Bulgaria with Noodles

Recently there was some discussion on a Facebook group about why expat Brits would want to leave Bulgaria and go back to the UK.  In my experience, very few expats sell up and leave Bulgaria, although some do for family reasons or bereavement. Here is my contribution to the discussion. If your life in the UK had been so wonderful, then of course you would never have wanted to leave in the first place and you certainly would never have wanted to go and live in Bulgaria. Yes, it is true that learning the Bulgarian language is not exactly easy, if you really want to be fluent in it, but in reality Bulgarian is not much harder than French or German, once you have got over the novelty of the Cyrillic alphabet. In any case, why would you want to do something stupid like returning to the UK? Because you miss the fun of driving on the M25, aka the biggest carpark in Europe? Because the National Health Service is such a model of prompt and efficient patient care? Because all of the affordab...

If you have been faithfully reading my blog, then by now you should be an expert on centralne tepline . (That is Bulgarian for "central heating", just in case you have forgotten.)  In Daveri, keeping our home toasty-warm is quite a time-consuming business. I usually go downstairs at about 4 or 5am and give the fire a good raking, so that lots of the ash goes onto the tray underneath the metal grate. Next to the fireplace we have an impressive-looking collection of tools to use. They look like instruments of torture from the Middle Ages.  Then I put some more wood onto the fire and, if I am lucky, there is soon a good blaze going once more. Then I go down again and put on some more wood at about six, when a naughty little doggie asks for her breakfast and she needs to go outside, to do her business at the bottom of the garden. Then I get another snooze until 8am or thereabouts when, if I am lucky, my dear wife brings my morning mug of tea up to the bedroom.  After breakfas...

I love Bulgaria. A committed Bulgarophile, I am now in the process of buying our THIRD property in this country. That does not mean, however, that I like everything that is BG-related.   A real Bulgarian electricity bill! For nearly two years, those scumbags at the Bulgarian electricity company have been overcharging us. We had no option but to pay, as they will disconnect you faster than saying "Nyama tok!" (No electricity!) I thought that an e-mail would do the job, as there was a long queue at the electricity company's office, just along the road from the Lions Bridge (you can't hide your lion eyes). Well, I should have known better. Just because they do actually have an e-mail address does not really mean that the electricity company will answer your e-mails. And even if they do, it does not mean that they will refund you all of the money that they have collected because they have been overcharging you.  First I sent to the electricity company all of the photos of...

Peter is one of my oldest friends. I am including a few photographs from 2018, when he visited us in Bulgaria (yet again!) We went to Plovdiv and came back with a naughty little dog. Dear Peter, How are you, old fellow? I have not had an e-mail from you for a while, so I can only assume that you are still recovering from all of the extra strain and the stress of overwork. I really am glad that I do not have to do any more of that online teaching nonsense.    Well, in some ways I suppose that you should be grateful that you do in fact have a job, as lots of people in the UK seem to have lost or are about to lose theirs. Thank goodness you are not an airline pilot! However, I reckon that quite a lot of independent schools will have gone bust by the time this is all over. But when is this Coronavirus pandemic going to be over? So far, there have been about 45,000 deaths in the UK and 140,000 in the USA. Some commentators think that in America the death count might be as high as 2...

On Tuesday of this morning we had our first amazing visit to Emen Canyon, west of Veliko Tarnovo. Yes, it really is as incredible and spectacular as all of the photos on Google Images and as breathtaking and huge as the videos on YouTube. Tina, that naughty little doggie, had a great time too. From the little suspension bridge at the beginning to the waterfall at the end of the canyon takes about an hour of fairly strenuous walking and then you will want to do what we did: go for a swim! Tina went swimming tooo. What a brave little dog! One commentator has described “a crystal clear lake with a quiet waterfall providing its water”. What a lot of nonsense! The pool at the bottom of the waterfall was full of muddy brown water. Even though there was a modest flow of water, it certainly was not quiet and the surrounding cliffs amplified the sound. Some of the paths through Emen Canyon are quite easy and pleasant, but there are some pretty steep and rocky bits too. In the UK, a Health and...

