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In May 2024 Wendy and I travelled to Berlin then to Greece for several weeks. We finished our European trip with a week in Bulgaria, followed by a week in the UK, before flying back to Sydney.
On a previous trip to Turkey and the Balkans we had bypassed Bulgaria, not knowing what to expect. My awareness was mainly informed by the spy novels that I've read in which Bulgaria figures. These reflect real life 'Cold War' espionage when the country had one foot in the Soviet Union and the other, half in the West.
A Short Story
"She’s put out a beer for me! That’s so thoughtful!"
He feels shamed, just when he was thinking she takes him for granted.
He’s been slaving away out here all morning in the sweltering heat, cutting-back this enormous bloody bougainvillea that she keeps nagging him about. It’s the Council's green waste pick-up tomorrow and he’s taken the day off, from the monotony of his daily commute, to a job that he has long since mastered, to get this done.
He’s bleeding where the thorns have torn at his shirtless torso. His sweat makes pink runnels in the grey dust that is thick on his office-pale skin. The scratches sting, as the salty rivulets reach them, and he’s not sure that he hasn’t had too much sun. He knows he’ll be sore in the office tomorrow.
Today, with good cause, Adolf Hitler is the personification of evil.
Yet without him my parents may never have married and I certainly would not have been conceived in a hospital where my father was recovering from war injuries.