More Holes


Dear Peter,          Wednesday, 3rd December, 2025                                
No, my dear chap. I am really not suggesting that any of the banks in Bulgaria are about to go bust. I think that this is highly unlikely and next year this will be even less likely, as Bulgaria will be in the Eurozone. The other countries in the Eurozone would probably not be too happy if some Bulgarian banks go out of business, so they will make sure that this does not happen.

As you have probably seen on the BBC news, there have been rather a lot of demonstrations in Sofia. (President Vladimir Putin will be very pleased with his agents’ work, I am sure.)

What are they protesting about? Well, maybe they are unhappy with the EU, which is silly because the EU has done a lot of good things in Bulgaria. Or maybe they are protesting about Bulgaria’s entry into the Eurozone? Everyone has been talking about Bulgaria joining the Eurozone for years and years. Since the lev, the Bulgarian currency, has been “pegged” against the Euro for more years than I can remember, then really Bulgaria is in the Eurozone already and has been for ages. So what is the fuss about?   

Bad news about Albert, aka Papulichka, my father-in-law. No sign of the money that the swindlers got out of him and I really did not expect that he would get back any of it. The really bad news is that his wife (the one that he married after he and Irena’s mum got divorced) has cancer. It sounds pretty bad. Irena is rather upset because Albert’s wife is actually a nice lady and she is very worried about how he could cope with life if she was no longer with him.  
Yesterday I sent off my old passport by DHL. That was nearly forty quid, on top of the cost of the dreadful passport photo (another ten pounds). Altogether, my new passport is costing me nearly two hundred pounds. Oh the joys of international travel!

The road repairs in the street outside our apartment, Ulitsa Patriach Evtimiiy, have now been going on for about two months. After they dug all the holes for the new mains water pipes, they quickly filled them in again and of course they did not bother putting back all of the old cobblestones. It looked absolutely awful. Well, now they have started putting the old stones back and already it does look a bit better, but they are really slow and so I reckon that they will not get it finished before Christmas.

Yes, I am intending to take my car in for repairs, yet again, as I want to get the horrible rust patches sorted out and re-sprayed.
The walk we went on today with the VT was okay. Not the best. Maybe six out of ten. We drove to the women’s monastery (well, really it is a nunnery) and went for a walk along the road.
How splendid to hear from the great Shaun Payne! I think that what I will do is to send you a letter for the Old Fraud and then perhaps you could be very kind and print it out and then mail it for me.
Best wishes from Veliko Tarnovo,
Simon


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