Only five bedrooms and three bathrooms The big news is that we are seriously thinking about selling our house in Kalotina and buying another country house closer to Veliko Tarnovo. It has been a hard decision, as we both love our home in Kalotina that we bought sixteen years ago. We have put a lot of time and effort (and money!) into improving the house and of course we will not get back all of that cash when (and if!) we manage to sell it. A new bathroom, attic, a kitchen, a garage, a central heating system: I just do not know how much we have spent on our house over the years. Nice view, shame about the house. First we were very excited about a five-bedroomed house that was on sale for 79,000 euros. It was about 25km from VT. It was a little bit too big for us and the garden, nearly 1500 square metres, is a mess. Then I thought about a house up in the mountains. It was a lot cheaper, with an asking price of only 27,000 euros and the views really were splendid. The bad ne...

WALKIES for a naughty and fat little doggie Well, the Internet connection for ZOOM was not working properly on my birthday and this meant that I gave up on my online lessons with Grade 3. It was a sunny day, with a blue and almost cloudless sky. Instead of sitting in front of my laptop, I went for a walk in the beautiful Bulgarian countryside, with my dear Irisha and Tina, that naughty little dog.  Along the River Nishava With all of the roadworks still going on in the road outside our house, we went out the back way, through "the Secret Garden", the little bit of land that is next to our garden and between our garden and the river. The Secret Garden does not seem to belong to anyone, so we have taken it over. Mostly we use this piece of land for bonfires and of course we gather the walnuts from the big tree.  A View ON a Bridge, not From It Through the Secret Garden and then along the River Nishava we went. Most of the water for the "river" co...

The Coronavirus. Although I did not want to mention it in my blog, it seems that I do not have much choice. The situation in Europe is turning from bad to worse to absolutely ghastly and there does not seem to be much chance of things improving sometime soon. The only light at the end of the tunnel is China, where life is slowly getting back to normal. After nearly three months of staying indoors, my friends in Shenzhen tell me that gradually more and more people are venturing out of their apartments and the streets are getting busy again. Last Tuesday we left our apartment in Sofia in the morning and came to our house in Kalotina. My Nissan X Trail is still waiting to be repaired, so the garage lent me a courtesy a car. First, we drove to the big METRO supermarket near the ring road and bought some food. The store was pretty well stocked with just about everything, including toilet paper, but there was almost no pasta left on the shelves. Wednesday was mostly spent making a se...

One of the many things I love about Sofia is how Vitosha mountain looms beside it. Even in the middle of the city, in Vitosha Boulevard, there is this ruddy great mountain squatting at the end  of the road, right next to a capital city! Well, I was rather motivated to go up Mt. Vitosha, after reading Claire’s excellent post on the same subject on her superb blog, Auntie Bulgari a. No, we did not take the cable car ( cabinov lift as it is called in Bulgarian) from Simeonovo, which is basically behind IKEA on the ring road. According to Claire, it is wise to call ahead and check whether the cable car is running before you set off (the same goes for the chair lift at Dragalevtsi, apparently). The working days are, shall we say, a bit sporadic. In theory, it is meant to work at the weekends. But, you know, sometimes maybe not. According to Claire, the cabins are dinky – about the size of a large ferris wheel cabin – so you will have one to yourselves. There are actually quit...

Yes, Christmas is on its way. My dear Irisha has put up the tree and the decorations in our apartment in Ulitsa Kozyak. Then she started to go with Patricia to lots of rehearsals for a special Christmas concert in Sofia. Patricia and Irena at the Christmas Market in Sofia. Here are some photos of the festivities at St. George's School. The traditional Bulgarian dance troupe really were rather good. 

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...

Plovdiv is the second-biggest city in Bulgaria and, even though we have been coming here for fifteen years, we had never been to Plovdiv. It takes about two hours to drive there from Sofia. The road is pleasantly scenic and there are a lot fewer dupki than usual. Blogger and our guide, Pavel Regular readers of my blog will know that I am a fan of the free Sofia walking tour. Well, the Plovdiv-based version is equally good. We met Pavel, our loquacious and very knowledgeable guide, outside the city hall, next to the rather splendid fountain. The tour took about two hours and it covered the central parts of the city: the main square, the street that follows the layout of the Roman stadium, the Kapana district and the Old Town. On the way, we heard some of the many stories about Milo’s statue and yes, we did whisper in his ear and rub his knee. As for architecture, there are plenty of charming and elegant buildings from the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, but Plovdiv ...