Bulgaria with Noodles

Bill and Julia, our dear Chinese friends, have been very ill with COVID, as I think I mentioned to you, but the good news is that they seem to be recovering. In China, COVID is causing chaos and the hospitals are all full up.  Yes, almost everything in Bulgaria is going up in price, just as it is in the UK. Now things seem to be a bit more stable and the price of oil is going down again. There are still some things in BG that are still absurdly cheap. For example, in VT I can usually park my car without paying a penny. We can live in my apartment or house without paying two or three hundred quid a month in Council Tax. And yes, you can still buy a house here in Bulgaria for less than ten thousand pounds, although you might have to spend another ten in order to make it nice.  As for Bulgaria adopting the Euro in 2024, I just cannot make up my mind whether or not this will be a good thing for Bulgaria (or a good thing for the EU). You need to bear in mind that the total populati...

I have discovered a group called VT Walkers o n Facebook. One member of this group of expats described them as "drinkers with a walking problem", as their forays into the Bulgarian countryside usually end at a pub.   Most of them are retired Brits and doggie people, so of course a pooch or two comes along for the walk. I went for a walk with them on the other side of VT, when we met near the art gallery and then went for a long walk in the huge park, the one with lots and lots of steps (and then some more).  Today we were walking around Arbanassi. Tina wore her red doggie coat, as it was decidedly chilly. During the walk I had an interesting chat with a lady who has a house near Cambridge and she has recently returned from the UK to Bulgaria. Why is the UK such a flipping miserable place at the moment? (Regular readers of my blog will know that this is an issue that Claire has raised in her excellent blog, Auntie Bulgaria .) Maybe the UK has always been a total dump and I hav...

Things are a bit dull here in VT. I have had an awful cold for the best part of a week and now Irena has it. I also have to go to the dentist and I am not looking forward to that. That naughty doggie Tina spends a lot of her time looking out of the window, watching the doings of all of the local cats. I had a rather unpleasant confrontation with our Bulgarian neighbour, who does not like it when I park next to his apartment. Usually, I park a bit further down the street, but of course someone else had decided to park there. Good grief! Anyone would think that this part of VT is becoming another town in the UK. Blooming cars everywhere! Well, in the end I could not be bothered to argue with him and so I moved my car about 200 metres along the street. Yes, it is not long to Christmas and the government in the UK seems to giving out a few early prezzies. I t is good to know that my TPS pension will be going up again and so will my State pension, when I finally get it. Here in Bulgaria, th...

Getting our new Bulgarian residency cards from the Microwave Oven Woman Rejoice! Let's celebrate. Hallelujah! At long last, the Microwave Woman has given us our new Bulgarian residency cards (BRCs). As a special treat, just in case you do not know what a BRC looks like, here is my old one.  My dear wife suggested that I should "black out" certain bits, as there are lots of evil people out there on the Internet, all gathering my personal and financial details in order to swindle me or involve me in some dreadful scandal or some such nonsense. Of course, no one who reads my blog could ever do such a nasty thing!   Getting our new BRCs means that we can go ahead with our applications for our Russian visas. Then, maybe two or three weeks later, our passports will be returned to us, with new Russian visas stuck into them. The other good news is that the insurance agent in Dragoman did not lose my car registration document. When she had finished giving me my new car ...