For my appointments in the small resort of Sveti Konstantin between Varna and Golden Sands, I had no wheels. Public buses were no good solution back then – often grubby, some without window panes, and the conductor cheated you. So a taksi was needed.
When I found a very nice taxi driver with a working meter, I thought: keep him sweet. His old car was well kept, he chatted away in passable English – the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Hristo became our private taxi driver and, thanks to his reliability, soon a micro-entrepreneur, ferrying clients and suppliers to Sofia, Burgas and Shumen.
Hristo was proud of his country and loved to explain how intelligent Bulgarians were – he only had doubts about the intelligence of the government. Like many, he had fallen into euphoria when Tsar Simeon II, who had once fled to Spain, returned and had himself elected prime minister in 2001. Disillusionment came quickly. His motto, after the writer Trojanow: Bulgaria wasn’t privatised, it was pirate-ised.
Once Hristo drove my husband home after a chaotic day at work. He cursed: “I just need a Kalashnikov, then rat-a-tat…” – “Nyah, I don’t have one, but here…”, Hristo pulled a firing pen from the glovebox. “I could lend you this. Getting a Kalashnikov would take three days – but I could drop off a Makarov for you this evening.” “It’s fine. Never mind.”
After our move to Switzerland, we heard that Hristo was doing well in real estate – his English skills helped during the boom of English pensioners buying cheaply in the country. Later we learned that his taxi was run over by a lorry. Hristo was badly injured and has been a little confused ever since. Poor Hristo.
