Aviation day

"This is aweseome, dude! High five!"
Two Albanian guys with immensely thirsty throats

Yesterday was the 1st of July. For many people in Bulgaria, this means travelling to the sea-shore and greeting the rising sun as it emerges from beneath the calm water of the Black sea. For some strange reason, the sea is always calm on July Morning. Anyway, people gather round the campfires, guitars are played, songs are sung... other interesting activities are done. This would have been my night save for one very important fact. The first of July is the aviation day, at least in Bulgaria. And on this particular aviation day, there was an aviation show at the air force base in Graf Ignatievo. Additionally, this day marked the end of a joint Bulgarian-American air force training, thus the aviation show featured a skill demonstration by the Thunderbirds, the third oldest demonstration group in the United States.

The story begins... exactly at 15.50, Eastern European Time, on the last day of June. I went out from home with a huge backpack filled with very useful things, including a knife, a book, some food, spare clothes, a rubber hose and an emergency supplies of handkerchiefs. After all, it was only 35 degrees in the shade... somebody might catch a cold. I had exactly twenty minutes to get to the Central Railway Station - a task not impossible, provided the tram comes just in time. Well, the tram did come just in time... but remained stationary for about ten minutes, since it was its first and last stop. While idly waiting for it and idly reading the graffiti on the nearby walls, I idly stumbled across a note that informed me about the new routes of the city transport due to repairs. Needless to say, the tram did not go to the Station at all. Swearing(1), I took one of the (in)famous minibuses of Sofia called Route Taxis or just Routers. Of course, I got harassed for being two minutes late (this is what you get when you are extremely punctual otherwise, so do not be). I gently swore (2) at the guy and we went to buy our tickets.

Our nutrition state dictated the purchase after the tickets. We bought a piece of sausage and some bread. Embarking on the train, we saw the carriages were almost full. Poor little souls, they did not know what was expecting them. Being very hungry, we hardly waited for the train to depart and produced the "good stuff" from our backpacks. Being VERY hungry, we barely resorted to using the knife and teared and bit and gnawed on the soft flesh of our prey. Well, I guess we were overdoing it a bit, but the terrified looks from the other passengers were well worth the exertion. Concluding our meal with a heroic portion of water and a villainous belch, the two barbarians decided that some culture was in order. My friend, Vruk (this is his nickname, his true name not disclosed due to security purposes), sunk into 'Bulgarian Ballads' by Theodor Trayanov. I, myself, preferred the gay and lively tales of Edgar Alan Poe. I do not know what this man had smoked, but I want some of the stuff... He is amazing.

Five to seven, the stonework of Plovdiv Central Railway Station shuddered as we jumped from the train. We called the guy that was supposed to meet us there, Blake. Turns out, he was not there. He was at home, watching TV, with the presumption that we were to arrive one hour later. Of course, we swore(3) at him. He came in fifteen minutes and we went to have a beer. A great thing, the beer. We call it "capped pastry". The Navy - "tinned steaks". Either way, it is both refreshing and nutritious. Having moistened our throats, Blake called our host for the night, Lews Terrin, also known as Lyoshtern, and with a regret informed him that we have not yet arrived. We have not disembarked the train. We would probably arrive with the next one, one hour later. Lyoshtern was so stunned by this piece of information that he went and did a Number 2. For those of you that do not know what that is... Ignorance is bliss. The only problem... ok, the only two problems, were that he was doing for more than thirty minutes during which he had left his cellular phone somewhere beneath a pillow or into a botomless pit, since he did not answer it.

We were beginning to feel really uneasy and swore (4) at Blake and again (5) at Lyoshtern. My father, who was in Plovdiv on wholly different grounds, came to have a beer with us and, hearing of our predicament, called his hotel and arranged for a double room. At the same time, Lyoshtern finally called. We swore (6) at him again and told him to wait for us on the bus station. Having eaten our canned steaks, we parted ways, i.e. said good-bye to my father and went to the Central Bus Station. There, barely failing to step on a small black curious suicidal kitten, me and Vruk got on the bus and were off to Brestnik, a small village several kilometres south of Plovdiv.

