Bulgaria 2024

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: Europe; Published: 25 August 2024; Hits: 920

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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.

In my mind Bulgaria was most associated with the 1978 murder of Georgi Markov in London. Markov was a Bulgarian writer who defected to the West to work as an anti-Soviet journalist for the BBC World Service and Radio Free Europe. While crossing Westminster Bridge one day he was stabbed in the leg by an umbrella-wielding Soviet agent. His assassination became known as the 'Umbrella Murder' and remains one of the most famous examples of Cold War espionage.

So, I warned Wendy to watch for spies carrying umbrellas.

But we soon discovered that that was all in the past and the stories of the country's general decrepitude were also highly exaggerated. We had, after all, just come by bus from Thessalonica in Greece (where shabby has become an artform).

Our first stop was Sofia airport where we were to pick up a rental car. A small adventure took place - wrong terminal etc. A long drive to Plovdiv partially, retracing our steps, then ensued.

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Travel

Israel

2024 Addendum

It's shocking that another Addendum to this article is necessary.

Yet, we are no nearer to a peaceful resolution like the, internationally called for, 'Two state solution', or some workable version thereof.

Indeed, the situation, particularly for Palestinians, has gone from bad to worse.

At the same time, Israeli losses are mounting as the war drags on. Yet, Hamas remains undefeated and Bibi remains recalcitrant.

Comments:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024, at 1:23 PM, Barry Cross wrote:
> There seems to be no resolution to the problem of the disputed land of Israel. You consider Gaza to have been put under siege, but I wonder if that and the other Israeli acts you mention are themselves responses to a response by them of being under siege, or at least being seriously threatened, by hostile forces who do not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel? Hamas’s claim and stated intention of establishing a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” and periodic acts of aggression need to be taken into account I suggest, when judging the actions of the Israeli’s. In addition, there is the menace coming from Iranian proxies in Southern Lebanon and Yemen, and from Iran itself.
>
> Whatever the merits of the respective claims to the contended territory might be, it seems reasonable to accept that Israeli’s to consider they are a constant threat to their very survival. Naturally, this must influence their actions, particularly in response to the many acts of aggression they have been subjected to over many decades. By way of contrast, how lucky are we!
>
> These are my off the cuff comments for what they are worth.
>
> Regards
> Barry Cross
>
> Sent from my iPhone

2023 Addendum

It's a decade since this visit to Israel in September 2014.

From July until just a month before we arrived, Israeli troops had been conducting an 'operation' against Hamas in the Gaza strip, in the course of which 469 Israeli soldiers lost their lives. The country was still reeling.

17,200 Garzan homes were totally destroyed and three times that number were seriously damaged. An estimated 2,000 (who keeps count) civilians died in the destruction. 'Bibi' Netanyahu, who had ordered the Operation, declared it a victory.

This time it's on a grander scale: a 'War', and Bibi has vowed to wipe-out Hamas.

Pundits have been moved to speculate on the Hamas strategy, that was obviously premeditated. In addition to taking hostages, it involving sickening brutality against obvious innocents, with many of the worst images made and published by themselves.

It seemed to be deliberate provocation, with a highly predictable outcome.

Martyrdom?

Historically, Hamas have done Bibi no harm. See: 'For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces' in the Israel Times.

Thinking about our visit, I've been moved to wonder how many of today's terrorists were children a decade ago? How many saw their loved ones: buried alive; blown apart; maimed for life; then dismissed by Bibi as: 'collateral damage'?

And how many of the children, now stumbling in the rubble, will, in their turn, become terrorists against the hated oppressor across the barrier?

Is Bibi's present purge a good strategy for assuring future harmony?

I commend my decade old analysis to you: A Brief Modern History and Is there a solution?

Comments:
Since posting the above I've been sent the following article, implicating religious belief, with which I substantially agree, save for its disregarding the Jewish fundamentalists'/extremists' complicity; amplifying the present horrors: The Bright Line Between Good and Evil

Another reader has provided a link to a perspective similar to my own by Australian 'Elder Statesman' John Menadue: Hamas, Gaza and the continuing Zionist project. His Pearls and Irritations site provides a number of articles relating to the current Gaza situation. Worth a read.

The Economist has since reported and unusual spate of short-selling immediately preceding the attacks: Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?

Money-making by someone in the know? If so, it's beyond evil.

A Little Background

The land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea, known as Palestine, is one of the most fought over in human history. Anthropologists believe that the first humans to leave Africa lived in and around this region and that all non-African humans are related to these common ancestors who lived perhaps 70,000 years ago. At first glance this interest seems odd, because as bits of territory go it's nothing special. These days it's mostly desert and semi-desert. Somewhere back-o-Bourke might look similar, if a bit redder.

Yet since humans have kept written records, Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, Ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, early Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Ottomans (and other later Muslims), British and Zionists, have all fought to control this land. This has sometimes been for strategic reasons alone but often partly for affairs of the heart, because this land is steeped in history and myth.

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Password

How I miss Rio. Rio de Janeiro the most stunningly picturesque city on Earth with its dark green mountains and generous bays, embelezado with broad white, sandy beaches. Rio forever in my heart. Rio my a minha pátria, my homeland, where I spent the most wonderful days of my life with linda, linda mãe, my beautiful, beautiful mother. Clambering up Corcovado Mountain together, to our favela amongst the trees.

Thinking back, I realise that she was not much older than I was, maybe fifteen years. Who knows?

Her greatest gift to me was English.

Opinions and Philosophy

The Prospect of Eternal Life

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
… But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

[1]

When I first began to write about this subject, the idea that Hamlet’s fear was still current in today’s day and age seemed to me as bizarre as the fear of falling off the earth if you sail too far to the west. And yet several people have identified the prospect of an 'undiscovered country from whose realm no traveller returns' as an important consideration when contemplating death. This is, apparently, neither the rational existential desire to avoid annihilation; nor the animal imperative to keep living under any circumstances; but a fear of what lies beyond.

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