Traveling To Summer

It was a long winter. Everyone agreed on that. It was dark and cold and went on and on and on and everyone was glad when it was over. Spring came fitfully and teasingly to Bulgaria. A few bright hot days, a week of rain, a day of heat, more rain. Fields of weeds grew with great vigor. Pale sprouts poked up from gardens, a few early strawberries appeared, sweet and tart. Berries drooped from Mulberry trees. Our visas expired and it was time to go. We said goodbye to friends and fled in the night, running to the south.

Fragments of memory from the trip: bouncing along a potholed road in the dark, the border at midnight and the bus conductors hiding packages of smuggled goods, the Istanbul otogar at 05:00 – pale dawn light and courteous Turks serving us savory soup at an outside table, a long wait at Ataturk airport, then a short flight and we walk into sunshine and hibiscus, bougainvillea, olive trees and orange groves.

We’re at an outdoor café in a green park next to the harbor, children and balloons and laughter, lemon trees and fan palms, a canvas tarp the size of a sail strung from tall plane trees shades the tables and there’s a soft breeze from the Middle Sea, that most ancient, most storied, and for me most beloved of seas.

It’s summer on the Turquoise Coast.