Bulgaria with Noodles

When you start to use a log burner, aka wood-fired central heating, one of the first things that you notice is that you need to use a lot of logs. And then some more. Then what? Yes, well, you keep putting them into the stove and they get burned, turned into ash, and then you need to put in some more. Of course, this was not really what you signed on for, but hey, let's just order some more logs. Although buying properly seasoned logs is not too much of a problem in the summer, it is not so easy in the winter. I do not know why I look so happy in this photo. They just dumped ten cubic metres of firewood on the grass outside our house, as the lorry would not fit under the roof of our large front gate. Next I had to put it into the wheelbarrow and carry all of this wood into the woodshed.  And in case you did not know, let me tell you that splitting the larger pieces with a sledgehammer and a wedge is a very time-consuming and exhausting business. After we made the video of yours tru...

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...

The other day the sky was looking grey and ominous. I saw an advertisement in the TES for an English teacher at St. George’s School. I was quite tempted to apply, for about twenty seconds, but then I recovered my senses. How do you know that Autumn is coming? We drove back to our apartment in Veliko Tarnovo from our new home in Daveri the other day, an easy 45-minute drive, and the trees were the most amazing mixture of colours: the greens, yellows, browns and reds. For once, Irena did the driving and so I had the time and the leisure to enjoy the scenery, the beautiful nature of the Bulgarian countryside, the sort of thing that we used to have in the UK before we built all over it. Another indication that Winter might not be too far away is that Tina, the naughtiest Jack Russell in Bulgaria, becomes very interested in finding warm places in the kitchen for a good snooze. You can also guess that Autumn is coming because my dear wife becomes obsessed with her hunter-gatherer tendenc...

Central heating in Bulgarian is centralne tepline . Those are two words of Bulgarian that I have got to know rather w e ll since we first came to this country. We first had the Heat Pump central heating installed in our apartment in VT. (In some ways, that is quite similar to air conditioning.) Then it was the pellet burner and all of the radiators in Kalotina. Now we have a different system in Daveri, a large woodburner, an electric pump and pipes going to the radiators.  The good news is that we now have plenty of firewood, as we had five cubic metres d elivered and, with Vincent’s kind help, we cut d own some of the old trees that were spoiling the view from the house. And the bad news? The bottom parts of “cupboards” that were hiding the original electric heating system have all gone rotten and warped, as the pump was corroded and leaking. Smoke has discoloured the walls and ceilings in the kitchen and the sitting room, so you can see where Allan used to hang all of his picture...

A lot has happened in the last few days. First of all, my dear Irisha is very pleased with her new washing machine (a Bosch, of course). It is now installed and working well (and surprisingly quietly). We could not have installed the new machine without the invaluable help of our dear neighbour, Vincent. Next to the woodshed is another outbuilding and inside it were some very good pieces of furniture. As well as the huge oak sideboard, we also discovered a large cupboard and display cabinet, all solidly made of oak and matching our dining table and chairs. The bad news? Yes, there is some. The central heating expert came today and he said that we have some serious problems. The chimney is not working properly and there are big deposits of sticky black gunge that could start a dangerous chimney fire. The firebox is too small to provide enough heat for all of the radiators and the pump is also not up to the job. Getting it all fixed is going to cost about 4,000 leva (around two thousand ...

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...

Sometimes things happen just in time. On Friday the man from BG Therm came and he spent an hour or two adjusting the boiler, as it had developed an irritating habit of shutting itself down after an hour or two. The sensor for the exhaust gases was set too low, so that was why we kept getting the error messages on the boiler's mini computer. On Saturday I went into Sofia on the train. First I visited the Elephant Bookshop, hoping toi buy a copy of Adam's book, Kings of the Yukon , but they did not have a copy. Bother! I also went to the Christmas Bazaar at St. George's. My main reason for going was to talk to the two very nice ladies who are sort outing my employment details and our new apartment in Sofia. The Irish coffee was good, the sausange and sauerkraut were so so and the kindergarten children were sweet when they did their little songs and dances in the theatre. Lots of happy, cooing parents. We were supposed to go to church this morning, but it just did...

Yes, the never-ending battle of my Chinese Police Certificate is still going on and it does not look as though it will be over for a few more weeks. As well as taking up big chunks of my time, it is also rather expensive. I have been working hard on writing lots of PowerPoint presentations (ppts) because the headmaster at St. George’s wants me to be involved in Professional Development (PD). So far I have written ppts about Assessment for Learning (AFL), Design and Technology , Robotics , Flash Cards , Gifted and Talented Students (G & T) and How to write a PowerPoint ! The ppt about G & T students is rather good. One of my better efforts, in fact. I did not realize that I had some many photos of my students doing all sorts of interesting things. In some ways I am quite looking forward to doing some PD at St. George’s. Doing some PD yourself ought to be a lot more fun than listening to some of the dreadful so-called PD that I had to endure at GOS. The principal was add...

It really started about two years ago, when we had insulation stuck onto the outside of the house. Tako and his team came to our villa in Kalotina and they started sticking large polystyrene blocks onto all of the exterior walls. Then they put a plastic mesh on top of the blocks and covered that with the yellow-coloured plaster. It looked so much better, as the old white paint was decidedly shabby and, much more importantly, it made the house wonderfully cool in the summer and, we hope, warm in the winter too. The insulation also made the house much quieter inside, as external noises were muffled. The middle of the house could be bitterly cold in the winter, as heat escaped under or round the front door. The solution to that problem was to fit another external door. As well as keeping in the warmth, the second front door makes us feel much more secure and it is a deterrent to anyone who is thinking of breaking in. Another important step when preparing for winter’s icy...

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...

If I am feeling good and charitable, then I go downstairs, first thing in the morning, and make a mug of tea for my dear wife Irena and also one for me. Well, yesterday was one of those good days and so I duly went downstairs, in my quest for early morning cuppas. I also lit the woodburning stove. This meant that the kitchen was warmy and toasty when we came downstairs for our breakfast. I was feeling that the world was actually a pretty good place as the eggs and the slice of ham sizzled in the frying pan.  I was just about to pour myself a cup of coffee when Irena announced that the kitchen was on fire. The paper that some silly idiot (yes, alright, it was me) had put under the stove had caught light and there was a danger that the large of pile of firewood that someone had put underneath the stove (yes, alright, me again) would also catch fire. So there was quite a lot of smoke and noise and and a nasty smell and general confusion.  Eventually the flames were extin...

When we tried to order some more firewood from the builders’ merchant in Dragoman, they said there was a problem: they have too many customers. Oh dear! I do feel sorry for them. This meant that we had to drive to Slivnitsa to order the wood. This morning we went into the Secret Garden, as usual, and collected the walnuts. There were more than usual, as it was quite cold during the night and that meant that more nuts split their green shells and had fallen down onto the grass. After breakfast we cleared what was left of the old firewood from under the concrete steps. Some of that wood is destined for the Einhell, as I can probably cut it up and it can be used in our woodburners, either the cooking stove in the kitchen or the smaller one in the sitting room. Some of it is just too big to cut up with the Einhell and I do not have a large and powerful chainsaw. Another problem was that some of it was rotten, so it all had to go to the Secret Garden to be burned. Yes, it is a bit wa...