Bulgaria with Noodles

Happy Easter! Christos vaskres! Yes, when I started writing this, it was Easter Sunday, the most important day in the Christian Church’s calendar. But which church? Normally Irena and I go to the evangelical church in Veliko Tarnovo. The services are all in Bulgarian, of course, but it is good to be with other Christians. I was not brought up as a Christian. I don’t remember my mother or Eric, my step-father, ever encouraging me to pray or to read the Bible. I hated going to church at my public school, Lord Wandsworth College, and it was at Oxford that I become a Christian. Although I originally signed up for Classics, I changed to Theology. So what about our new Archbishop of Canterbury? It is now a few days after Easter. There have been a few pieces in the newspapers and on TV about the new Archbishop. Half of me says, “Hooray! Yes, why not? It is about time we had a lady in Canterbury. After all, we have female airline pilots, lawyers, plumbers, mechanics, soldiers, etc.” I am ...

The other day I was surprised (and very pleased) to hear from Yehia Ayman Saleh, one of my Year 5 students from The British School of Al Rehab. This school is a few miles out from the centre of Cairo, on the Suez Road. Yehia sent me a voice recording and I have transcribed it. Hearing Yehia's voice brought back some happy memories of our two years in the Land of the Nile, so I am going to include a few old photos. Mr Hill, hello! This is Yehia. I used to be your student at the British School of Al Rehab in Cairo, some twenty-three or twenty-something years ago, in Year 5! I don’t know if you remember me, but I definitely remember you and I am so happy to have found you on Facebook. I have been looking for you for many, many, many years. I had asked also Mr. Cann about you and I am so happy to know that you are doing well that enjoying your life in Bulgaria with your wife and that you are having a good time. Again, I don’t know if you remember me, but I remember you very well and my...

Well, I finally go to meet Josh and Heidi, two Canadians who are hoping to buy a property in Bulgaria. We first met on Monday evening at "Bianco" in VT and then they came to have coffee with us at Daveri, followed by lunch at the "cheap and cheerful" mehana in Elena. I hope that things work out for them. They want to buy a "renovation project" and that might mean rather a lot of extra expense and hassle for all of the DIY work. In case you have not guessed, the series of posts called Canada Calling was a long chat I had with Josh over the Internet.  I thought that my comments might help anyone else who is thinking of re-locating to Bulgaria. Why does no one ever comment on my blog? We just went to Daveri for the day on Wednesday, in order to drop of some of my dear wife's rather large collection of house plants. Today, Saturday, we made the all-in move and, as usual, I was amazed at the huge collection of stuff that Irena had decided we must move from...

Looking forward to meeting you guys and checking out Elena for that leg of the trip. It's probably a lot more expensive though, so it might not actually be beneficial in the long run to have house or car insure through an EU wide company. My car is really old, second-hand and not worth much money, so I have fairly cheap insurance. We will probably be going for an older, small off-road capable vehicle there, like a Suzuki, for easy and cheap repairs.  Well, these are matters that you will need to discuss with your Bulgarian friends and neighbours. For example, some expats pay for a security company to protect their property. Yes, you can do this and it will cost you about 300 euros each year. Maybe it is worth it for the peace of mind. Indeed. That's not very expensive. There is no point in getting expensive car insurance for a really cheap car! Totally! As long as you are well covered for liability, you don't need amazing coverage for the vehicle itself. We had a ...

That's great to have people who know what they are doing.  I would've taken them off your hands! They could be used for a greenhouse. As there was almost as much wood as glass, they made the apartment quite gloomy. Yes, I managed to get some money for the old windows, as someone used them for a greenhouse. Always a great use for old windows or they can be used for a sunroom. The damage the so-called workmen did to the plasterwork and the brickwork was appalling. That sucks. Every time I asked them to repair this or fix that, they said, "Well, you will have to pay extra for that. It's not included in the price." Ridiculous! Then one of our neighbours turned up, very angry because they had smashed the windscreen on his sister's car. They had dropped something down into the street. It would be funny if it had not been so awful. Oh no! So you must get people who are reliable! No doubt. I know it's hard to find there. We definitely need to go ...

You might therefore want to look at the area north of Gorna, around Polski Trambesh, or a bit further north, near the Danube. Well, sometimes things do not happen on time in Bulgaria, so don't get too excited about the airport... From VT to the airport in Sofia is about three hours in a car.  Maybe four hours. Driving to the airport, collecting someone and then driving back to VT or Daveri.... Yes, it can be done, but it's tiring and a long day. I paid our "danak" for our apartment this morning. This is a property-based tax and my wife and I had to pay 47 euros each. I also had to pay another 82 euros for our car. These taxes are annual, not like in the the UK where they are monthly. On the whole, properties in cities have higher danak and country houses are lower. If you have two properties, as we do, then of course you have to pay danak for both of them. Yes, it’s crazy how much lower the property taxes are there. Here, property taxes are many thousands of dol...