Bulgaria with Noodles

I became the Man with the Van last week, as we went (yet again!) to Kalotina. We hired an Iveco van and it took about five hours to drive there. A manual transmission diesel bus is not much fun to drive, I can tell you, and it was so NOISY. Irena and I mostly moved the bigger items: the black chair from my study, the white cabinet from the bathroom and the special box for shoes that was in the entrance hall. That means that Kalotina is now more or less empty. There are still some things that we want to bring to Daveri: a few chairs, some clothes, plates, and quite a lot of pictures.

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...

Our house in Kalotina, seen from the patio The big news is that we have found a buyer for our house in Kalotina! Well, we do not have the money in the bank yet, but it really does look as though the deal will go through. I am going to be meeting the chap who wants to buy it sometime in July and then we will sort out the paperwork and he will give me a substantial deposit.  Irena in action and in the kitchen When I mentioned that we were thinking of selling the house in Kalotina, I was a bit surprised by the reaction of many of our friends. Some of them thought that something awful must have happened and some of them were convinced that we were moving back to the UK! The terrace (and the water channel) Yes, it is hard to believe that we have a buyer. Of course, this means that we do not have to find an agent and that is very good news because some agents, such as Bulgarian Properties, will charge a hefty fee. The dining room, the scene of many happy (and deliciou...

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...

Lunch for a hard-working blogger At lunchtime yesterday, Irena and I were sitting on our balcony (the one next to her music room). It was a wonderfully sunny day with lots of trees in blossom and not a cloud was in the deep blue sky. We were having a good glass or two of white wine (in case you were wondering, it wasTargowischter Eselsmilch, about 2 leva a bottle) with some cold chicken, humus and salad. It was a bit bizarre and you might say that in some ways it was almost obscene, having such a good scoff and listening to Irena’s Clavinova quietly tinkling in the background, playing some old piano tunes, while all over Europe this dreadful Coronavirus disaster goes on and on. I felt a bit like Vincent Prince, playing Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death.   A View from a Balcony (not a Bridge) As for the U.S. of A., my guess is that it is going to be much, much worse. They have an idiot in charge of the country, President Chump, and their health system only ...

I do not want to write about the situation with the Coronavirus. It is just awful. The evening news reminds me of the concert parties or entertainment troupes that were supposed to keep up morale during the Second World War. The initials were "ENSA", so the soldiers joked that it stood for "Every Night Something Awful". The snow has all gone now and maybe the Spring is thinking about coming back. It has not quite made up its mind, as the weather, though sunny, is still quite chilly and perhaps we are going to have another big freeze next week. Typical blooming boring Brit, always going on about the silly weather. You probably do not want to read about that, so let us get on with the much more important matter of sirniki. What are they? Well, sirniki are little cakes, made with lots of izvara , a sort of Bulgarian cottage cheese.  We had some of these yummy little cheesey things (well, quite a few, actually) for breakfast this morning, with some good ...

Okay, so we are in the middle of the most terrible pandemic since the Black Death, with stock markets crashing all around the world and the health services struggling to cope with more and more cases. There is, quite obviously, only one thing to be done: make homemade marmalade. First you need a lot of oranges and sugar. My dear Irena says that it is more or less one kilo of sugar to a kilo of fruit. Then you need to “top and tail” the oranges and start the long, laborious process of peeling. Now don’t go breaking my heart, as Elton John and Kikki Dee used to sing, by throwing away any of that peel. When the outer, orangey peel has been peeled, then you need to peel it again (yes, I know it is not so exciting) in order to get rid of the white stuff. Then all of the orange peel and then all of the oranges go into the splendid Bosch mincer. This Bosch mincer is the real deal. (Yes, I do hope that a kind and generous Bosch executive is reading this blog and then maybe we c...

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...

Tina in Kalotina, contemplating the workings of the boiler I started writing this in the kitchen of our house in Kalotina. Every so often, there is a little “tinkle tinkle” sound. No, it is not that naughty little doggie, Tina, peeing again. No, it is the sound of the wood pellets falling down into the central heating boiler’s combustion chamber. Very clever, really. I wonder how it knows when to feed in some more pellets. The boiler also makes a golden glow, an orange light that bathes the room. It is like having your own pet dragon in your kitchen. The bad news, of course, is that the whole damn house is so blooming cold that it is going to take ages for the central heating system to warm up every room. Well, that is the main drawback of a pellet boiler, of course.  The boiler uses wood pellets (and lots of them!) The boiler itself takes ages to get going properly and then it takes even longer before the house starts to warm up. But when is the house going to war...

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...

I will wake you up by walking on your face. Dear John, How are you, my dear chap? I was sorry that I could not invite you to come to Bulgaria this summer, as we were off to Zakynthos in Greece and then some friends of ours from Qatar were supposed to be coming. Anyway, Irena put her pretty foot down when I mentioned your name as well!   J.C. in Kalotina, looking down the valley  The good news is that next summer she is off to the Crimea again (probably early in July) and that will be for about a month or so. Therefore I am planning a Grand Reunion of the Gang of Three – except that actually it is going to be the Gang of Four, as there will be an important addition to the likes of Peter Adams, John Cann and Simon Hill. Tina is a very naughty little Jack Russell and we love her very much. Her main interests are food, eating, and finding something to scoff. In some ways, she does look a bit like dear Zoika. Her speciality is waking me up in the morning by wa...

Several of the teachers at my new school, Saint George's, have told me that Sofia is the most polluted capital city in all of Europe. Yes, that is probably true because lots of Bulgarians drive old and badly-maintained second-hand cars. That is one reason why I always enjoying going away for the weekend.  This weekend it was wonderful to escape from Sofia and go to our country house in Kalotina. Even though it is still only April, the weather was really warm and all of the birds were singing happily. Lots of fruit treas were covered in blosssom and, best of all, our house was still there and nothing bad had happened to it. It was a bit sad, having to cut the lawn, as the dandelions and daisies looked rather nice.  My dear wife's tulips were making a good show and the parsley is also going well. There was absolutely no sign of the asparagus and the Jerusalem artichokes that I had planted about a month ago. On a slightly more positive note, there were absolutely no was...