Stanke Dimitrov, 02 May 1987:  Dobar den (Good morning)!  All is well!  The Bulgarians are very nice people, and some try very hard to communicate with me even when it seems hopeless.  The hard part is that they nod their heads to say "no" and shake their heads left and right to say "yes".  I could find no Bulgarian-English dictionary, so sometimes I try to communicate via my Russian dictionary or with the two dozen phrazes that a woman at the Bulgarian embassy wrote for me.  Gestures often confuse the issue here, since they are commonly opposite from what they are in the West.

I am staying in the small city of Stanke Dimitrov to see the snow-covered mountains and a 1000 year old very beautiful monastary.  The hotel is very nice for the $11 price.  Bulgarian prepared food is often quite good, and the beer is very strong.  The mountains and the young Bulgarian women are often quite beautiful.

Yesterday was May Day (Labor Day), a very important holiday in the Socialist countries.  The red banners are out everywhere.  There were two bands, one rock-and-roll, one easy listening, playing at my hotel.

Dovizhdaynye (goodbye),
Georgi Dimitrov

Sofia, Bulgaria, 05 May 1987:  Zdzaviete (Hello)!  Recently, I visited Rila Monastary, high in the Rila Mountains.  The mountains are very snow-covered and at least as beautiful as the Swiss Alps.

I arrived yesterday in Sofia.  Like Moscow, many of the streets are wide and the buildings are grand, seeimingly designed to overwhelm.  Everything is clean, and even the people themselves seem to be groomed by the State.

Bulgaria seems to be doing quite well in quality of life, certainly better than say Poland, and in some ways, equal or better than Western developed nations; and yet, certain disadvantages remain -- occasional long lines for some commodities, often very crowded public transportation, and while their department stores are as nice as any Sears or Wards, many of their shelves are filled with look-alike items which offer somewhat limited choices.

The official Bulgarian Tourist Agency has made Bulgaria not a good place for budget travelers like me.  I am staying at the only relatively cheap place, a camping bungalow outside of the city -- $10 a night.

I received a $4 jay walking ticket yesterday.

Dovizhdaynye (goodbye),
Ivan Rilski

Sofia, Bulgaria, 9 May 87:  Dobar den (Good morning)!  This is the third card or letter I've sent you from Bulgaria, spreading the risk in the hope that at least one gets through.

I leave for Bucharest, Romania tonight.  All is well here except that the weather is bordering on being too cold.  The first 14 months of my trip, the weather was perfect or nearly perfect 90 percent of the time.  This past month, it was maybe 20 percent of the time.  It had to happen sooner or later.

There are a lot of Vietnamese students studying here.  These are not refugees.  These are the victors, from places like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

I wish I felt freer to take pictures here, say for example, of the inside of a department store to show you what the displays look like.  I did it once today and got a number of people mad at me, even though I'm quite sure that it is not illegal here.  It's just not normally done.  The general layout of the store is like that of Daytons, but the products on the shelves often look a little different.

Peace and love,
Ivan Vasof

Sofia, Bulgaria, 7 May 1987:  Dobraye Veycher (good evening)!  I am sitting at the home of a Bulgarian family whose meeting was arranged for me by the Bulgarian Nation Tourist monopoly, Balkantourist; and I am listening to Radio Free Europe -- "The Voice of America" broadcasts.  They speak very slowly in English so that people who are learning the language can understand -- hey, so that even I can understand!  Every so often, they change from one short wave band and frequency to another or to a medium wave frequency to avoid having their broadcasts scrambled by those who would prefer that they not be heard.  In fact, normally they seem to be broadcasting at several different frequencies and bands simultaneously to make sure that their message gets through.  Maybe I'm imagining this, but what had been a previously clear signal quickly faded to the point where I could no long pick it up when they began talking about striking workers in Bulgaria, and then came back when the report was over.  Actually, the signal faded in and out several times during the news broadcast and is now coming in loudly, clearly and consistantly during the music program.  All this is merely speculation, but I think this is a big game that goes on all the time.

The American Embassy here in Sofia is a popular place for Bulgarians to pass the time during the day because they have a video viewing room where they show American movies, television programs and music videos.  It's very effective and compelling American propaganda in a country that more often still sees black and white and bland programming.

When traveling in Bulgaria, each foreigner must have the back of a "statistical card" stamped by the place where you are staying for each night that you stay there, or one risks receiving a $150.00 fine for any stampless nights when one leaves the country.  This helps to assure that you will stay only at inflated-priced, officially sanctioned places.  Bulgarians themselves are permitted to stay at much cheaper hotels or private accomodations.  The cheapest places I can legally stay include a $22 hotel, a $15 private accomodation, and a $10 campground.  Those may not sound like high prices to you, but in comparison to what I can find in most other countries and what I might find if there were no government restrictions, it is indeed quite expensive for the average long-term budget traveler.  In addition, each accomodation requires by law the exchange of at least $23 of foreign currency into local currency, which cannot be taken out of the country and converted back to dollars if you have some remaining.

If it weren't for these legal restrictions, recently imposed, it would be quite inexpensive to travel here.  Instead of $23 a day, I could probably live comforatably, as the locals do, on half that amount.  I guess I have little reason to complain.  $23 per day is about what I averaged in Western Europe, although that often included the purchase of additional items (such as film processing, transportation, etc.), and I knew that if I wanted to do so, I could get by on less.  Here, it just bothers me that I have no choice but to keep dealing with the same small set of impolite and less-than helpful officials to arrange a place to stay each night.

