Bulgaria with Noodles

As usual, I have had an online chat with a South African lady called Sonelja. She and her husband are thinking of making the move to Bulgaria. As usual, my comments are in italics. Hello. Yes, I think that moving from South Africa to Bulgaria is a great idea. You can read a lot about starting a new life in Bulgaria by going to my blog. The real problem, however, is how to do it, if you have a SA passport. Sorry for taking so long to read your message. Facebook doesn't alert me of messages if they're from someone I'm not friends with. No problem. Let me know if I can be of any help. I think that moving from South Africa to Bulgaria is a great idea. I have never been to SA myself, but I have had quite a few friends who came from there. The situation in SA does not seem to be getting better. Someone told me that “load shedding” (we Brits call them “power cuts”) happen almost every day in SA and they often go on for most of the day!” We're considering moving to Bulgar...

I have ordered the DVDs of the American version of  House of Cards , as I already have the British version. I am planning to watch it again with my old friend, Peter. This excellent BBC drama series does not show the Conservative Party in a positive and complimentary light. Instead of buying Waitrose blueberries at £3.50, we will shortly be enjoying lots of our own organic blackcurrants and redcurrants for free! As well as making homemade marmalade, Irena has also started producing mayonnaise. This is perfect for our tomatoes and lettuces. Irena also grows a green leafy thing chervil, which has an interesting, lemony flavour. The bad news is my dear lady wife has been slaughtering me at badminton. She is too good for me! The other bad news that Bulgaria is already HOT. I mean, here in Daveri it is getting uncomfortably close to 40 C in the middle of the day. I do not suppose that it will be much cooler in July. Is this climate change? Well, there seems to be quite a lot of freaky w...

It was great to have Lorraine and Keith come over for lunch. (As you may have guessed, L & K are members of the VT Walkers.) It was quite a drive for them to get here, as the normal road from Veliko Tarnovo to Elena is still closed for resurfacing and the only way to get here is to take the road to Stara Zagora when you come out of VT. The road is quite narrow in places, with lots of twists and turns. Tina was very happy indeed to meet and play with our visitors. Keith was keen to have a go with the tractor mower. The bad news is that Lorraine likes our country house so much that now I think that she wants one too!  Lorraine is also a keen horse fan, so she was very interested when I told her about the riding stables near Elena.

I have written to HMRC again (this might be the third or fourth letter) and I posted it this morning, together with another letter, to none other than the one-and-only Nicholas Armfelt. We were back in VT for a few days, sorting out one or two little matters. My dear wife now has a new UK passport and it is blue. (Not surprising, as we do have a Conservative government.) What with fees for DHL each way, the total cost came to nearly two hundred pounds. Although the NHS is a flipping disaster, at least we now have blue passports. On the subject of the NHS, my friend John Cann’s surgery seems to have gone fairly well, at least so far, and the surgeon attached two of his vertebra to metal rods. It all sounds horribly painful. Mud wrestling, bungee jumping and the tango are out and he can only do a little bit of walking, at least for the time being. They seem to have done quite a good job, but John’s overall impressions of the NHS hospital were not good. Now that we are under the Bulgarian...

That naughty fat Plovdiv dog has her birthday today. I took her for a special birthday walk in the glorious countryside near our house in Daveri. It has been raining for these last few days, so it was a bit wet, but I think that Tina enjoyed herself. Someone who has not been enjoying himself recently is Donald Trump. His "hush money" trial is not going well for him. My guess is that he is going to "the slammer", as our American cousins say. 

At our country house in Daveri, we have a LOT of wooden fences. My guess is that they were put up when the house was built, so these fences must be about twenty years old. The wood is quite cheap rubbish and it has not been treated properly with preservative over the years, so now these fences are falling to bits. I thought that the new fence would take a few days, but now it looks as though it will be several weeks before it is all completed. Getting rid of the old fence was a bit awkward. Yes, a lot of the wood is rotten and so I smashed it with my axe, but most of the vertical posts had to be cut through with an electric saw.  The solution to all problems is Vincent, our nextdoor neighbour. He did an excellent job of installing the green metal posts and the actual fence itself. The only problem was that I had miscounted and did not buy quite enough posts and also we need some more bolts. We are hoping that Vincent will finish all of the work quite soon and this morning I went in...

I seem to have become a sort of unofficial "Agony Uncle" for the  Facebook "Moving to Bulgaria" group. Here are a few words of advice I recently gave to a lady called Wendy. Originally this post had some photos of Wendy's house, but she and her hubby are rather private people and so I took their photos out and put in some of our house instead. My comments are in italics, as usual.  Hello. You might like to read my blog.  Here are a few photos of our country house near Elena, about 50kms from Veliko Tarnovo.  If you are interested in buying a property in the VT region, then I would recommend having a look at the YANTRA HOMES website. Thanks, Simon.That's a lovely house, really lovely. Is it for rental? I will check out Yantra Homes. No, I am sorry, it is not for rent. The good news is that there are LOTS of properties for sale in Bulgaria, at very affordable prices. If you really want a bargain, then look around for a property that someone has lovingly ...