A smoke without fire

SO THERE we were, 31,000 feet above central Europe in the belly of the great silver bird with its beak pointing at Sofia, when an odd thing happened: the woman beside me lit up a cigarette.

Odder still, nobody complained, least of all the cabin crew from whom, after all, she had just bought her supply and who now looked on approvingly as she took her first satisfying puff. And, unless I lost something in translation, my understanding, after a brief, bemused conversation about this strange event, was that the captain was also merrily puffing away up in the cockpit.

Before the nannies all start agitating to have Bulgarian Air shot of the sky, I should perhaps explain that my fellow traveller was breaking no law on our strictly no-smoking flight, because what she was happily sucking on was something called an “electronic cigarette.”

This turns out be, technically speaking, a yoke that looks like a pen, glows red at the top like a cigarette and emits an occasional tiny wisp of odour-free smoke which disappears almost the very instant it leaves the mouth.

Or, as the shaky English language version of the user’s manual helpfully explains: “The Electronic Cigarette is a non-flammable electronic atomising device, adopts the advanced microelectronic technology and supercritical physical atomised technology, to atomise the high-purity nicotine diluent, which is extracted from tobacco and has the excitating function, so that the smoker can take it in.”

Well, I could hardly have put it better myself.

The idea of the electronic cigarette seems to be two-fold: the addict can continue to smoke even in smoke-free zones but, by using the appropriate cartridges to work their way down over time from high-nicotine content through medium and low to zero-nicotine content, can eventually wean themselves off the dreaded ciggies altogether.

Of course, that’s assuming that, before they reach this blessed point, their health hasn’t already suffered the terminal event of being beaten to death in the restaurant or cinema by enraged anti-smokers who get, if you will, the wrong end of the cheroot.

And the theory also assumes — as a smoker myself, I would have to say, unwisely — that the moment the user leaves the restaurant or cinema, he or she doesn’t simply pocket the electronic cigarette and light up the real thing.

Anyway, back on our flight to Sofia, with an hour still to go, the young Bulgarian woman — who told me that she had previously tried nicotine patches and was now experimenting with the electronic cigarette for the first time — was suddenly all smiles and chat, a veritable living, breathing, coughing advertisement for a product which claims to “refresh the smoker and satisfy their smoking addiction, making them happy and relaxed.”

Which is just as well, since the electronic cigarette she had just purchased from the duty free trolley had set her back €82. (“I’ll have 20, please,” I quipped good-naturedly to the stewardess). Her long-term cause will also be helped, I hope, by the fact that her work in the travel business takes her out of Bulgaria a lot because, on the basis of my briefest of trips to Sofia, I would have to say that’s it’s hard to find a place in the capital where, far from the practice being outlawed, you aren’t almost compelled to smoke, just to fit in.

Nevertheless, new habits die almost as hard as old ones, which is why I still find myself instinctively leaving smoke-filled cafes to go outside for my personal hit. (By contrast, huddled together out on the streets in Ireland, I’ve taken to telling my fellow smokers, “I think I’ll just pop back inside now for a breath of fresh air”).

Plonked on an elevated plateau beneath the dramatically towering Mount Vitosha, Sofia is the highest capital in Europe. The most cursory ramble through the streets suggests it’s also the black leather jacket capital of Europe. But you don’t even have to leave the dining room in your hotel to be convinced that it’s almost certainly the smoking capital of the world.

Actually, I broke my own in-house smoking ban in that very setting last night but only, I’d like to think, under extreme duress. Wiped out after a middle of the night alarm clock call in Dublin and a long day’s journey via Gatwick to Sofia, myself and a colleague chose the easy option of dining in our hotel.

That we’d arrived off-season was brought home by the fact that we were the only two customers in the large restaurant, although the paltry nature of his audience appeared in no way to diminish the professional enthusiasm of the resident entertainer — a portly, pony-tailed gentleman in a black shirt who blasted away on an electric keyboard throughout our meal, his repertoire and style drawn straight from the East European Eurovision tradition. “Zis one is for you, gentlemens,” he announced, and then proceeded to serenade us with ‘Please Release Me’ sung in Bulgarian. As they say, we didn’t know where to look. By the time the waiter and manager were joining in for ‘Alice’, I was practically smoking three cigarettes at one go. But it was only when it dawned on us that ‘The Birdy Song’ was almost certainly imminent — and, ye gods, what if they asked us to join in? — that we finally made our excuses and left.

Nice meal though, and nice friendly people too — but then what else but a warm welcome would you expect in a hotel whose official brochure boasts that it’s located “in the hearth of the city.”

When the Green Army arrives out here on World Cup duty in June, Sofia will be pretty hot and dusty. But right now it’s a lovely time to visit the Bulgarian capital. The mornings and evenings have a crisp Autumnal bite but, once the sun is up, the temperature rises to a balmy 21 degrees.

Rather cooler are expectations of success when the national team take on Italy in Ireland’s World Cup group this evening. Yesterday’s edition of the weekly English language Sofia Echo carried the less than patriotically stirring back page headline ‘Favourites To Lose’ and reported that the bookies have Bulgaria at a whopping 9-1 to turn over the world champions tonight.

However, if our driver from the airport was anything to go by, the Echo has judged the popular mood just right. When asked what he thought the result might be this evening, our man pulled a sour face, thought for a bit and eventually replied “10-zero.”

Excitation, as the electronic cigarette people might say, appears to be limited.