The Quest of the Sofia Airport
There's many things I like about Bulgaria, but the airport is not one of them. I can only assume the EU commissioners either arrive by car or fly in blindfolded, because 5 minutes in the airport would have doomed Bulgaria to admissions lightly after Tajikistan.

It'd make a rather good video game, actually -- or possibly knightly quest. There's several distinct dangers and tests one faces.

The first, upon arrival, is the Seatbelt Test. 50 years of Socialism and 15 years of post-Socialism have resulted in a respect for the rules taht would do Tammany Hall proud. 30 seconds after the plane has touched down the cell phones are out, the seatbelts are off, and your neighbors are crawling over you to pull down their bags. This is rather quixotic, since the airport (unless you're lucky enough to land at the new terminal) still uses busses. Hint, people: make sure you're the last person off. Why rush? The bus won't leave without you, and you can hit the underside of the luggage bins to look for coins (if you prefer the video game simile) or lake-dwelling sword-tossing maidens (if you prefer the knightly aspect).

Upon arriving in the terminal, you face the challenge of The Queue of Non-Queuing. Generally, there will be 3 or 4 customs booths open. Strangely, the new fashion seems to be to have two people in each booth, while a series of "The Glamorous Young Ladies of the Bulgarian Customs Police" watch on incuriously. The challenge and struggle you'll face here is the fact that the queues work in unpredictable fashion, and it's considered the height of savviness to cut in before the unwary. This would be no worse than, say, a visit to a McDonalds in Sofia, except for the brilliant strategy of Air France, British Air and Lufthansa to have as many planes arrive and depart from Sofia as simultaneously as possible. This means that instead of just the 100 from your plane to deal with, you might have 200 or even 300! I suspect it has something to do with the difficulty setting.

Next, the most difficult task: Can You Find a Baggage Cart? Curiously, the Sofia airport has hundreds of baggage carts, which (after a brief experiment back in 2004) are free to the taking. However, you have to find one first. Although airport management and Bulgarian law apparently provide for an approximately a dozen customs officials waiting for the first person to ever voluntarily declare goods, there seems to be only one man who collects carts and returns them for use. This means that there's generally about 2 carts available for any arriving plane. Generally, obtaining one of said carts involves beating off businessmen and babas with your hand baggage while you wait for one of the periodic arrivals of 5 or 6 carts. Given that I always arrive with about 50 kilos of baggage, it's a must. This is really the boss level (or, if you prefer, the climax of the tale).

Once you've obtained a cart, it's the periodic wait for luggage. This is really no worse than anywhere else in the world, with the vague exception that the belt eats luggage. No, really: the quality of the machinery is not up to par, and straps, locks and any protrusion can become trapped in the belt or (occasionally) ripped off. Luckily, for the new terminal, the airport authority hired those keen chaps that designed the Denver luggage system that obtained such fame and notoriety a decade ago.

Finally, and perhaps anticlimatically, you merely have to dodge the taxi touts at the door, and make your way through the thousands of people waiting in the arrivals area, many with signs. This is, again, not that bad -- Dulles is usually just as awful -- except for the fact that most people seem to pass the time of waiting for an arrival by standing in an immobile line, making it as difficult to move a baggage cart past them as possible.

Bitter? Me? Oh, my, no.