring roads around Bourgas and Varna. Not that I do not have the deepest regard for those two cities, but idling drearily this afternoon through their dense traffic and traffic lights when all we wanted to do was get from one small town at one end of the coast to another was a bit much.

If anyone in those two cities would argue that ring roads would deprive them of passing trade from passers-through such as ourselves, they would be well advised to think again. With through traffic compounding existing problems, we were of no mind to stop anywhere, but simply wanted to nose our way through the seething stew and out the other side.

Nor should the local constabulary imagine that they are going to make any money from fines. The practice of flicking headlights to warn of speed traps continues to thrive, and while I drive fastidiously within speed limits, I had ample warning of every such trap.

And after all, the slugs with big lugs, heavy jewellery and heavy cars, have a well-known exemption from being stopped in such traps. Thus another argument for wide, multiple-lane ring roads. Every opportunity for them to speed mightily towards (hopefully, only their own) doom must be a welcome one.