The stars over Bulgaria
I’ve always loved the story of the Michelin star system. It began as a clever trick by a tyre company, which tells you almost everything you need to know about human civilisation: we will travel absurd distances if someone tells us the food is good enough. One star means, if you happen to be nearby, you should stop in. Two stars mean, you really ought to plan a trip. Three stars mean, pack your bags, cancel your dentist appointment, and fly halfway across the globe just to sit in a room where a man in white gloves serves you a foam that tastes like sadness and anchovies.
This makes sense in Paris. It makes sense in Tokyo. But what happens when you apply this logic to Bulgaria?
The average Western traveler, when told to visit Bulgaria, squints in confusion, as if you’ve just mentioned a distant moon that might or might not support life. Bulgaria, to most, is not a destination; it’s a question mark. But that’s where the Michelin logic falls apart, because if Michelin is about perfection, Bulgaria is about everything else: chaos, stubbornness, absurdity, survival, and moments so startlingly human that perfection feels irrelevant.
You came anyway. You ignored the warnings whispered by travel blogs and the silence of the tourist brochures, drawn by the stubborn whisper that this is, after all, Europe’s oldest continuously named country. Two millennia of history—that weight must land somewhere. Yet, that ancient pedigree does not smooth the edges of the present. Instead, it seems to have granted the country the right to be entirely unimpressed by you, your comfort, or your expectations.
And so you landed in Sofia. The plane bumps down on the tarmac with all the grace of a shopping cart hitting a curb. The airport feels like it was built by someone who wanted to remind you that travel should be slightly humiliating. The signage is indecipherable, the baggage carousel makes noises that suggest mechanical despair, and the man at passport control regards you as if you’ve arrived with the sole purpose of wasting his afternoon. The taxi driver greets you with a glare that suggests you’ve personally ruined his evening, and the ride into the city is less “transportation” than an ongoing negotiation with gravity. By the time you reach your hotel, you’re already composing an email to yourself titled “Never Again.”
To continue reading, please visit the website of This Is Bulgaria.
