If you have visited the Bulgarian Black Sea coast in the summer, calm is the last word you would use to describe it. At this season, the resorts and beaches teem with tourists, and suffer from noise and rubbish pollution. In such circumstances, the feeling that you have stumbled into some sort of a hell on earth is inevitable.
When the summer is over and the last visitors for the year have gone, Sozopol quickly returns to its former life as a quiet fishing town. The hotels are boarded up, the restaurants are closed and the streets are empty. In itself, this is an incredible sight, especially if you've seen what Sozopol looks like in August. In wintertime, salty wind blows along the empty seaside promenades, and the voices echoing between the traditional houses in the old quarter belong not to the guests of the many B&Bs, but to their elderly inhabitants.