Goodbye to 2022

Bill and Julia, our dear Chinese friends, have been very ill with COVID, as I think I mentioned to you, but the good news is that they seem to be recovering. In China, COVID is causing chaos and the hospitals are all full up. 

Yes, almost everything in Bulgaria is going up in price, just as it is in the UK. Now things seem to be a bit more stable and the price of oil is going down again. There are still some things in BG that are still absurdly cheap. For example, in VT I can usually park my car without paying a penny. We can live in my apartment or house without paying two or three hundred quid a month in Council Tax. And yes, you can still buy a house here in Bulgaria for less than ten thousand pounds, although you might have to spend another ten in order to make it nice. 

As for Bulgaria adopting the Euro in 2024, I just cannot make up my mind whether or not this will be a good thing for Bulgaria (or a good thing for the EU). You need to bear in mind that the total population of Bulgaria is only five million. That is the same as a couple of fairly average-sized cities in Germany. So what difference will it make to the rest of the EU? Not much. Lots of deals in Bulgaria are all done in Euros, whether it is houses or cars, and the BG leva has been “tied” to the Euro for as long as I can remember. So maybe it will not make much difference. On the other hand, maybe lots of companies will see the changeover as an opportunity (or an excuse) to put up their prices. However, the prices for many things in BG are already going up like mad, so you could argue that nothing is really going to change. Another thing to remember is that Bulgaria is a poor country, one of the poorest in the EU. If you put up the prices for many items, many Bulgarian people will probably just stop buying them because they cannot afford them! 

All of the problems of Bulgaria can easily be forgotten when you go for a good long walk with a naughty little Jack Russell. Every Wednesday, the “VT Walkers” go for a walk somewhere around VT and we usually finish up at a pub! This Wednesday there were about fifteen of us and I discovered a new and rather good walk that is not too far from us. 

Yesterday we had some splendid roast beef for lunch, courtesy of our friend Adrian. He invited us over to his house, just the other side of the wooden bridge in VT. He is quite a character, Adrian, and a bit of a rough diamond. No, he does not have a posh accent, but he does have a filthy sense of humour and so I think that Adrian and Peter would get on well! 

So what is going to happen in 2023? 2022 was a bit of a disaster and this horrible war in Ukraine probably is not going to end sometime soon. Putin says that he wants peace, so why doesn’t he withdraw all of his troops from the land they have invaded? The awful missile attacks, deliberately destroying Ukraine’s power and water infrastructure, are probably not going to put Zelensky in a good mood. The only sensible course, therefore, is for the Ukrainian soldiers to finish it, once and for all, by pushing the Russian army out of the occupied territory. This will then, in all probability, trigger some sort of revolt against Putin. Maybe this will happen sooner than we think.