Beach idyll disturbed by mafia minders and global unrest
ALMOST heaven – that’s Sunny Beach with miles and miles of golden sands.
No wonder it’s been a favourite Black Sea resort since construction began back in the 1950s heydays of the Communist regime.
The local currency – the lev – can buy you gallons of cheap booze and good nosh in any of its innumerable seaside restaurants. Home to over 200 hotels offering 300,000 beds, it has fast become Bulgaria’s most popular holiday destination.
With temperatures at this time of year reaching a very comfortable 30 degrees, it’s a place to chillax and soak up the rays. The nightlife continues to draw in hordes of young 18–30 somethings looking for party excesses. With scantily clad table-top dancing girls enticing passing customers, one might be forgiven for thinking: does it get any better?
It’s fast becoming the alternative Mediterranean destination for British, German and Scandinavian holidaymakers.
It’s “almost heaven,” as Martin Fletcher would say. But Fletcher, who was the Washington Post correspondent for The Times during the 90s, never met the Bulgarian mafia that runs Sunny Beach. (More of Fletcher later).
Word has it that control of the resort lies with just a few mafia families. You can see their musclemen staff all day – every day – and night, collecting doubtless previously agreed “security” monies from the mushrooming array of small businesses that make up the resort. Apparently they offer peace of mind. Or something like that. Anyway, I’m told no-one would dare interfere with a business displaying their security stickers in shop doors and windows…
The police presence borders between low-profile and non-existent. Corruption is said to be widespread throughout the country. It seems everyone is on the take.
According to recent media reports the Socialist government was toppled following mass rallies by Bulgarians unhappy with the industrial-scale corruption that blights the economy. But it seems none of the political parties can be trusted and when I was there – just last week – talks to form some sort of rainbow coalition appeared mired in political game scoring.
SO there I was, poolside, glass of whisky in hand, reading Martin Fletcher’s account of his travels through backwoods America. Almost Heaven is an enthralling read – albeit it came out in 1999 – which details an extraordinary journey, sharply detailed, of the quintessential America.
I encountered evangelical snake-handlers, redneck bear hunters, Death Row inmates and a whole host of eccentric whackos from West Virginia, Montana and Idaho.
What struck me though were the Stateside conspiracy theorists – people who loathe the federal government and see it as essentially a threat to their constitutional liberties. Many had shacked up in mountain retreats awaiting Armageddon.
They were well versed in apocalyptic revelations and had dug their nuclear bunkers all the while amassing colossal weaponry to defend themselves when the bomb went off or – as more seemed to believe – when the global economy crashed.
There was something strangely prophetic reading Fletcher’s account almost 15 years after it was written. And given the subsequent globalised economic crash of 2007
Fletcher trundles through decaying and abandoned communities well off the interstate’s beaten track and meets such a bizarre array of unlikely characters. Mormon polygamists, neo-Nazi militants, anti-Zionists, the final vestiges of the Ku Klux Klan…
It’s a journey that exposes the prevailing racism, prejudice and inequalities that continue to blight the so-called Land of the Free. So much for the American dream! (Here, I must admit, I’ve always harboured this desire to do my own coast-to-coast trip across the States. Ideally on a Harley Davison.)
I’m not sure what they dream about in Bulgaria. The indigenous Roma gypsy population constitute the largest ethnic minority but many barely survive at a subsistence level. Their children, I was told, don’t attend school, but help their beleaguered parents scrape a livelihood scouring wheelie bins for food or things to recycle – such as glass bottles, plastic and cardboard.
The airport at Burgas sports a MiG fighter jet. It’s a dated military trophy and does little to impress new arrivals to the country’s former Soviet past.
But it does effectively remind you that things weren’t always so open and hospitable to the West.
My week in the searing sun passed by all too quickly. And before I knew it I was back in Bonnie Scotland attending to hailstone showers!
I was disturbed by the news of the savage and shockingly violent attack on drummer Lee Rigby. That he could be run over and subjected to a frenzied machete attack in broad daylight is absolutely horrific.
I’d been out of touch during my time in Bulgaria and had a lot of news to catch up on. YouTube video clips of Rigby’s blood-stained assailants seeking to justify their gruesome actions beggared belief. What has the world come to?
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” insisted the Islamic radicals. It was too barbaric.
Much has been made by our own respective governments in their attempts to justify illegal wars and interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems in fighting terrorism abroad we are protecting our borders at home. Oh yeah?
Both Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo – Rigby’s prime suspects – were known to the British secret services.
The previous Labour governmental and the current Tory
Yet all the while we have wasted billions of pounds and needlessly sacrificed the lives of our military personnel in forlorn overseas campaigns when what we should have done was simply lock our border gates – welcoming only those who had something to contribute to our way of life. Or those who genuinely needed protection from foreign oppressors.
Instead we have harboured and bred fanatics whose personal martyrdom depends on suicidal jihads against our values and way of life. Their rewards are in heaven, apparently.
I had enjoyed Sunny Beach and reading Martin Fletcher’s account of his travels across the States. One thing for the sure; the world is still a very divided place and governments the world over have a lot to answer for.