I was soon to discover, several thousand pensioners moving at the speed of continental drift.
The hotel has apparently been “recently renovated”, a phrase which in this case appears to mean that someone was allowed loose with a budget smaller than the GDP of a medium-sized carrot. The architecture is of such determined ugliness that it makes some more adventurous architectural firms look positively inspired. The overall effect can best be described as “municipal regret”.
The complex contains some 550 rooms, although “accommodation block” is probably more accurate than “hotel”. It now serves as a pilgrimage site for the retired populations of Bulgaria and neighbouring countries, all arriving to “take the waters”.
At opening time for the spa each morning, the migration was magnificent. Imagine a tsunami wearing dressing gowns.
The appliance-white aluminium joinery was a particular delight. Even the bathroom door had been fitted with double-glazed mirrored panels, suggesting that somewhere, at some point, a designer sat back proudly and thought: “Yes. This is luxury.”
Everything in the bathroom was bolted down.
One suspected that if the plumbing could have been chained to the wall, it would have been.
Dunny paper emerged one translucent sheet at a time.
Communism may have failed, but its ghost still wanders the corridors here. It peers from behind the reception desk, supervises the buffet queue, monitors the tea bags and keeps a watchful eye on the toilet paper.
