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.