I have decided, after some debate in my mind, to go to Romania for several days.  It promises to be even more expensive and more filled with bureaucratic hassles.  It'll probably cost $35 or $40 a day, which is the reason I'm limiting my time there when I know I could be having an equally good time, probably better, in Greece of Yugoslavia on one-third that amount.  Still, when you wnt to see a place enough, you pay the price.

Travel in Romania is probably more difficult than in any other Eastern Bloc country, and fewer foreign tourists travel there.  This is part of its attraction for me.  In comparison with Bulgaria, which seems to be doing quite well economically, Romania's economy is a mess, and people are comparatively impoverished.  Long lines for many desired commodities are commonplace.  The guide book Let's Go - Europe say that I should expect to stand in line three hours when purchasing train tickets.  The book has a number of disparaging remarks ranging from comments about thievery to hassles with public officials, which do not sound like fun; but, it also claims that travel there can be rewarding in that "few other countries, especially socialist ones, offer the realities of everyday life so tangibly to the individual traveler".

Everyday life in Bulgaria seems to be very much like it is in the West, although certain activities are implemented and certain behaviors of the people seem to be, as Let's Go - Europe puts it, "groomed by the state".  There are differences in the way people live and act, but I think that for someone who hasn't been here, the fewer differences one assumes, the more on the mark one will be.  Take a look at any American city, and you will see most of what I am seeing in downtown Sofia, minus a few surface alterations, although perhaps there are things figuratively beneath the surface that I don't see.

Except for the side excursion to Romania, my itinerary remains more or less the same as anticipated when I left Greece -- Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary again and the U.S.S.R.

I hope all is well there, and that this letter gets to you.

Peace and love,
Dovizhdaynye (goodbye),
Georgi Dimitrov

Bucharest, Romania, 12 May 1987:  Buna dimineata (good morning)!  Crossing the border into Romania, in the words of Let's Go -- Europe, feels like you're being "cleaned out by skilled professional card players".  That may be an understatement.  The search, though cordial, kept me guessing for a couple hours whate they had in mind when they were holding several forms of my identification.  They escorted me off the train in Bucharest to where I exchanged the required $10 a day for each of the 7 days of my expected visit, returned my identification and everything was fine.  I later discovered that the $10 a day is only academic since the exchange rate makes it impossible, even when camping, to get by on less than $25 a day.  Actually, it's costing me about $35 a day (more than I've spent in most countries I've visited), so I'm shortening my stay to four days.

Unless you hang out the doors of the city busses here, which many people do, the only place you can hope to squeeze past the people to get on or off is where everybody else does -- at the ends of the bus line and perhaps at one central station downtown.

This potcard cost me $1.60 to send, so you will probably be the only ones to receive one with Romanian stamps.

Love,
Count Dracula

Sinia, Romania, 13 May 1987:   Buna dimineata (Good morning)!  I'm spending a day in the Transylvanian Alps at the village where Vlad Tepes Dracula once lived.  The real Dracula, not the fictional one, lived in the 1400s and is most notorious for having outwitted some of the Ottaman Turks who occupied this country at the time, capturing them and impaling their heads on metal rods around the walls of his castle.  The brick streets and the steep orange-shingled roofs of the houses with circular towers make the village appear as a place from out of a storybook, though not as foreboding as in the movie Dracula.

Larevedere (goodbye),
Dean
 
 

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Korcula, Croatia

Dubrovnik, Croatia, Yugoslavia, 18 May 1987:  Dobru vece (Good evening)!  As you can see, it can be quite beautiful at places here in Yugoslavia; and in some ways it is a relief to me to be back in a country which has a greater degree of freedom than where I have been -- Bulgaria and Romania.

Crossing borders into and out of Romania was especially nerve-racking.  They search through every personal piece of paper (letters, what have you) inquiring what each one is.  Perhaps, they were looking to see if I had any acquintances in Romania.  Worst of all, they confiscated temporarily 3 rolls of film I had taken in Bulgaria nad Romania.  They returned them to me an hour later, but I won't know until I process them whether they did something (x-ray, etc.) to dstroy them.  Since I went swimming with my passport in Tanzania, smearing some of the ink, some border officials have challenged its validity, saying that it was a fake.  One hot-shot young man in the Romanian army implied that I wasn't actually an American, but that I was a Romanian mafioso.  Anyway, I never felt threatened, I just hope that my film is still okay.

Yugoslavia has been a pleasant experience by comparison.  I am rooming with a guy from Australia at the home of ta Yugoslavian family.

Love,
Zbogom (goodbye),
Josip Broz Tito

Korcula, Croatia, Yugoslavia, 21 May 1987:  Dobro Jutro (Good morning)!  I am writing to you from the childhood home of Maro Polo here on the island of Korcula.  In spite of all the places I've been, the man has still out-traveled me -- but give me another year.

I met a family from Minneapolis, yesterday, only the second time I've met any Minnesotans in 15 months.

The Yugoslav people, without exception, have impressed me as being friendlier and more helpful than in the average touristed European country.  Perhaps it is because they haven't overdosed on tourists yet, as other countries have.

On rare occasion, to cut costs, I sleep outside with with my sleeping bag (no tent) in the bushes somewhere.  It was raining hard last night, however, so I found a dry spot under the awning of a building.

I watched the movie of nuclear disaster "The Day After" in a bar with a bunch of Yugoslavians last night.  It had a geat impact on them and even a greater impact on me the second time around.  I wonder if the Russians have seen that movie, among others of its type.  I went to see an old American movie in Romania -- non-political of course.  The huge theater was packed to see the 1966 flick "El Dorado" with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum.

Zagreb, Yugoslavia is next, followed by Vienna to hopefully pick up my money by wire.

Zbogom (goodbye),
Marco

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