Bad BG, Part 1

So tasteful and artistic
The honeymoon is over and so we have to get on with the trials and tribulations of married life. No, I am not talking about Irisha and me. Bulgaria is my subject, especially what is so blooming awful about this country.
First moan: graffiti. Young Bulgarians feel an irresistible urge to spray paint both the new and the old. The Bulgarian state railways bought some smart and modern trains, so let's spray paint them with stupid slogans and rubbishy "street art". There are heaps of crummy crumbling Commie concrete buildings around Sofia, so let's spray paint them and make them look even worse.


Falling to bits
 
Next whinge: alcoholism. BG has a serious booze problem. At Dragoman station today, I noticed vodka and beer being bought before 8am. Not surprisingly, the faces of many people in Bulgaria are unpleasant, frowning, miserable and darkened by alcohol. Hard booze makes people's facial expressions horrible, like the faces of zombies or trolls.

 Moan number 3: derelict buildings. The whole country is full of them. Our village, Kalotina, is about 60km north of Sofia and many of the houses in the village have been abandoned. They are just wrecks, falling to pieces, eyesores. Yes, it would not be so expensive to pull down and demolish these old buildings, but it is even cheaper just to leave them to fall down.

 If this ruin were in Provence, then it would be snapped up by a merchant banker. Unfortunately, this old house in Kalotina, just across the road from our villa, is a total wreck and no one wants to buy it.

 Fourth complaint: bureauocracy. We are trying to get the documentation ready to give to AGS, our shipping company, so that the agent in Sofia will send a message to the AGS people in Shenzhen, so that they will put our freight onto a boat. That means getting documents printed and signed in the presence of a Bulgarian notary. Then I have to get the documents to AGS, but AGS are in Sofia, somewhere, and we live in Kalotina.
A government office, not a microwave oven
But we also need to sort out the documents for our Bulgarian residency cards, so that we can apply for our Russian visas. But we cannot get our new residency cards until we have health insurance for at least a year.  (This reminds me of the silly song about the old woman who swallowed a fly.) We thought that we could get the residency cards done at KAT, but when we got there we found that it was all about driving licences and everything to do with cars.
A charming government building



Then we went to the Interior Ministry, just along from the Lions' Bridge. In fact, we went there twice and the second time the nice lady said no, go to another office on the other side of town. So we went to the other office and the woman who talked to Ira from a hole in the wall that looked like a microwave oven said no, you have to get a declaration signed by a Bulgarian notary. So we went to a notary and he said no, the declaration has to be in English as well as Bulgarian and no, we cannot print out anything for you because your external hard drive might have a virus. Then Irisha went to the insurance company, to get our health insurance and our travel insurance for Russia. The insurance company has closed down. 

 Yes, it was a bad BG day!
More documents from the Notarius

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