This year I took my first flight. Big deal...you’ll probably say. So far my concept of first-class travel to the native Black Sea coast has included a drive by car packed with less than five people and the household belongings of a small apartment block.
My friends’ and my usual practice was a pictorial example of a refrain from a song by the great Upsurt: pristigame na garata v Bourgas, a toia trezvenia sum az” (we have just arrived at the Bourgas Station, the sober person being my own modest creation”).
After Bulgaria’s EU accession and the penetration of low cost airlines, the life of Bulgarian travellers has eased a lot. And they have been offered new endless horizons. I was eager to take advantage of all the goods the capitalist world offered and bought my self a return flight to Rome for the price of 0.02 euro. With taxes and other charges the sum came to as much as 50 euro. I stayed there with relatives, so the money I spent for a five-day holiday in Italy, accompanied – along with various extras such as bargaining all kinds of rubbish things from the Morocco’s gypsies – was half the sum a red-cheeked Irishman would spend for a weekend in Bansko.
I was still excited after my first flight when my colleagues offered me a one-day working trip to Varna and back by plane. Domestic airlines in Bulgaria are maintained by Bulgaria Air.
On the day of the trip, I arrived at Sofia Airport’s new terminal, enthusiastic and happy that I would spend the day away from the office. And then the first disappointment came. The flight had been cancelled. There was no logical explanation given by the company why the flight was cancelled a few hours before take-off. However, the next flight was in three hours, we were going to take it. In our group there was a lady, who said she was a contributor to a local interior design magazine. She bore a suspicious resemblance to the girl from the latest issue of Playboy. We reached the scanning devices and the security asked the lady to check her miniature bag, where they found a miniature bottle of perfume. The security guards then asked the lady to place her bottle in a plastic bag and eventually removed it from her carry-on luggage. The lady got angry and refused to take a step further without her perfume. After long minutes in which everyone in the group was wheedling with the guards, they agreed to set the perfume free and we were able to move on.
Sofia-Varna flights are on propeller-driven ATR 42s, or so Bulgaria Air says. But my companions agitatedly explained to me the plane was “anche” (An 24). I’m not sure there is a point to tell you about the experience (survival?) called flying with “anche”. All I want to say is that there were enormous gaps between the panels the plane is built from. The view of the infinite white-blue heavenly space was interrupted by some parts of the aircraft. The funny thing was that every time we entered cloud masses, the temperature inside the plane decreased significantly. You will probably say – this is nothing, the flight to Varna should last not more than 30 to 40 minutes. But you would be wrong. On an “anche”, the flight lasts an hour and 20 minutes. By Boeing, for example, it takes the same time to get to any nearby European capital.
Before I used a Bulgarian airline for the first time, I was living with the belief, a product of many TV commercials, that stewardesses are long-legged, shining and smiling beauties wearing sexy uniforms, all the planes have luxurious leather seats in the business class and everyone is drinking champagne. Could you imagine my surprise, when I got on Bulgaria’s own “anche” and was welcomed by short-legged, roundish, reddened lady wearing funny, far from sexy, uniform. I didn’t have much time to think over the debacle of my stereotype for the flashy stewardess, because my attention was pretty much fixed on the cute blue-eyed colleague I had just met. I no longer cared that there were some gaps in the plane construction, nor about the lumpy old brownish seats. The blue-eyed boy and I sat together and started an enjoyable and non-engaging conversation. In the next moment the roundish stewardess I have already mentioned appeared on the extremely narrow path between the plane’s seats with an in-flight service trolley. First, she decided to interrupt our conversation by asking us if we would like something to drink, thus earning my detestation. I refused politely hoping that she would get the hell out of there and we could continue our conversation on existential issues such as: Who do we like most – Stoyan and Elitsa or Chambao. But then my companion decided to ask for a cup of orange juice. What followed I remembered as a slow motion projection – the stewardess, pincered between the seats and the service cart, was trying to handle a cup of juice over my head to the boy sitting next to me, but she failed. She spilled the juice on me. Then a 15-minute ado followed, desperate explanations of how sorry she was and tones of paper towel all over me. And all I wanted was for her to get the hell out of there...
Do not get me wrong. Flight, no matter if it is with An 24, is still the fastest way to get from Sofia to our coastal cities.
If you are contemplating flying to Varna, there are flights available every working day at 9.45am, 12.45pm, 4pm and 7.30pm. From Varna to Sofia there are flights every working day at 5am, 7am, 11.15am and 6pm. The price of a five-day return ticket with all taxes and charges included is 260 leva (about 130 euro). If you need to stay longer, it will cost you an additional 20 leva (10 euro).
For more information call +359 2 40 20 400 or +359 2 40 20 405.
It is a fact that flying with a Bulgarian airline to Varna may, to understate the obvious, turn into an adventure.
