I RECOGNISE THAT CAN DESIGN !

April 2024. Veliko Tarnovo.

A reminder where this blog is up to, somewhere in central Bulgaria on the penultimate night of a whizz (or is it wizz ?) round Bulgaria’s highlights.

I suspect we may have only scratched the surface of this great country, though Veliko Tarnovo would definitely be my tip if you only visit one city there.

After early tea we dodged the showers and sprinted through Veliko Old Town,

mysteriously ending up at Zavera, the only real craft bar in town.

I reckon it supplies bottles and cans to restaurants like the one we’d stuffed our faces on that lunchtime, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if our waiter at Shtastliveca had nipped down the hill to buy that bottle of Varushka Oatmeal Stout here.

Attractive cans on the shelves, but it’s draft you want, Bulgarian stuff like Sofia Electric’s Passion Fruit Gose.

“Gose ? That’s a sour, isn’t it ?” said Mrs RM, who knows things.

She’d asked for a flight, she always asks for a flight abroad, but that always leads to disaster and halves would do.

You get a great view over the Yantra from the back window,

but that table had been reserved by a group with a lady who looked like Carol Decker, so we had to put up with the high tables.

I’m against table reservations in pubs, or reservations in general, and in a micropub with half a dozen table it looks particularly incongruous but then I don’t run a micropub.

Zavera had a lot to commend it, with 7 day opening and a collection of half-and-half scarves commemorating the unique bond between Manchester United and Liverpool,

a Soviet-era Black and White TV showing Bulgarian quiz shows,

and a wonderful soul soundtrack spanning T’Pau Stevie Wonder to Sharon Jones.

I’d only popped in for a quick half, but despite the high tables I was warming to the place,

and the TV above Carol Decker’s head was showing two top teams from Sofia and Plovdiv play out a top flight league game in a near deserted stadium lit up by flares. So we stopped for a can of the Sofia Electric Overflow (top) the local had urged me to do on Tuesday.

And it was great, though my main takeaway was the remarkable similarity between that can design and a piece of 1980 angst pop from Wah! Heat.

Pete Wylie should sue, though I suspect he’d nicked that design himself.

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

12 thoughts on “I RECOGNISE THAT CAN DESIGN !”

  1. Sitting in a Spoons in Glasgow, fretting while Mrs B has a hip operation. Then a Wah! Heat reference and the sun came out. Maybe everything’s going to be all right. God, I hope so.

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      1. In the café at Glasgow Transport Museum now (it’s brilliant by the way) nursing a bottle of Fraoch. No news on Mrs B, don’t know when she was due to be “done”, they don’t give you this information. Off back to the hospital soon to await developments.

        The Spoons was the Lord of the Isles. It’s been in the GBG for a couple of years so you’ve probably been there.

        I remember Hipsway. Had a single by them which probably went in the Great Vinyl Sale a few years ago.

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      3. Mrs B update: she’s been under the knife (hammer, chisel, drill, angle grinder etc) and she’s OK. She’s been asking for a gin and tonic so hopefully not too much wrong. If I can get hold of one of those premixed cans I might try and smuggle one in.

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  3. Might I remind the reader, that In 1974, a Welsh coracle, piloted by Bernard Thomas of Llechryd, crossed the English Channel to France in thirteen-and-a-half hours? The journey was undertaken to support a claim, that Bull Boats of the Mandan Indians in the United States could have been copied from coracles introduced by Prince Madog in the twelfth century. Furthermore, for many years until 1979, Shrewsbury coracle maker Fred Davies achieved some notability amongst football fans, from the fact that he would sit in his coracle during Shrewsbury Town FC home matches at Gay Meadow, and retrieve stray balls from the River Severn. Although Mr. Davies died in 1994, his story is still associated with the club to this very day.

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