Another Weekend in Kalotina

My two favourite girls

It has been a long week. Irena decided to stay over in our villa in Kalotina, so I went back to our apartment in Sofia without her last Sunday. She wanted to stay there with Tina and do various garden-related things, as well as giving the whole place a good clean before we shut up shop for the winter.

This week has actually been pretty exhausting, as there were meetings with the St. George’s parents for more than two hours on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. These meetings were supposed to last from 3.40 to 5.30pm, but in fact they always go on much longer. I always seem to be the last teacher to leave and then I have to take all of my students’ books and lots of other bits and pieces back from the sixth floor to my classroom on the second floor. As if that were not enough, there was Halloween on Thursday, so the students all came to school dressed as monsters, witches and so on. In short, my dear students were not really in a mood for serious some studying.


As it is a public holiday on the Friday, on the Thursday evening, I drove to Kalotina from our apartment in Ulitsa Kozyak. That, of course, meant lots of delays on the Sofia ring road, plus even more delays because of the roadworks between Slivnitsa and Dragoman. For about ten kilometres, I had to do a detour and drive on the old cobblestoned road. Yes, the new motorway is going to be wonderful when it is finally finished, but that probably will not be until 2021!

A late supper in the sitting room

Despite the delays, I finally got home at about eight and had a joyful reunion with my wife and dog. Today we did a few things in the garden and we went for a nice long country walk, past the lake, under the railway line and up the hill on the other side. Of course, lots of properties are empty now, as not many people come here at this time of the year. There is still a lot of green, but now there are more and more yellows, oranges and brown in the landscape. Winter finally seems to be arriving in Bulgaria, after all of those gloriously warm and sunny days in October.

More and more walnuts (and a naughty dog)

The hundreds of walnuts on the floor of the dining room are confirmation that Autumn is almost over, while berries and apples seem to have taken over the kitchen. Long nights, so cold and so dark, are going to be the norm from now on.

Later, while sitting next to the wood-burning stove in the kitchen, I caught up with some school work and finally (finally!) got round to writing another overdue piece for my blog.

      

Sitting by the River Nishava with a naughty little doggie