Bulgaria with Noodles

  We have had some SERIOUS snow. Just when everyone was thinking that the Winter was over and the Spring was on its way, heralded by the snowdrops in my last post, what happens? Yes, we got it wrong. Winter is back with us, at least for another day or two. While her poor husband had to go to school, my dear Irisha went for a walk with Yanna and two naughty little doggies. Tina loves the snow and she keeps trying to eat it. Now it is Saturday and this morning I took that naughty hound for several walks in the snowy park. Still no news from Nissan about our car being repaired. And the situation in China with this new virus goes from bad to worse.

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...

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...

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...

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...

 Pancakes with Stefan & Poli My post about buying property in Bulgaria, Why buy BG , seems to have collected more "hits" than any of the other pages of my blog. In the interests of fairness, I am therefore going to write a few lines about why you should NOT buy a property in Bulgaria. I will try to be as objective as possible. Yes, I love my adopted land, but even a Bulgarophile like me has to admit that this country does have its downsides.  An abandoned house in Kalotina If you buy a property anywhere outside the capital, Sofia, then it is not going to appreciate in value. Silly Brits have this idea that buying a house is always a good idea because it must go up in value and this is not true in BG. A country house in Bulgaria is simply NOT a good investment. It will not go up in value and, if you do try to sell it, then you probably will not be able to get back what you paid for it. (That is, of course, assuming that you can find a buyer at all!)  The...