Bulgaria with Noodles

My two favourite girls It has been a long week. Irena decided to stay over in our villa in Kalotina, so I went back to our apartment in Sofia without her last Sunday. She wanted to stay there with Tina and do various garden-related things, as well as giving the whole place a good clean before we shut up shop for the winter. This week has actually been pretty exhausting, as there were meetings with the St. George’s parents for more than two hours on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. These meetings were supposed to last from 3.40 to 5.30pm, but in fact they always go on much longer. I always seem to be the last teacher to leave and then I have to take all of my students’ books and lots of other bits and pieces back from the sixth floor to my classroom on the second floor. As if that were not enough, there was Halloween on Thursday, so the students all came to school dressed as monsters, witches and so on. In short, my dear students were not really in a mood for serious some...

Several of the teachers at my new school, Saint George's, have told me that Sofia is the most polluted capital city in all of Europe. Yes, that is probably true because lots of Bulgarians drive old and badly-maintained second-hand cars. That is one reason why I always enjoying going away for the weekend.  This weekend it was wonderful to escape from Sofia and go to our country house in Kalotina. Even though it is still only April, the weather was really warm and all of the birds were singing happily. Lots of fruit treas were covered in blosssom and, best of all, our house was still there and nothing bad had happened to it. It was a bit sad, having to cut the lawn, as the dandelions and daisies looked rather nice.  My dear wife's tulips were making a good show and the parsley is also going well. There was absolutely no sign of the asparagus and the Jerusalem artichokes that I had planted about a month ago. On a slightly more positive note, there were absolutely no was...

The weather forecast said that it was going to be warm and sunny. The Nissan garage had finally (finally!) fixed the problem with the powered steering, so we decided to have a weekend away from Sofia and go to Kalotina. There was an extra reason for going: Ira needed her old passports in order to apply for her Russian visa. We left at a reasonable hour on Saturday morning, so the traffic on the ring road was not a problem. It was sunny and pleasant spring weather as we drove to our villa in Kalotina. Yes, the house was still there and the dogs in the village were pleased to see us. When I went up into the loft to check, there was no sound of buzzing and nothing flying about, so perhaps the fumigation smoke did its business. Although we had the central heating system going full blast all day, it was slow to get going and make a difference to the temperature inside the house. I suppose that the whole house was so cold, after nearly three months of standing empty.   ...

Kalotina and Berende Izvor are two villages in Bulgaria that I have come to know quite well. They are only about one kilometre apart, yet they are rather different. I suppose the most important difference is that Kalotina is a village that is dying or almost dead now, whereas Berende Izvor seems to be pretty much alive. Why is one village so full of decaying and abandoned houses, while the other one still seems to have some life in it? In Kalotina, there are some houses that are still inhabited, but even they look unkempt and neglected. Raina and Rangel's house in Kalotina Both villages are on the map because of the River Nishava. In Berende Izvor, the Nishava is really still a stream, as you can jump over it, but by the time it leaves Kalotina it is a river. “Izvor” in Bulgarian means “bubbling” and, sure enough, there is a spring that bubbles up from the rock and then it flows away to join several other springs that eventually form the Nishava. Our Bulgarian friend ...

The back garden Yesterday’s walk in Lizhi Park here in Shenzhen was enjoyable. The sky was absolutely blue, without a single cloud, and in the Sun (and out of the cold wind) it was as warm as toast. At night, our apartment is so cold, as the windows are not double-glazed and you can feel the cold air coming in. But shivering at night here in Shenzhen made me think of the winters in Bulgaria. We have only experienced part of one BG winter, so how are we going to cope with the real thing next year? Walnuts from our trees It all starts with Autumn (or Fall, if you are an American). This is a wonderful time in the Bulgarian countryside, with walnuts and mushrooms to be found. Here are just a few of the walnuts we collected from the trees at the end of our garden. Our villa is next to an abandoned orchard, so we are going to follow Auntie Bulgaria’s example and have a go at making lots of cider. Even by the middle of October it can be chilly in Kalotina, as we discovered ba...