Winter is coming Part 2

Yesterday we came back from Daveri, having stayed there overnight. Whenever we move from Daveri to VT or the other way round, my dear sweet wife always manages to find piles and piles of stuff that she wants to move from one to the other. Anyway, Daveri was blooming freezing when we arrived, but I am glad to say that our central heating worked pretty well.



What was not working so well was the electricity. There wasn’t any. Although power cuts do tend to happen quite a lot in the Bulgarian countryside during the winter months, it was a bit of a shock to arrive in Daveri and find that there was no power. Fortunately, the electricity came back on fairly soon and so we were able to get on with all of the jobs associated with preparing for winter.


If you are going to be leaving your house empty for some length of time during the winter months, of course you need to drain all of the water pipes. Before you can do that, you must turn off the water. The next day we were just about to leave when I found out that I could not turn off the mains water supply! I had used buckets to take out a lot of the water from Tina’s swimming pool, the square hole with the water mains at the bottom of it, and tried to close the levers that turn off the water. After I had taken out nearly all of the water, I noticed that there was a rippling movement that meant only one thing: we have a water leak! This is Bulgaria, not the UK, so we phoned the workman who lives in Palitsi, just up the road from us, and he came round in about twenty minutes. I think that he spent the better part of an hour working on the pipes. He stopped the leak and managed to completely turn off the water.  When he had finished, I asked him how much I should pay him. “Nishto” is the Bulgarian word for “nothing”. I insisted on giving him 30 leva, about fifteen pounds.

Now I am sitting at my computer in the narrow little room that used to be the guest room for Peter and AJ in our apartment in VT. We will not be going to Daveri again until the spring, I suppose.

Comments

  1. México1 December 2023 at 11:45

    Thank you for consistently delivering content that is both informative and engaging.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Educaring, Part 2

Image
Not so long ago, I wrote a post for my blog called Educaring . Please do not misunderstand me. I really do believe that teachers, youth workers, parents (and indeed anyone involved with young people) all have a duty to protect children and teenagers, to keep them safe. As I argued in my previous posting, I also believe that the task of protecting children is becoming more and more difficult - almost impossible, in fact. Yes, the Internet has a lot to do with it, I am sure, but there is another problem that is hardly ever discussed.  In a nutshell, anyone who genuinely cares about children finds it very hard to imagine how evil and how subtle child molesters and pedophiles really are. I think that is probably why many teachers and parents just do not know when a pedophile is "grooming" a child and why they often do not believe it, even when confronted with the unpleasant truth. Michael Green at Windlesham House School I knew Michael Green when I was teaching at Windlesh...
Read more

On the Cards, Part 1

Image
Getting our new Bulgarian residency cards from the Microwave Oven Woman Rejoice! Let's celebrate. Hallelujah! At long last, the Microwave Woman has given us our new Bulgarian residency cards (BRCs). As a special treat, just in case you do not know what a BRC looks like, here is my old one.  My dear wife suggested that I should "black out" certain bits, as there are lots of evil people out there on the Internet, all gathering my personal and financial details in order to swindle me or involve me in some dreadful scandal or some such nonsense. Of course, no one who reads my blog could ever do such a nasty thing!   Getting our new BRCs means that we can go ahead with our applications for our Russian visas. Then, maybe two or three weeks later, our passports will be returned to us, with new Russian visas stuck into them. The other good news is that the insurance agent in Dragoman did not lose my car registration document. When she had finished giving me my new car ...
Read more

Moving to Bulgaria

Image
A lady called Betty Bradshaw recently wrote this on the Facebook Group "Moving to Bulgaria" and my replies are in italics. Sorry if this sounds thick... but what is the very first thing we need to do before buying a house in Bulgaria? Is it the visas? Is it buy a house first? We are serious about moving over, but have no clue where to begun our journey. Dear Beckie Bradshaw,  You are not being "thick" at all. We all have to start somewhere, when we do something completely new and out of our comfort zone!  Anyway, the first thing you need to before buying a house in Bul garia is to read my blog  www.bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com   Then you should watch some of Susan Ashwell's lovely videos about Bulgaria on YouTube. (Her series is called "Escape to a simpler place and time.")  Thirdl y, you should reply to the message that I am just about to write to you. Here is the message (or messages) I wrote to Becky, together with her replies. Hello! My wife an...
Read more