Christian outposts in the southern Balkans, perhaps for the obvious historical reasons, seem to be in the mountains. And as soon as I understood where I had landed in this latest jump, I did have the strong urge to flee to the Bulgarian mountains. The present country is generally thought of as a bad place to be, and although I try not to let these generally held perceptions affect my thinking, the physical aspects of the place do genuinely make it an unpleasant place to walk down the street. And that's right next to the ocean, inaccessible behind wall-like private developments, with platoons of strays guarding the street-level in the evening hours.
Man, flee!
And yet, one interesting aspect. This sort of place seems to traditionally be the place where the less well-off of Central Europe go to the sea when they manage to get away, and there's a chance that the ancestors, perhaps proximate ones, spent some time here in the summers. So less a nostalgie de la boue than a sort of solidarity.