In Bulgaria, it was the year of July rains. The weather, which supposedly is neither bad nor good, but simply is, was dreadful. Folk sayings had made it clear as early as February that July would be miserable. The oldest highlanders kept repeating something that sounded like: “February in water, July without weather.” And in February, one downpour followed another. NATO’s precise measuring instruments confirmed the folk wisdom, but the International Agency for Concealing Weather Anomalies, operating under the International Tourism Organization, carefully hid this information from tourists out of sheer greed.
It was also a year of cooperation with Air Polonia, whose planes flew to Bulgaria and were like the weather—capricious and unpredictable. Sometimes, for reasons known to no one, they failed to depart from their home airports for a quarter of a day, and this could not be concealed. No one could explain either the company’s behavior or the weather. Rain fell continuously for five days during a seven-day holiday, and finally the plane was six hours late.
Naturally, attempts were made to change this uncomfortable situation by applying pressure and filing complaints about the airline’s delays. As for the weather, tourism workers remained humble and did not interfere. Once, when absolutely no one could understand why Air Polonia’s plane had not reached the airport in Varna and tourists had been waiting for eight hours to depart, it was decided to find the airline’s representative in Bulgaria.
A serious conversation was held with the woman at the information desk at Varna Airport, who was irritated by the pilots’ excessive inquisitiveness. Nothing was extracted from her—not a phone number, nor even information about who was responsible for notifying people about delayed flights.
One clever female pilot asked her colleague at the office in Poland to find the foreign representative’s number for Air Polonia. With a triumphant expression, she looked at the unpleasant woman at the information desk. She felt like a master of cunning. After an hour of searching, she obtained the number—and it was even a Bulgarian number. The pilot did not leave the information desk window, determined to show the woman how such matters were handled and what competence looked like. Demonstratively, accompanied by her colleagues, she dialed the Bulgarian representative of the airline. The call went through. Only the person who answered was the same unpleasant woman from the airport information desk, in front of whom this grand performance had been staged. Looking at each other, they exchanged greetings over the phone. The pilot lost her bravado, while the information-desk woman did not look defeated at all!
Only the weekly transfers to the airport, regardless of whether the plane showed up or not, were a predictable and rational phenomenon in this storm of emotions, dissatisfaction, and frustration.
When the plane arrived, the male and female pilots greeted the tourists emerging from the arrivals hall with smiles on their faces. They held signs bearing the agencies’ logos and informed the newcomers that the buses taking tourists to their hotels were parked on the left side of the exit. The tourists came out with their luggage, exchanged greetings, listened to the information, and headed in the indicated direction.
It was the Year of Anomalies, and one of them was approaching with a suitcase and a smile on her face.
— Good morning, welcome to Bulgaria! — greeted her the female pilot, a tourism commando¹ — The bus is in the parking lot. At the exit, turn left to reach the parking lot.
— Is left here on the same side as in Poland? — asked the Riddle of Human Intelligence.
The sky became overcast, and it began to drizzle. The tourists were beginning another week of their holiday in sunny Bulgaria.
¹ The rank of tourism commando is awarded after completing at least three missions transporting tourists to a hotel other than the one they purchased through the travel agency. The professional term for this disastrous mistake is “overbooking.” In practice, a tourist books a holiday at the Nimfa Hotel in one town, but upon arrival is taken to the Babylon Hotel somewhere entirely different. There, they are forced to check in. Most often, the scandal is caused by the nonexistence of the Nimfa Hotel or by its having been occupied by other tourists who arrived earlier on another airline. A tourist’s righteous anger knows no bounds, and the only person to whom they can express their dissatisfaction in person is the pilot. Here I pay tribute to those pilots who fell in action.
Grażyna Hanaf