I currently live in the Balkans and have been talking about this case with my DH who is Croatian. Our thoughts are that the core of the story is closest to the truth.
They chose Golden sands for the party scene, almost absolutely - there are far more popular, safe a "posh" places Germans usually go (we must rescue many of them every year getting lost on hikes). I think they had been partying, got into an altercation with the futbol fans, and later that night they caught up with him and he was hit hard on the head - we do know at least he absolutely had a ruptured eardrum, but any other excuse like he maybe hallucinated from the antibiotics is just BS to make sure they don't look bad or negligent or an unsafe place to vacation (it is, I would never recommend it). All it takes is a very hard slap with an open palm to the side of the head to rupture an eardrum. I don't think they were "paid"- how would Lars even know that? It is likely the same guys or their friends, and I wouldn't be surprised if a girl is part of that problem. This kind of thing is actually not uncommon especially between rival clubs (we have riot police out every world cup because of the fights here) Nontheless,I think this altercation happened and lead to his injury which lead to his subsequent physical deterioration. When you are traveling (and partying) there is already stress like sleeplessness, not eating well, etc and now he is injured and abandoned by his friends. You do absolutely hear rumors about being killed or kidnapped for all sorts of reasons in this region, and that may have made him paranoid. His scaling the fence at the airport is what keeps me coming back to this theory - as Elainara said, it seems he was trying to get out of there and onto the freeway. When I asked my DH he said without hesitation that there is no reason to doubt the hooligans hurt him seriously and waited to "teach him a lesson"while he was separated from his friends. This may have made him fearful, and the only reason we could find for running out of an airport and scaling a fence. Consider if Lars was afraid they wouldn't let him leave the country and he thought he was involved in some conspiracy. He left his phone - could someone have taken it and this flipped him out? It seems we don't have a straight story of what happened in the doctors. I don't know if it is as involved as the onset of mental illness, or a side effect of his injury, but I do think he could be out there somewhere and that the Bulgarian police are not going to be the ones to solve it - if this poor mother wants Lars found, she must get the German authority to go and do their own search.
