"Brief encounter" a Sofia Travel Page by CliffClaven

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Many years ago when old Cliffie - well, he was young Cliffie then of course - was sitting on the steps of the foreign students' residence at Sofia University, sadly wondering why most of the female students looked more like East German shot putters than Romanian gymnasts, there suddenly emerged from under the sundappled trees lining the approach to the residence a young girl of amazing beauty. Old Cliffie sat there with his tongue hanging out, rather like one of Ally McBeal's chauvinist male colleagues, and watched as she shyly approached and climbed the steps.

Her name was Naomi, she was 19 and she studied Slavonic languages in Strasbourg. For the next month she and old Cliffie struggled inside every morning with Bulgarian grammar and then spent the afternoons under the sunkissed trees lazily correcting each other's pronunciation of French and English. At the weekend they would escape to the Marine Bar on the top floor of the US Embassy, the only place in town where cold Heineken could be found. The Marines doing bar duty slavered while Naomi flirted and old Cliffie quenched his thirst.

Summer romances never last, of course. Naomi came to Naples next spring, and old Cliffie whisked her away for a whirlwind weekend in Sicily, but the magic of those hot afternoons beneath the trees at the students' residence in Sofia somehow never came back.