The Black Sea

In 1990, I spent three weeks travelling through Bulgaria. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program, seven months after the nation’s Communist Government had voluntarily ceded power. We crossed the border from Romania on 11 July, exactly a month after Bulgaria had held its first free elections in almost fifty years.

We drove from Pitesti in Romania, via Bucharest, before crossing the Bridge of Friendship into the Bulgarian city of Ruse. This was also our last sighting of the Danube on this trip. From Ruse we drove east to Varna on the Black Sea coast. As we ventured through the countryside, we unwittingly experienced our first taste of post-Communist corruption.

In the middle of nowhere, as our minivan rounded a downhill curve, a police officer suddenly appeared from the trees holding a sign that instructed us to stop. We pulled over. In broken English, he demanded payment of a fine. David, our Canadian colleague who’d been driving the van, quietly slipped a handful of banknotes into his open hand. We were then free to go.

We encountered this entrepreneurial spirit everywhere we went in Eastern Europe. For example, almost every town had someone offering Western pornography, a once-rare item, at a bargain price. This included trestle tables set up in city parks loaded with explicit magazines. We were also frequently approached by freelance money changers offering an exchange rate two or three times more favourable than the official rate.

The use of unofficial money changers caused quite a stir within our group. Some of us, including me, felt we were normalising lawlessness in these fledgling and potentially fragile democracies. Tim, our group leader, eventually agreed that our collective expenses would only be funded using official currency exchange outlets.

Varna was a typical seaside resort destination (see the internet-sourced image above). It’s home to more than 300,000 people, making it Bulgaria’s third-largest city. It’s often referred to as Bulgaria’s maritime capital and is home to the headquarters of the Bulgarian Navy and merchant marine. We were invited to visit Varna by a local church member who’d seen us performing our street drama elsewhere in Eastern Europe. However, unlike Romania, we set up camp in each location rather than being taken in by local families.

As I’ve posted previously, public infrastructure throughout Romania was in disarray thanks to the oppressive austerity measures imposed by the Ceaușescu regime. We camped for a night in Timisoara when we entered the country. The campground was in a serious state of disrepair, with toilets broken and filled with human excrement, and basic foodstuffs almost impossible to procure if you didn’t have the right connections. We couldn’t have travelled for a month in Romania if local families hadn’t taken us under their wing.

Camping in Bulgaria proved to be a rather civilised affair. The facilities were well-maintained, and hot water was generally available, although it was sometimes available only for set hours each day. I recall an encounter I had with an old lady cleaning the male shower block at our campground in Varna. I was enjoying a leisurely hot shower when she suddenly appeared in the doorway. She immediately took umbrage when she noticed my blade shaving in the shower. She decided this was a colossal waste of precious hot water and began scolding me in Bulgarian. I dismissed her protestations and continued shaving.

A few minutes later, she reappeared. However, this time she took a more aggressive approach. She decided that the only way to stop me wasting water was to embarrass me. She began cleaning the shower block while I was still standing there. I decided that being naked in front of an elderly Bulgarian woman was a humiliation worth enduring for the sake of a leisurely hot shower. To this date, I’m sure she thought I’d rinse off and make a quick exit.

We spent eight days in Varna, hosted by a large and active evangelical church. Its bold and public proclamations of the gospel meant that it had suffered extensive persecution under Communist rule. We heard many stories of individuals who’d been harnessed by local officials, denied access to social services and other injustices. For example, we learned that the church’s pastor was relatively new to the congregation. Apparently, his predecessor had been arrested, imprisoned and never heard from again. It was confronting to hear firsthand of people disappearing at the hands of the Government.

We conducted daily open-air performances of our gospel inspired street drama. These regularly drew large crowds, often hundreds of people at a time. In fact, some of the biggest crowds we drew during our entire time in Eastern Europe were in Bulgaria. You see one such crowd in the photo that opens this post. I believe the image above, taken from the web, is of the church which hosted us. However, thanks to the passage of 35 years, I am no longer certain.

When we were ministering in the streets, we spent our downtime by the beach, enjoying the warm waters of the Black Sea. I still marvel at the fact that I once swam in this renowned body of water. A sea that's currently a battleground in the war between Ukraine and Russia.

On 19 July, we packed up camp and drove south along the Black Sea coast to Burgas, Bulgaria’s fourth largest city, before turning inland towards the ancient city of Plovdiv. You learn more about our time in these Bulgarian cities here.