I'm pleased to report that the wife is back in the French Chateau and being pampered by daughters Nos 1 & 2. She will enjoy that, and I hope that now she is in the care of those two they will start to wreak some sort of revenge for their upbringing on at least one of us! She (the wife) has to go back to hospital for a check-up on Wednesday and has more pills to take than hours in the day, but progress is being made.
Friday night I didn't sleep well as I knew a taxi would be knocking for me at 4am. I woke just before 1am and that was it. I chucked a more few things into my bags that I had remembered whilst asleep (more business cards etc) and awaited my transport. I'm quite pleased to be writing this as the taxi driver missed a roundabout, in some style, at 50 mph. I could now be in Redhill hospital with large parts of me splattered over the side of a cement mixer.We arrived at the airport before 4:30 and to my horror I found that the queue for Difficult-Jet already stretched outside the terminal! If they employed a few of the people doing crowd control to work on the check-ins .... I mustn't rant.
I did get to check-in on time (security doesn't actually do a cavity search, but it comes close these days) only to find the flight delayed by 45 minutes. No problem! I was mightily entertained by Gatwick’s travelator to gate 112, it goes over a taxi-way. If you use it at the right moment, you can see what a plane looks like from above.
The trip to Sofia was uneventful, we arrived at Terminal 1, typically of Difficult-Jet this is the old grotty one; so much so that there were no signs on what to do to transfer to Bulgaria Air. I checked my ticket and it did indeed mention my flight to Bourgas departed from Terminal 2, it was pouring outside and the place was thick with taxi touts but there were no signs for a shuttle bus. With the aid of a pretty lady and a taxi tout I found that Terminal 2 was 5km away, there was indeed a shuttle bus that ran from outside the departures entrance (of course!) and after getting a bit wet and taking a confusing call from Bulgaria Air (initially I thought she said my flight was cancelled) I found the shuttle bus and jumped on.
Sofia airport Terminal 2 is modern, it even has shops! I got there about 12:30 local time, my flight to Bourgas was at 9pm, only eight and a half hours to wait. Why not go into Sofia I hear you cry. Well, I had a heavy suitcase and a significant amount of cash on me, I really didn’t want to be pick-pocketed. So I opted for the boring wait and the outrageously expensive airport food. £8 for a coffee and a sandwich.
The wait was spent listening to Figaro (just wonderful) and Rosini’s Stabat Mater. Why the latter, why not? It was there. I was also scammed, and in French too. I’m quite pleased with myself, not so much for not falling for it, more for not falling for it in French! A gentleman came to sit next to me whilst he was on the phone, when he finished he started talking to me whilst I was in the middle of Figaro Act III . My first thought was – this is a scam artist. He started with an interesting sob story that his bus to Sofia from Varna was delayed and he missed his flight to Algeria, he showed me his Algerian passport and his visa which had run out and said he was studying mechanical engineering in Varna. The next flight was not for a week and he couldn’t get the ticket moved to another airport because – of course – there would be an extra charge. He didn’t have enough money with him and his card wasn’t working, there is no Algerian embassy in Sofia and the Moroccans said he would have to wait at the airport for a week. We chatted about this for a while, and he even asked me what I was doing in Bulgaria, all very pleasant. Then the sting, could you lend me the money? “Je ne peux pas!” was repeated endlessly at this point, he apologized nicely and moved on. I saw him around the airport for some more hours, and he did ask me one more time. My French must be improving.
At last 7pm came and I could check in, and we boarded at 8:45. The flight made an additional stop at Varna so we were late into Bourgas, then on to the hotel and to bed by 12:30. I don’t enjoy travelling much any more, I think I’m getting old.
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