the Grand Corona
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This post is about a painful day of rest in the former Grand Corona Hotel in Svilengrad. The Grand Corona Casino is right next door.
I woke up late, and when I did, I confusedly remembered a scene from the border crossing the night before.
my turn
It had happened in the Bulgarian part of the border, when I was moving from one checkpoint to the next. First there was a sign of the European Union. I wanted to take a photo of it, but there were cars in front of me and behind me, and I had to keep moving.
Then I noticed that the car in front of me was passing a row of jets in the ground that sprayed it with some sort of liquid. The car became engulfed in a cloud of little droplets, then it emerged on the other side. Behind me, more cars were coming. I stood there, looking at the fountains being sprayed into the night air, and it dawned on me that it was now somehow my turn.
soreness
When I arrived at the next border guard I was wet from the spray. And when I finally made it to the hotel later in the night, I took a long shower. I fell asleep knowing that I had reached the European Union, and that I had been thoroughly disinfected.
It took me a long time to get up. My legs and arms were heavy, and there was a general soreness everywhere. Also, I had developed a bunch of blisters under my toes. I used a safety pin and some iodine to drain the blisters, then I dragged myself to the breakfast buffet.
language issues
This was my first morning in Bulgaria, and I felt very conscious of the fact that I didn’t know anything. Not how to say hello, not how to say thank you, not how to say good-bye. I was in a hotel that used to be called Grand Corona Svilengrad, where the towels still had an embroidering that said BE A KING. And I knew nothing.
But I was optimistic. I figured that Bulgarian was, after all, a Slavic language, just like Russian. And I knew a bit of Russian. So during breakfast I tried listening to the television and to the people around me, but it turned out that Bulgarian sounded just like Czech or Polish to me: everyone who spoke it seemed to turn into a drunk Russian.
pictures
My trail runners after the mud of the border:
The Caboose in the hotel hallway:
The Grand Corona Casino:
The hotel used to be called Grand Corona as well:
