A journey to the misery of the new Europe: Bulgaria

Frank Abbas, streetworker in the ghettoes of Varna in Bulgaria asks me to come to him. An hour from Bucharest there is the border village Giurgiu. The border reminds of the old fortifications between the former countries. Now it is Europe, but nevertheless you have to to drive peculiar detours to reach the Bulgarian border. Collection of 6 Euros for use of the bridge - they accept Euros only. I have a 10-Euro-bill only, they keep the rest. Bulgarian border: German? You may pass. Then a kind of highway which you will not yet find anywhere in Romania. 180 kilometers until Varna, straight, ecellently constructed and neat. I am amazed and I begin to draw a comparison to the country, where I have been living for 16 years now. I become enthusiastic and I am blindfolded: here everything must have improved in the meantime.
Arrival at the bathing resort Varna. All hotels are booked up, in the middle of winter. I am surprised. It is spoken German in the hotels, good German. I am surprised. The town seems to be neat, cleaned up. If there were not the cyrillic letters, you could easily believe to be in a Western European town. Finally, a taxi driver knows a hotel at the harbor. Would you please drive ahead. I am tired, dog-tired. The wind gale-forcely blows from the harbor. So violently, that I am hardly able to open the door of the hotel.

They still take your passport
In the harbor, in a safe harbor, I think. Everybody is friendly, but they take your passport, if you do not pay immediately. That I knew from Romania only in the first 10 years.
I ask Frank Abbas to come to the hotel, we want to have our meal together. To exchange our ideas and information. Frank is German, he worked with an international truckage company in Bulgaria and some day, as he says, "was fed up with corruption and disrespect for human dignity". God lets a Roma child run into him, wretched, wounded. He recognizes the sign of heaven and enters the scene, the scene of the gypsies or as they are called there, the "Millets".
He says "I am hungry, I have not eaten anything today". And "may I order another salad, I am really hungry". It occurs to me, as if I have known Frank for a decade, but that happens, when brothers in God meet. We pray together, thankful, that God has brought us together. The waiter stands at the table and does not understand, what we are doing.
Now Frank has been there for two years and he had to bear many mental and physical pains. The police does not love him. How to love somebody who shows solidarity with "those people". The word police makes him nervous, even the ones, who only control the traffic. "Drive slowly", he says over and over again, "we do not want to catch somebody's eye". I begin to think about it. I myself had been arrested only once and should have shot shortly after the "revolution". They planned to loose me in the woods of XX and then to claim that I wanted to flee, in order to shoot me dead. Thus I am able to judge Frank Abbas' feelings.

The town of Varna: people are living in the middle of the trash
The next morning Frank shows me the town. The sunny side first. In the truest sense of the word. A whiff of freedom and happiness? One mansion more imaginative than the next. With an undisturbed sea view. Magnificent buildings in any color and pattern. Am I in Hollywood or Nice? The new Europe. If the people living there, are happy? Alas, I wish it for them with all my heart. But what about the others, who do not live on the sunny side? Frank shows me the other extreme.
We drive to a trash-dump. What are we doing here? Soon I can see the truth. People, children are living in the middle of the trash. ...........................

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Yours Father Don Demidoff ICCC
Basilica Catholica Ecumenica in Iacobeni besides Agnita
International Council of Community Churches USA
Sunday 11.00 AM Holy Mass

Stiftung Sf Don Bosco
Independent Catholic Church USA
International Council of Community Church USA

Pater Don Demidoff
Str. Scolii 232
557105 Iacobeni
Romania

This release was published on openPR.