Bulgaria with Noodles

The results of the American election were such a shock that for several days I did not want to watch TV or read the BBC and the CNN news on my computer. Then I remembered that I do not live in America, I am not an American, and in fact I live in Bulgaria. At the moment Irena and I are living in a part of Veliko Tarnovo called Assenova, a world away from Washington DC. Located more or less half-way between the two fortresses of Trapezetiya and Tsaravets, the region or district of Assenova is next to the river, close to the old wooden bridge. The bridge is called "Vladishki Most", the bishop's bridge, and it dates back to the Middle Ages. You can find lots of padlocks fixed onto the wires on the bridge, many with red hearts on them, so some people call it "the lovers' bridge".  On a less romantic and more practical note, there are two little houses or towers at the Tsaravets end of the bridge and I think that these used to be tollhouses, as you had to pay a fe...

One of my favourite photos! Recently we have been spending quite a lot of time in our apartment in Veliko Tarnovo (VT), so I thought that I might perhaps give you a little tour. (This is also an excuse for me to include lots of old photos of VT.)  Tsaravets across the river and the old wooden bridge Our apartment is in Ulitsa Patriarch Evtimy, next to the old wooden bridge. This area of the city, Assenova, dates back to the 13th century and it is just across the River Yantra from Tsaravets, the huge castle that is up on the hill. From the wooden balcony and the dining room of o ur apartment, we have some great views of the wooden bridge and Tsaravets.  The dining room The dining room is probably my favourite room, but the sitting room is also nice. We bought the leather sofa and the chair from Malcom, who originally owned the apartment, and we said, "We will buy the apartment if you sell us the sofa too!" Breakfast on the balcony We were in VT because we ar...

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...

Merry Christmas, dear readers! Well, the last few months have been rather interesting, what with my new job and our move to the new apartment in Sofia. It really has been quite hectic and we have had to make several trips to Kalotina, in order to collect all of our bits and pieces. The new apartment is now looking less empty and a lot more like home! We even brought some logs from Kalotina, but so far we have not lit the fire because the apartment is wonderfully warm, thanks to all of the electric radiators. I am glad that we will not have to pay the electricity bill! I was very impressed that my old friend Peter Adams somehow managed to get a Christmas card to us, with a bit of IT ingenuity. The card arrived on our doorstep in Kalotina a few days before we left for Sofia. It caused a lot of laughter in the village. Yesterday we went for a little walk in the park, even though the weather was bitterly cold. It is a lovely park. Yes, maybe we did not see it at its best, but Mou...

The lounge, but it could be a squash court. I have not written a lot of blog posts recently because we have been very busy, moving into our new apartment in Sofia. Well, I say that it is "our" apartment, but of course St. George's School is paying the rent, the utilities and just about everything.  We will have to bring some logs from Kalotina for the fire. As you can imagine, Irena and I are very happy all of this! Our apartment is HUGE. You could probably have fitted all of our flat in Shenzhen into the main room of our new apartment in Sofia. Our kitchen in China was almost like a big cupboard and the bathroom was pretty horrible.  In our Sofia apartment, the kitchen is a fair old size, big enough for a large table and lots of cupboards, plus we have TWO rather nice bathrooms. Regular readers of my blog will know that we used to live opposite Lianhuacun Park in Shenzhen and that was really convenient and very good for walks. Here in Sofia, our apartment i...

Looking across the Yantra, with Tsaravets at the top of the hill. Veliko Tarnovo used to be Bulgaria's old capital city. It is a rather splendid place, with the River Yantra winding through the old town and the Tsarvets fortress up on the hill. There are two main bridges across the Yantra, the stone bridge for cars and the old wooden footbridge. Our apartment in the Assenova quarter is next to the wooden bridge and from the window of our dining room you get a great view across the river to Tsarvets. The balcony of our apartment, looking down into the cobblestoned street. Now it is time for the bad news. Our apartment was horribly, dreadfully COLD. It was like a freezer. (Unlike our house in Kalotina, we have never got round to having the insulation done.) There was a bottle of olive oil in the kitchen and it had frozen! There was also something wrong with the guttering, as it was probably clogged up with ice and snow, so there was a nasty-looking damp patch in the bat...

