Haiku Posted August 5, 2017 Report Share Posted August 5, 2017 You're from Bulgaria? I didn't realize that. Your English is pretty darn good. Thanks, I'm flattered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aidan Posted August 5, 2017 Report Share Posted August 5, 2017 Thanks, I'm flattered. I hear the beer is cheap out there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiku Posted August 5, 2017 Report Share Posted August 5, 2017 I hear the beer is cheap out there! Well, almost everything is cheaper, due to our lower socioeconomic status. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeO Posted August 5, 2017 Report Share Posted August 5, 2017 I hear the beer is cheap out there! I went skiing for a fortnight in Bulgaria many years ago (Communist era), except there was no snow . So we just got a chairlift up to the top every day, wandered around a bit and then got drunk; chairlift down, eat, get more drunk, pass out, repeat x 14. Took £270 spending money with me and bought more than £200 home! I expect it's not quite that cheap any more . Corecom shops ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corecom) were incredible; eg a litre of blue label Smirnov for US$2. My liver took months to recover from that trip . Beautiful mountains though the Rhodopes. Only thing we did other than drink was visit a Planetarium in Smolyan. Lost my boarding pass coming home so while everyone else got on the plane I was frantically searching and contemplating a few years in a "Commie" cell but I found it eventually. rubecula 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aidan Posted August 5, 2017 Report Share Posted August 5, 2017 That's it I'm moving there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiku Posted August 5, 2017 Report Share Posted August 5, 2017 (edited) I went skiing for a fortnight in Bulgaria many years ago (Communist era), except there was no snow . So we just got a chairlift up to the top every day, wandered around a bit and then got drunk; chairlift down, eat, get more drunk, pass out, repeat x 14. Took £270 spending money with me and bought more than £200 home! I expect it's not quite that cheap any more . Corecom shops ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corecom) were incredible; eg a litre of blue label Smirnov for US$2. My liver took months to recover from that trip . Beautiful mountains though the Rhodopes. Only thing we did other than drink was visit a Planetarium in Smolyan. Lost my boarding pass coming home so while everyone else got on the plane I was frantically searching and contemplating a few years in a "Commie" cell but I found it eventually. It's laughable that you've spent £70 for two weeks. No, it's not that cheap anymore. Tourism has grown quite a bit here lately, although I think in a bad way. Summer resorts are very attractive to young people who enjoy parties and alcohol. Prices are good for the value they offer. And Rhodopes are still beautiful, that hasn't changed. A bottle of Smirnoff costs about £10 in grocery shops. Edited August 5, 2017 by MikeO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeO Posted August 5, 2017 Report Share Posted August 5, 2017 It's laughable that you've spent £70 for two weeks. No, it's not that cheap anymore. Tourism has grown quite a bit here lately, although I think in a bad way. Summer resorts are very attractive to young people who enjoy parties and alcohol. Prices are good for the value they offer. And Rhodopes are still beautiful, that hasn't changed. A bottle of Smirnoff costs about £10 in grocery shops. It was down to changing money on the "black market", ie some bloke would approach you on a mountain and ask you if you wanted to exchange because people were desperate for "hard currency" and you'd get something like four times the exchange rate you'd get through official channels. Supermarkets were just rows and rows of empty shelves mostly apart from (strangely) loads of biscuits so the locals were desperate for Sterling so they could use the Corecoms. We were actually warned by the travel company not to do it because it was possible you'd be asked to show receipts for any money exchanged at the airport, but was too good to resist. The other thing I remember is the plane (Balkan Airways); obviously back then you had smoking areas but they were normally separated front and back, on Balkan it was smoking to the left of the aisle, non-smoking to the right (or the other way round) so the "non-smokers" were breathing in as much as anyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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