Back to Sozopol

BH and I originally planned to visit Sozopol on Thursday because the Deaf festival was in Primorsko. It turns out, however, that people are just staying in Primorsko, but the festivities were in Sozopol. Our friends drove us to Sozopol and we spent a couple of hours watching different performances.

One of the groups, I think from Serbia, did some sort of play about a woman that was stolen by an Arab. Her husband then goes off to find her. Maybe it was an important story for the actors, but it was not only boring, it also was verging on racism. 

Saving the girl from the Arab

Now she needs to become a nun? WTF

A lot of people translated songs. These were usually really boring­—not just for me, but for the Deaf people as well. In order to be interesting, you have to put some of yourself into the song. Or interpret it in an interesting way. That's why I like this guy: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5E59rk3_y0

My favorite performance was by the Macedonian actors. Their play was about a group of Deaf people who go to a café and throughout the skit all of the actors would freeze save one, who would then talk about her dreams.

Our friend Radmila acting as a model

 The rest of the evening was spent at the hotel; we danced Bulgarian folk dances, drank Bulgarian beer, and swam in the hotel's swimming pool.

The Macedonians all went for a swim so we joined them!

Finishing the night at Tekila Club

Deaf Festival Primorsko

Every other year they have a deaf festival in Primorsko, which is about 20 kilometers south of Sozopol. Without a car, we had some trouble getting there. Apparently, there aren’t any buses from Sozopol to Primorsko until July. What should have taken us twenty minutes ended up taking longer than an hour. We first had to take the bus back to Burgas and then switch to a маршутка (mini-bus). The drive was quite pleasant though. I expected us to stay along the coast, but we went through the countryside. In one of the smaller villages, every telephone pole had a crane nest. Beautiful. 

When we got to Primorsko, our friends hadn’t arrived yet so we went to the southern beach and tanned for a while. The beach wasn’t very crowded, and I would assume most of the people on the beach were Bulgarian. Near the entrance of the beach two women were tanning topless. This wouldn’t normally surprise me, but these women must have been chalga singers. They were very young, very thin, and had gigantic breasts. Plastic surgery sized breasts. Nearby, two very old men were staring at the young women. Not obviously, but not hiding it either.

I think they look so Bulgarian

 Clouds came in and we decided to find a campsite or a hotel. We were just wandering around when we ran into a group of deaf people. They brought us to a big hotel that had rooms for just ten leva per person per night. That was about the same price as our camping. After sleeping for two days on the hard ground, getting into a hotel bed with clean sheets was fantastic. I can imagine that the hotels have to compete a lot for guests. Practically every building in Primorsko was a hotel, and the few houses also had rooms for let. It was not a pretty city. 

View from the hotel

 Later in the evening, we met up with our Bulgarian friends. A couple of our friends from Macedonia was also there, which was fantastic. We went to a bar, had some margaritas, and chatted for hours. There were so many Deaf people in Primorsko! I had never seen anything like it before; you’d walk ten paces and there’d be another group of people signing. We hardly ever run into Deaf people in Sofia, so it was great to meet some other Deaf Bulgarians.