Friday 22 February 2008

Do you know where Shabla is?!

Balkan Expedition - Part III (Final)

We got into the café.

As fast as I could I managed to take the seat on the table nearer to the entrance. I remember just "leaving" my body on the chair, like if I had no bones in it. Nara took the seat on my left, and when we were both seated, we took a deep relief breathe - Kostov was coming to "rescue" us, in only a couple of hours! Only a couple of hours...

Anyways, I noticed Nara was OK again when she said she needed a coffee - she always needs a coffee when she's fine. She stood up, looking for the waitress, when she noticed the miner looking men were inviting both of us to join their tables. Before I could say "Nara, I think we'd better stay here", she was already heading to their table.

So, on this table there were two guys only: the most miner-looking man in the whole cafe (he was wearing a full-of-holes grey wool cap, and a huge grey jacket, with some little grey beard covering his cheeks) and his younger friend (black haired, with a black jacket on). As Nara was approaching the table, she asked "Speak english?". "English? No, no, no Engleski", the older man said. "Sprachen sie Deutsch?", he asked.
"YES!!!" Nara quickly replied, and finally took a sit at the guys table, next to the older man, facing me, just a few tables away. After the introductions (of course they mistaked her name with "Nada", as usual), she started explaining them what happened to us in our way from Serbia to Bulgaria. That was when I realised the black haired guy didn't speak any other language other than bulgarian, as his friend was translating to him what Nara was telling them. But it wasn't quite working: the two guys were so damn drunk, they were asking her again and again what happened to us and what were we doing, on a Christmas eve, in that cafe in Shabla. After having the same answer from her some three times, the man gave up and started telling about him, and started asking where we were from. "I bet you can't guess where we're from! Try to guess!", Nara said. While they were trying each and every possible european country - and Nara saying "no" to every wrong try of them, I was looking at her and shaking my head like saying "Fuck Nara, don't do that! Don't tell them where we're from!". She was looking back to me with a crazy smile on her face, like if she wasn't understanding why she shouldn't do that.
I mean, we didn't know anything about those two, they were pretty drunk, we didn't speak the same languages, we were alone in Shabla and, to make it worse, everybody knows that brazilian girls have the reputation to be easy and big arsed ones. Hehe, we are not "easy", and most certainly not big arsed girls, haha. But they didn't know that.
When she said "We're from Brazil", the two men were like "Noooo, you're not, you're lying!". Although she even showed them her student card to prove it, they didn't believe her. Then they started pointing their fingers at me and asking Nara where her friend was from. When she said Brazil, again they said she was lying.

That was when I decided I should join Nara at their table, to not leave her with them all alone. I sat right before her and beside the younger black haired guy that, as soon as I sat down, took my hand in his and raising his eyebrow with a drunken look he started saying in bulgarian "Your hands are so cold..."
"Fuck", that's what I thought, and as quick as I could I took my hand off his and put it inside my coat's pocket. He was staring at me moaning something that sounded like "Oh come on, give me your hand". Fuck again, I so wanted Kostov to arrive soon!

I then saw Nara was on a similar situation with the older man, haha. In a very, very 'restricted' german he was saying something like "I cook Berlin. 15 years. My mother sick. My daughter not house. I alone. Come to my place with me". Nara was pretending she didn't get what he really meant, saying "I need to stay and wait for my friend to pick me here, can't go anywhere else". And he said everything all over again, this time to me as well, and the younger one was still trying to get my hand again, and Nara saying "no" once more, and then ha! The younger guy took a note of 50 leva, placed on the table, and pushed it to our direction. On that moment, I think Nara realised she'd better really stop giving them the attention she was giving. She looked at me as who says "Dammit!", and I gave her back my "Yeah, dammit!" look.
She turned to the guys and said "What is that? What in the world is that???", pointing at the 50 leva. The older guy looked to his friend said something in a harsh tone of voice, turned back to us and said "I'm sorry, my friend is very drunk, he got confused, he just wanted to pay a coffee, he's confused".
"It's Ok, it's Ok", Nara replied.

Immediately the guy said again "So, come my house, I alone, my mother sick" and that was when we finally gave up, stood up, and got back to our table.

We were both nervous with the whole situation at this point. After making a nervous speech to Nara, pointing how she should never have started talking to them in the first place, we both started laughing, laughing so much, that we started crying, hahahaha. Laughing, crying, and pointing out to ourselves our bizarre situation and saying to ourselves "Kosta, please, come quickly!!".

After we managed to control ourselves, we agreed on speaking very low and not even looking at their direction til Kostov rescue us. So we did. But even so, the older guy - after realising we wouldn't go back to their table - came to us, kneelled down next to our table and started saying a bunch of things in Bulgarian. Nara was getting kinda pissed, telling me, in portuguese "I told him I only speak german, why is he still talking in bulgarian, dammit! I can't get a word!".
As soon as she said that, he stood up right away, and said "Romanian! Romania!!!" and started saying a whooooole lot of things in romanian, hahahaha. We completely forgot how much portuguese sounds like romanian and how close to the romanian border we were, dammit! Nara looked at me like who says "It doesn't matter what I say or in what language, he just won't stop". Yes, indeed he looked like he wasn't gonna stop, hehe. After a minute speaking romanian to us, he stoped, with a thoughtful look on his face, glazing at our table. That was when he saw my notebook, full of russian stuff written on it's cover. When I noticed he was staring at my notebook's cover, it was already too late: he turned to me and started speaking russian, hahahaha. I just couldn't believe that was happening, that guy was unstoppable, completely!!! The most annoying thing is that, actually, I could get quite some stuff of what he was saying, but I was holding myself back to not answer anything, or then heaven knew what could happen, haha.

Nara and I stayed completely mute, staring at the table, and after a while he gave up and got back to his table.
Thank God!

Nara and I could then start a conversation without being interrupted at every second. We were making some random drawings on my notebook, while talking about how funny it would be telling about that whole situation to our friends, hehe. All during our talk, Nara was staring at every single car that was passing before the cafe, believing it could be Kosta coming to save us, haha.
The older guy still made one last try to please us: he gave, to each one of us, an orange, a huuuge one, hahaha. And got back to his table. I remember even the waitress was laughing like crazy when he gave us the oranges, hahaha.

I was so tired, I didn't even have forces to be scared of nervous anymore, hehe. I wasn't even anxious for Kostov to come. I was simply absent. And Nara was still staring at the glass windows, hoping that each car passing by would be Kostov's.

Then, at one point, she stood up and started heading to the glass door, saying "I think it's him... It's... Yeah!! It's him, it's Kosta now!!!". And I was like "I bet it isn't. It's probably the 10th car passing by that you say it's him for sure, Nara..."
But this time she was (finally!) right: it WAS Kosta, and with his brother! Nara ran to the glass door and tried to open it, but it was locked, hahaha. She shook the door a bit, but it didn't work so she just stood at the door, with her hands and her face glued to the glass, watching Kosta and Martin approaching to the cafe. The waitress came and unlocked the door and ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! We held Kosta as strongly as we could, the four of us lauging a lot as we grabbed our things and headed to his car.

After an almost two hours trip back to Varna, we arrived at his house, met his parents, and had the coolest Christmas eve of the last years :)))))))))

Needless to say, this "Shabla adventure" became the_joke among all Kostov's friend in Bulgaria, haha. I guess we will be forever remebered as the "Shabla girls", like they named us.