Incoherent Scribblings

Growing up, my family only went on one “real” vacation. When I was 13, my dad, mom, sister, grandma, and I loaded up into our 1976 Monte Carlo and hit the road for a National Lampoon style vacation. We didn’t go as far as California, only to Colorado, and didn’t have nearly as many mishaps, but it set the stage for how I would define “vacation.”

For me, vacation became synonymous with sightseeing and tourist traps. I had a list of places I wanted to visit, sights I wanted to see, and things I wanted to do. If I went somewhere and didn’t accomplish these things, I felt like my vacation had been a failure.

When we first got together, A. and I did a lot of traveling. I took him to New Orleans, he took me to Florida, and for the first part of our honeymoon, we went to Arizona. After we arrived in Germany he took me to Rome for the second part of our honeymoon. We saw the sights, ate delicious food, drank too much wine, and paid too much money for worthless trinkets. Though we enjoyed ourselves, we were always on the go and never really took the time to relax. Whenever I got home I would always exclaim that I “needed a vacation to recover from my vacation!”

Then last year, A. suggested that we go visit his relatives in Greece. I was so excited. The ancient ruins were just overflowing in Greece and it had always been on my list of places to visit. When he told me that his relatives lived in an area of eastern Greece that was mostly devoid of ruins and that we would stay in his family’s little bungalow where I would have to cook during our time away, I put the brakes on his plan. Go to Greece and not see any ancient ruins and worst of all… COOK?! Was the man mad?

It was then that I was introduced to a different kind of vacation, and one that is very common here in Europe: Somewhere in “vacation” land you buy a little bungalow in the middle of nowhere that may or may not have indoor plumbing, you pack up your things as if you were moving, and spend three or four weeks “relaxing” there.

I was perplexed as how this was supposed to constitute a “vacation.” A. explained that it is a vacation because you are able to get away from the daily grind and relax by doing absolutely nothing in your little bungalow. You spent your time going to the beach, fishing, or just reading a book in the garden. I agreed that this would be the perfect type of vacation except two things: First, it sounded incredibly BORING and second, if I had to cook during vacation, then in my book, it was NOT a vacation and I would rather stay home. Well, you guessed it, last year we didn’t go on vacation to Greece, we stayed home.

Earlier this year, A. tried to talk me into visiting Greece again. I agreed to visit Greece as long as we didn’t have to stay in the bungalow and he promised me I didn’t have to cook. He was still mulling over this plan when he was invited to a conference in Bulgaria. The conference itself would only be a few days and A. suggested that he stretch his time in Bulgaria to a week and that I come along.

Honestly, Bulgaria had never been on my list of places to visit, but when A. told me that the conference was at the Black Sea coast, it sounded intriguing. I looked up the place that we were to visit on the web. I found out that Sozopol is an ancient Greek settlement and boasts an archeological museum, but for the most part is a beach resort. It wouldn’t be a vacation full of sightseeing. It would be a beach vacation made up of frolicking at the beach, ambling along the streets of an ancient Greek settlement, eating Bulgarian food, drinking wine, and just plain relaxing.

It was a different kind of vacation than I had ever taken, but I aimed to enjoy every last minute of it…

Posted on Tuesday 14 June 2005 at 15:35 under travel.
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