Canada Calling, Part 7

Looking forward to meeting you guys and checking out Elena for that leg of the trip. It's probably a lot more expensive though, so it might not actually be beneficial in the long run to have house or car insure through an EU wide company.


My car is really old, second-hand and not worth much money, so I have fairly cheap insurance.
We will probably be going for an older, small off-road capable vehicle there, like a Suzuki, for easy and cheap repairs. 

Well, these are matters that you will need to discuss with your Bulgarian friends and neighbours. For example, some expats pay for a security company to protect their property. Yes, you can do this and it will cost you about 300 euros each year. Maybe it is worth it for the peace of mind.

Indeed. That's not very expensive.

There is no point in getting expensive car insurance for a really cheap car!

Totally! As long as you are well covered for liability, you don't need amazing coverage for the vehicle itself.

We had a contract with a security company for our first house, the one near Sofia. We were only there for the summer, so for most of the year the house was empty. I think that this was the right decision, but we do not bother with this for our house in Daveri. Our neighbours are there a lot of the time and we gave them a set of keys, so they could come and check if there is anything wrong.

We will be living in our place year round, so it would only be empty when we go on short trips somewhere. Our attack cats will protect the place. Haha!


LOTS of snow here in VT. It should all be gone in a few days. Actually, you are a Canadian, so we had a teeny-weeny bit of snow. Hardly worth mentioning...

Yeah, I saw the snow on the forecast. The longer range forecast is looking pretty great. Funny thing. Where we live in Canada, we don't usually get snow. We didn't get any snow at all this winter. Oh yeah, that's not snow in Canadian terms. Haha!

Oh dear! I thought that all Canadians had at least a couple of metres of snow every winter.

We are literally one of the only spots in all of Canada that doesn't get loads of snow. I have lived other places in Canada that get lots of it.

My blog is called "Bulgaria with Noodles" because I started writing it when we were in China. I missed Bulgaria a lot! Now we live in Bulgaria and I miss China...

Haha! Always how it goes. You always miss what you had. Our travels to Croatia gave us the pleasure of Croatian beer, which is awesome.

There are four big supermarkets in VT. My wife flatly refuses to go to BILLA. She says it is way overpriced. She likes LIDL (great for cheese) and KAUFLAND (best for meat). There is also something called METRO, a bit like Cash & Carry, as you have to have a Metro card.

In my blog, I have written quite a long piece about the cost of living in Bulgaria. I really do not know about prices in Canada, I'm afraid!

We shopped at LIDL a lot in Spain. The prices in Canada are pretty high compared to salaries. The cost of living here has gotten out of hand... Main reason we are looking to leave.

Some things (imported things) in Bulgaria are expensive. No doubt about that. But some locally-produced things are relatively cheap. And sensible people try to grow at least some of their own fruit and veg. Got to go to lunch now!

I will be trying buy as much direct from producers as possible. I always leverage farmers’ markets. I will also try and connect with farmer neighbours to line up meat, dairy and cheese.

Have a good lunch!

Smart way to do a blog. No need to write new stuff when it's already been written! And it reminds me of how a conversation in a novel reads. It works!


An excellent choice! Elena is quite a lively town (nowhere near as big as VT) and it has some useful shops etc. The bad news is that property around Elena is not so cheap and it is quite a long way from VT (about 50 or 60 kms). It takes us the best part of an hour to drive from our house to VT. It is a pretty drive, but not exactly quick.

There are a few nice places to eat in Elena and the Yakhovitsi reservoir is great if you like sailing or canoes. And there are some good builders' merchants!

I had a chat with my dear wife during lunch and she said, "Tell Josh that there are no good supermarkets in Elena." Yes, it is true. There are a couple of small supermarkets, but they are pretty blooming awful.

Yeah, we will be utilizing farmers’ markets and smaller markets that stock local products as much as possible. We would be hitting larger chain stores more on a monthly basis. That's how we shop here too. I do a lot of cooking, and we rarely go out to eat. I like to keep costs down and quality up with our food consumption as much as possible. I really love to cook.

 


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