When I was working on a Danube river tug as a machinist I have
been to the country, in the two towns of Lom and Rousse. But such a
short landing cannot offer you a whole picture of the place. In the
summer of 1982 I had my first opportunity to make a trip to Bulgaria
that lasted some days instead of an hour. I had an assignment to go
there with the saleswoman of the foreign trade company NIKEX to
assist her from our part, as a representative of the producer, in her
export talks. She has been a woman of 40 with an ordinary apper-
ance, but she has been a very precise person. Our trip has involved
the company's export of spare units that year for the Bulgarian state
railways.
It has been a very useful trip to me. I have been in Bulgaria only
in Rousse 20 years before, going ashore from a tug. Now I could
see the vast difference between their negotiation style and that of
ours. In the coming years I would visit that country repeatedly, but
completely I would never be accustomed to their ways. During that
trip I have had an experience that made me think of Addis Ababa,
our first year in a high-rise apartment. About my stay in Ethiopia I am
to write in the next section. In our hotel, sitting in my room, I let my
thoughts wander and suddenly I felt myself sitting in my Addis
Ababa room. When this sense left me, I realised I was in Sofia. Then
I guessed the reason: the hotel has been built in the same style,
equipped with the same windows and handles as our apartment in
Africa. Besides, the end-of-May weather with gathering rain clouds,
may be, even an air moisture aroused in me a feeling of the coming
monsoon. And the Vitosha mountain outside impressed me as the
Entoto next to Addis. It was amazing, how this environment remind-
ed me of Addis Ababa.
In my opinion Sofia is so unique in its own way that I have never
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Bulgaria
seen anything similar neither in my trip to the eastern nor my ones to
the western countries. The only big town that has similarities is Kiev,
the capital of Ukraine. But even that is a forced classification. The
town is a true feudal capital, everything is there (in quantity) that is
needed by the inhabitants, i.e. apartments, water supply, transport,
even hotels and theatres. But the areas around government build-
ings are deserted, everybody knows well that he has nothing to do
there, others are arranging things for him, but without him and in
place of him. Avenues take you everywhere in the town, but you go
a quarter mile in transverse direction and even street lamps disap-
pear, let alone the downgraded state of houses, you doubt that you
are in Europe, an African would feel home in that environment. But
let's see the kitchen of the country. It is excellent, food is tasteful,
only you cannot be sure that would not get something with it that you
don't need: an indigestion hard to cure in many weeks. Also in the
restaurants of fine hotels yoghurt or sausage can do you harm. Oh,
yes, something even more peculiar: I experienced only here, in a
four-star hotel, that during night a loudspeaker shouts in the corridor
that Mr. So and So should hurry down to the reception. A method
sure as death. All hear it, they had better relay the message, unless
it would be shouted some more times.
This trip has established good connections between the sales-
woman and me. We trusted each other and we could work well to-
gether for several years.
Bulgaria had to go without me for a whole year, until I got inquiry
for an export offer of brake components to Bulgaria from one of the
salesmen of the foreign trade company MOGÜRT. I haven't known
him so far, but we made good friends with that young man soon. He
suggested me to meet with our customers at the Plovdiv Inter-
national Fair. My boss, the sales manager of the company nodded
to this topic, he even sent with us the manager of our factory in
Székesfehérvár. The job was not too complicated, we had time for
sightseeing, both in Sofia and Plovdiv.
Plovdiv is situated in a part of the country that belonged to the
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Canned roaddust
territory of Macedonia two to three thousand years ago. There are
historic ruins including a great amphitheatre. The place had been
the seat of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. There are young-
er monuments, too, as the statue of a Russian soldier. People erect-
ed it for the liberator of World War II. It is called Alyosha.
My second visit to that town would not be so easy with an almost
hopeless task and a passive company representative. At the begin-
ning of September 1986 I had to visit Bulgaria to take part in talks
about machine tools in Sofia and after that to travel to Plovdiv and
receive customers at the fair. These have been hard days for me, I
had to work together with two heavy smokers. When we finished our
meeting, I was to be taken to Plovdiv by our representative. I have
never met anybody more unfit for that job. He would not deal with
official tasks at all, until his family did not get their bread and milk. He
had not even thought about that his wife could do shopping. It was
only one day I spent in Plovdiv. For the next afternoon we agreed to
meet for my return trip. He was so late that I thought he was not
coming at all.
The point followed the next morning. He did not come to my
hotel to take me to the airport. When I considered time ripe, I called
a taxi and caught the plane.
When we were meeting in our office two months later, he told me
he was waiting me at the reception of the hotel “Balkan”. I had told
him that evening “Bulgaria”. And it was a great difference. No
ordinary sales engineer would have been allowed to take a suit for
150 dollars, when he had a sum of 70 levas for accommodation (40
dollars). Not an unimportant difference, at least two stars.
My last visit to that beautiful medieval land happened in January
1987, when I took part in a bilateral meeting within the Comecon in
the topic of machine tools in Sofia. Well, I think, according to news
reports I have seen in the TV, the revolutionary changes during the
last decade have altered everything there.
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Aid-Expert
PART II