Bulgaria with Noodles

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here Going there is usually a KATastrophe. Yes, I am talking about KAT, that most loathed and detested of all Bulgarian institutions, that bastion of bureaucratic bungling boredom and pointless paperwork. The really bad news for any expat in Bulgaria is that, sooner or later, you are going to find yourself in that dreadful place in Geo Milev. The Microwave Woman was actually quite polite and helpful, but we still had to go back again and again, first to the notarius and then to KAT itself. Our BG residency cards were about to expire, we are off to Greece next week and BREXIT is looming ever closer, so we simply had to get our new ten-year BG cards. It's not as bad as it's cracked up to be. Why is KAT so horrible? It is in an awkward place, well away from the centre of the city and all of the MTR stations. The actual building is a dumpy, dull, crumbling concrete construction, with a dark stairwell. The cracks and fissur...

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 ...

Now it is time for some good news. Or maybe not. Art or just vandalism? On Monday morning, we woke up early once again and we took the train from Dragoman. Then we arrived in Sofia and went back to the notarius. First, we had to wait in the glass waiting room and then - guess what? Yes, we had to wait some more. It rather reminded me of my experiences in a Chinese bank. Then, eventually, we were told that we could come out of the greenhouse and go into the Inner Sanctum. There the assistant gave us the stamped and signed document for our Bulgarian residency cards, but he said that he could not do this for the other two documents, the ones for our freight company, AGS, because they did not have parallel English translations. (Oh, the joys of Google Translate!) Sofia station, yet again   AGS should really be called a "fright company" because it was such a shock when they told us how expensive it would be and giving them all of the documents is a nightmare as ...