Lyoshtern offered us his kind hospitality, which we gratefully answered by eating a lot of food and drinking almost all the beer. We spared one bottle, though. After lots of laughter and a moderate amount of swearing at (7) and from (8) Blake, we went to bed. Sleeping through July morning, we got up at o7oo hours and woke up Lyoshtern. He was very pleased to see our mugs early in the morning and announced his pleasure with a variety of profanities (8) none of which were new to us. We took the bus to Plovdiv.

On the Central Station, we bought 4.5 litres of water (we should have bought more) and took a city bus to Bus Station North. There, we had a simple barbarian meal with some more sausages and bread under the astonished looks of some walking dead, er.. I mean senior citizens. Then we took a bus to Graf Ignatievo, which lies several kilometers north from Plovdiv. At half past nine we were in front of the main entrance to the air force base, under the searing sun, swearing (9) quietly at the guards who had a shade. At eleven o'clock we were allowed to enter after a none-too-strenuous luggage check. I mean, I was carrying a knife and a rubber hose in my backpack. Those were two concealed weapons, not that I had taken any trouble to actually conceal them. On the other hand, it seems a little difficult to sabotage an aircraft with less than a metre of rubber hose, but what do I know about military airplanes? Anyway, walking briskly in front of the huge crowd coming tight on our heels, we jumped around like children in a candy shop and started taking copious amounts of pictures.

A MiG-21 and a MiG-29: Fullcrum were open to the public and everyone could sit in the cockpit and feel like a real pilot. An awesome fighter-interceptor, that MiG-29. The Thunderbirds operated F-16: Viper, the Fullcrum's archnemesis. Sadly, we could not witness a direct competition between the two fighters, but the show was spectacular nevertheless. We took autographs from some of the pilots and the mechanics and even managed to hug a USAF officer without causing an international incident. Go us!

The show was opened at 1300 hours with a demonstration parachute jump performed by Bulgarian commandos. I shall skip the comments about beauty, functionality, mass jumps and rapid landing strikes from supersmall altitudes. One hour later, six of the eight Vipers started rolling towards the runway. The howling sounds from the air intakes were deafening. And then they arranged themselves on the runway. And then the engines roared. And then they were in the air.

The following sixty minutes cannot be described. A massive one-hour spiritual orgasm, filled to the brim with the beauty of those beasts, the prowess of their pilots and the grace of the maneuvers. Chasing themselves through the skies with supersonic speeds, standing still in the air only on the exhaust jet stream, flying in a tight formation, passing by each other with mere metres between the hulls, flying on their backs, those guys and gals rocked our world like an earthquake.

Well, not everything was sugar and spice. One of the fighters had a collision with a bird and had to land. The pilot then resumed the show on one of the spare planes. On the way back to Plovdiv... this looked like a nice torture. We have been standing under the sun for seven hours. Our necks and forearms were red and itchy. We have drunk more than six litres of water, without going to the bathroom even a single time. The next train for Plovdiv was not due for more than an hour. The busses were filled to the brim. A fifteen-kilometres long traffic jam blocked the way. Every single one of the 10 000 visitors wanted to get home as soon as possible. Public transport not being an option anymore, we decided to hitch-hike. Against the modest fee of one bottle of ice-cold water, the driver of a nice big air conditioned Subaru jeep agreed to take us to Plovdiv. There, we met with Arwen Undomiel. No, we were not delirious, it was a friend of ours with that nickname. We drank some more beer... God bless the Akkadians... or was it the Sumerians... whatever, God bless both of them for inventing beer. After that we took the train to Sofia and spent the next two and a half hours laughing, giggling and roaring (and of course, eating with our innate barbarian grace and manners, i.e. crumbs flying everywhere, panic-stricken mothers screaming for mercy... you know, the usual stuff).

And so, tired, sweaty, burned, dirty and stinky (I told you we were barbarians) we got off the train and on our respective chariots, I mean cars, towards a rest well-deserved. The End.