Our apartment in Veliko Tarnovo has quite a few air conditioning / heating units, installed by our friend Ivo, the Bulgarian engineer who lives along the street from us, but we also wanted to have a woodburner in the sitting room. As well as giving us the usual warmth and the pretty flames, we felt that a woodburning stove would be a good idea because we would still be able to have some heating if there was a power cut. (In Kalotina, power cuts happen quite often and the electricity sometimes does not come on again for an hour or so.) This is why we went to the Prity factory a few years ago and bought our rather smart Prity woodburning stove. There are, however, one or two little problems with woodburners. First of all, you need to connect the stove with the chimney flue. This meant a trip to Praktiker, to buy the metal tubes that go from the back of the stove to the round hole in the wall. I also bought a heat exchanger, as I thought that this might perhaps cool down the temp...

"The Leaving of Liverpool"   is an old song (and a sad song) by The Dubliners and it has the lines: It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me But my darling when I think of thee. For the last twenty years, I have been leaving different places: the UK, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Romania, the UAE, Qatar and now China. Sometime leaving is easy because we never put down any roots and we did not like the place that much anyway! When we left Qatar, it was that much harder because we were there for five years and we really got to know people in our church, Doha Fellowship. Lunch at the cheapie noodlie place  China, however, is a bit different because we have enjoyed it so much more than Qatar. Green Oasis has probably been the best international school I have worked at and for the last two years I have been one of the elders of Shenzhen International Fellowship, so we have been very much involved in the life of the church, in lots of dif...

Our apartment is full of bags and suitcases. The wardrobes, walls and the bookcase are looking decidedly bare. AGS are supposed to be coming on Thursday afternoon, to take all of our stuff to Bulgaria. 14,000RMB! Well, we thought that it might be a lot less than that. Oh well! The other day our landlady asked us to take some photos of the apartment, as she wants to find a new tenant asap. I am including the photos as part of this post. So do you know anyone who wants to rent a two-bedroomed flat in the centre of Shenzhen? T he good news is that it is central, right in the heart of Shenzhen. We love living right next to the park. Lianhuacun MTR station is a few hundred metres away and the Children’s Palace MTR is only a bit further away. It takes me about twenty-five minutes to walk to school in the morning. The bad news? The smells are dreadful. Sometimes there are ghastly sewage smells coming from the drains and sometimes horrible cooking odours come under the do...

Just over a week ago we had the World Scholar’s Cup at Green Oasis. For most of this semester I have been coaching the twenty-four students in Years 5 and 6 who were going to take part in this competition. It is a rather academic mixture of general knowledge quiz, essay writing challenge and debating competition.  All of the students who took part in the WSC were given an alpaca. They had to promise to be good alpaca parents, to look after their alpacas properly and not eat them. I was also given a small alpaca, but it looks as though he is going to be left behind in China. I know a little girl who would be a good alpaca parent. Judy and Wyatt, two students from my own Year 5 class, did rather well and of course I was very pleased about that. What was not so good was that it went on (and on) and in fact I did not get home on the Friday night until 9pm. After a long week of school, that was tough. Yesterday the man from the AGS freight company came to our apartment, t...

The box has arrived! Irena's Korg keyboard It’s arrived. The big black box, the one with the metal bits along the edges and at the corners. The one for my dear Irisha’s electronic keyboard. Maybe we will line it with a bit more foam rubber. We bought her Korg keyboard when we were in Romania and it is rather a nice one, so it came with us to Qatar and now it is here in China. Irena rather likes it and so this means that she does not to leave it behind when we leave in the middle of June. That is just over two months from now until 18th June. It is all a bit scary. This black box is a sign of the end, a bit like a coffin for our time in China. What will we be saying our goodbyes to? Well, one thing that we will be very glad to say farewells to is the awful aperture, the horrible hole, the Black Hole of Shenzhen. It is next to the washing machine and from out of this opening come forth the most dreadful smells, whiffs, pongs and stenches. The very smelly hole besid...