My idea of a vacation involves the Mediterrenean sea, the color of sand, and a simple place to stay. While I enjoyed my stay in Bulgaria, it was an exhausting, all too familiar experience. Not exactly an exotic getaway. I met many strangers, only one of them inspired me to write his story (a story I will not dare to write, because it will also be the story of why I really am). I tried to distance myself from what this place has become by imagining I were a journalist on assignment, but who am I kidding? It must be scary to see the ghost of a person you once knew, and it was scary to see the ghost of a place which was alive not so long ago. This is the ideal place to experience writers block, even abandon all intellectual pretenses, because you feel that nothing, nothing you write can possibly change the reality of an abandoned town that reminds one of a war zone, only there is no war - rather, the absence of cultural, social or economic development puts this place in the gray zone between war and peace . This is Northeastern Bulgaria. Hard to imagine it is part of the European Union.

He laughed, laughed and laughed. His mouth was missing front teeth, a single metal tooth glittered in the evening sun. Beauty was gone. In  his his hideousness I could see the suffering he had to endure in a post-communist world. This was his world now, sheer poverty, flies, stray cats. Even the cats were  ugly.  A I watched him from distance, I felt  nothing,  hope had long left this town. And the wedding was only four days away.