May 30; the times of abundance 💐🍒

Flowers, cherries, and the great outdoors... this was my week

Happy Sunday,

How wonderful it is that everything is in bloom, and the first summer fruits and veggies are finally here to enjoy. Bulgaria is great any time of the year, but summer is definitely the best time to be here. And for a second summer in a row, it looks like we won’t be missing any of it, unlike the pre-2020 days. Which is a very welcome upside of the pandemic in my book.

Cherries as far as the eye can see, finally 🍒

Ellie with roses in Shumen at sunset yesterday

Bulgaria’s North coast 🌊

The distance between the northernmost point on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, Cape Sivriburun on the border with Romania, and the southernmost point, at Rezovo Beach on the estuary of the Rezovska river, overlooking Turkey on the other side, is exactly 200km in a straight line. Roughly in the middle is Cape Emine, where the Central Balkan mountain range disappears into the sea. In Bulgaria, there is a funny opinion many people hold that the southern sea (south of Emine) is a warm and sunny sea, whereas the northern one (north of Emine) is a rough and stormy place, rarely warm or calm enough for beaching.

I think the water temperatures and the amount of sun and wind are pretty much the same all over this entire short stretch of coast. Towns are few and far in between on the North coast, probably because in Ottoman times there was little coastal activity here, due to the inhospitably high cliffs of the Dobrudzha plain. Then in the period of Bulgarian nation-building in late 19th and early 20th centuries, the entire territory was disputed between Romania and Bulgaria, and that only got settled in 1940, by the Treaty of Craiova, when Romania gave up on Southern Dobrudzha in exchange for Bulgaria paying 1 million Lei. Somehow to this day the entire territory feels vast and empty, and Ellie and I joke that it’s only a matter of a few years before hipsters rediscover it, and it becomes a mecca for the urban Sofia cool kids, like Vama Veche across the border in Romania is already for the Bucharest crowd.

Last week, Ellie took me for a few days of remote working on that North coast, where she had already spent a few weeks with her sister, and we had an absolutely fantastic time.

The place we stayed this time was the Thracian Cliffs Golf Resort, which is really nice even if you don’t play golf, with several fine restaurants, a cute little spa center, and a two excellent beaches with beach bars and soft, white sand.

A view of Thracian Cliffs from above, with the golf course at the right and Argata Beach below, shot by Ellie 💚

More on my recent Balkans road trip 🚗

I shared it here with you two weeks ago, but my excitement about finally visiting Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia warranted a more professional write-up as well, which I shared on our Vitosha Stories blog last week. Check it out to understand my excitement about the next decade in venture and tech in this rapidly-developing part of Europe.

Let’s meet in June 🙌🏻

I can’t wait to be back in Sofia this next week, as my Instagram is full of promises of parties, street food festivals, and other sweet notions of social life on the tail end of this pandemic.

Invitations to our office rooftop are always valid: just reply to this e-mail if you’d like to come and visit for an after-work drink. 🥂

Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇

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