For Florence

Florence is my Bulgarian friend in South Africa. When I first met her I thought that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, that I personally know. She has a Sophia Loren quality about her. In her home town Plovdiv (the old city of Philippolis)
we see many beauties around. All perfectly manicured and made up and dressed to the nines.

On the streets are designer upon designer, mom and I bought fabulous outfits for a song! And flowers bloom everywhere, on clothes, on furniture, on billboards. The Bulgarians are fabulous people, funny and happy and full of life! I suppose now that they are free from oppression they have a lot to celebrate.

We meet Bulgarian Greeks and their view about Greece is that the country is bankrupt, but the Greeks themselves have plenty of money!

The Bulgarians cannot believe we are from South Africa, nor can they believe that we are white! We even made it onto National TV, because we are the first white South Africans they have met here in Plovdiv! Weird!!! They all want to know who our ancestors were, seeing that we all fell out of a milk carton! Mom fell out of a beer bottle, she is so upset about this comment, Sy sê: "nou hou sy sommer net hier op met drink!" Mom feels at home because everyone is drinking beer and coffee and not a lot of wine! We go for lunch and the waiter is sooooo excited because his restaurant keeps the best wine in the world! A whole range of South African wines, he says that the wines are very popular with the Bulgarians.

We cannot believe the difference between Greece and Bulgaria! Here the shops are open till 8 pm and in Greece shops close at 2 pm. The streets are teeming with life.

This lot smokes like hell!! Everybody smokes, young and old, men and woman, and very few restaurants have a non smoking section. I saw an advertisement on a tree for smoke enders!