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Katerina Gadjeva
among the Bulgarian holidaymakers, the long and moderately hot summer, and
the coolness of the shady places among the luxuriant vegetation were the factors
that could turn Bulgaria into a fashionable tourist destination. For the citizens of
socialist countries it was hard to travel beyond the iron curtain, and the conditions
offered by the Bulgarian Black Sea coast were ideal for a summer holiday. Within
the socialist camp, these could only be rivalled by the Federal Republic of Yugosla¬
vias Adriatic coastline, but the country never assumed a course of dependence from
the USSR; it remained an unpopular destination for socialist citizens and attracted
instead more tourists from capitalist countries. Ihe authorities set themselves the
task of turning Bulgaria into a "Red Riviera"—the most desired holiday destina¬
tion in the socialist world.
In the summer of 1956, the first sod was turned for the Golden Sands resort.
The terrain was a wilderness full of snakes, for the extermination of which 200
hedgehogs were brought in from Albania (Kalinkov & Doychev 2007: 12). Nev¬
ertheless, for the start-up of the tourist season in the following year of 1957, eight
hotels, as well as several bungalow areas, five restaurants, and one pastry shop, were
built and ready for use (Ibid.: 15). Work started also on the Slanchev briag (‘Sunny
Beach) resort and the expansion of the Druzhba (‘Friendship’) complex. Some of
the country’s top architects were invited to design hotels that would naturally fit
into the surrounding landscape. “Simple, beautiful, refined, colourful, tranquil and
modern—these are only some of the architectural qualities of the Golden Sands
resort. The soft colours of the facades, the elegant lines of the balconies, the green
areas contrasting the black of the roads and alleys—this is the background against
which the people who have come here from near and far stand out. Everything is
organized in a single meaningful composition which has preserved the beauties of
nature.” This is the description of the Golden Sands provided by one of the most
representative photographic albums‘ of the 1960s advertising the Bulgarian seaside
(Dimchev & Shterev 1964). A US-American travel guide published in 1968 en¬
thusiastically declared: “What the Bulgarians have done and are doing with their
stretch of Black Sea coast is one of the phenomena of the international tourist
industry. ... The Bulgarians have created pleasure resorts that, despite the hun¬
dreds of thousands jamming them in season, are miraculously devoid of a honky¬
tonk quality. They have paid considerable attention to the need for shady spaces,
for parks and gardens, for a variety of places to eat, drink, and amuse oneself,
for sightseeing tours—inexpensive and well-organized—to both immediate and
distant points, for rapid transport (direct flights to the coast from abroad, for ex¬
ample) and at least to as great an extent as possible, for pleasant, efficient service”
(Kane 1968: 55-56) (Figs 1 and 2). To develop the new Black Sea resorts and at¬
tract tourists from abroad became one of the country’s top priorities in the long
run (Beyer & Hagemann 2013). But in the 1950s the inflow of foreign tourists
* Other representative albums in English are Rashev (1968); Boev (1966); Popov & Dimchev (1961).