Bulgaria with Noodles

Tina is a naughty little doggie. She has a lot of energy and she is more than a bit disobedient. Irena and I took her for a walk this morning. For once, the sun was shining and we did not mind the cold too much. As usual, the Bulgarian countryside was beautiful, empty and huge. We simply must get a couple of sledges and all of the skiing gear. It is crazy to be in the countryside, with lots of snow-covered hills all around us for at least a month or so each year, and yet we have absolutely no winter sports equipment at all.

Who left my basket in VT? Things did not start well, as we left her basket back in Veliko Tarnovo, but now Tina loves Daveri. She really enjoys running around the big garden, barking at birds, neighbours and anyone who comes anywhere near the house. Her favourite activity, after eating of course, is trying to catch the deflated football that Irena and I throw to each other. If we drop the ball, Tina is onto it in a second and then she runs off in triumph! She was not interested in helping us with the cleaning, as she is a lazy little dog, but she enthusiastically welcomed our new neighbours. Mariana is very fond of her and Tina likes her too!  Tina also has her own swimming pool. Well, actually it is just a hole, about a metre square, in the concrete and stone floor of one of the outhouses. Really it is supposed to be the access hole for  the water stopcocks, but this square hole  has filled up with groundwater. We thought at first that maybe one of the water pipes has a ...

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...

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...

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...

  We have had some SERIOUS snow. Just when everyone was thinking that the Winter was over and the Spring was on its way, heralded by the snowdrops in my last post, what happens? Yes, we got it wrong. Winter is back with us, at least for another day or two. While her poor husband had to go to school, my dear Irisha went for a walk with Yanna and two naughty little doggies. Tina loves the snow and she keeps trying to eat it. Now it is Saturday and this morning I took that naughty hound for several walks in the snowy park. Still no news from Nissan about our car being repaired. And the situation in China with this new virus goes from bad to worse.

There is no need for the Birling family to be worried, as this inspector came to St. George’s and she was suitably impressed by what she saw. Actually, she was not even called an “inspector”, but a Leading Improvement Partner (giving us a bit of LIP, I suppose, or was it just LIPservice?) Anyway, the inspector was in the school for three days and she certainly talked to a lot of people: students, JKN, teachers and parents. She did not come into any of my lessons, but she did have a look round my classroom and she asked me a few questions about what I teach and how I teach it. At the moment I am feeling pretty blooming exhausted and being woken up at three in the morning, in order to take a naughty little dog outside to do her business, has left me feeling run down all day. Thank goodness it is Friday and the weekend has now started. The flowers I bought for our Wedding Anniversay last week have lasted rather well. Another thing that has lasted quite well is my bl...

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...

In many ways Veliko Tarnovo, also known as V.T., is a much nicer city than Sofia. It is smaller, less polluted and the traffic is nowhere near as bad as it is in the capital. Every year, we go and spend a week or so in our apartment in Veliko Tarnovo.  The balcony of our apartment in V.T. For I don't know how long, Irena and I have been saying, "When you retire, we will move in V.T. and that is where we will spend the winter, as it won't be much fun spending the winter in Kalotina." The main problem with this plan is that we have not retired yet. Well, I was retired for six months, but then I started working again and now we have started to put down roots in Sofia, not in V.T. This trip to V.T. was rather different, as it was dominated by the presence of Tina. Yes, it was a lot of fun to have her delightful company, but she was also seriously ill. Several trips to the Vet were needed, along with quite a few injections and a course of antibiotics. Firs...

Introducing Tina to the unsuspecting readers of my blog   We actually had another reason for going to Plovdiv. Yes, it was great to go on the excellent (and free) Walking Tour with Pavel, but there was an additional motive for visiting the city: our new doggie. No one ever feeds me or takes me for a walk. For a long time, Irena and I have been talking about getting another dog after our return from China and finally (finally!) we have done it and taken the plunge. At first Irena wanted a poodle, but poodles are few and far between in Bulgaria, as well as rather expensive. We did not want another Fox Terrier like our dear Zoika, so we settled for a Jack Russell.  She is beautuful (and the dog is quite cute too) The eyes have it. Her name is Tina and she is now two and a half months old. She is quite a stubborn young lady, with a lot of character. As you might expect, we have been trying to persuade her to leave her little messages outside, but so far we have...