We Can Have Any Colour As Long As Its White!

Our blog title is inspired by our trip to Gabrovo to purchase a new mobile phone for Chris. With most of the pressing documentation now done it was now time to sort a few other things out. The girls in the mobile phone shop were very helpful but we soon found out that we could not have the Samsung phone we wanted on contract because we were unproven customers and they were only available if you were a customer for at least 6 months! Not to be deterred, we decided to buy a different Samsung phone and pay to use it on monthly contract for a lesser monthly fee. Therefore Chris chose to have it in black and the girls happily punched all the details in the computer. 5 minutes later they meekly informed us that although it was the same phone, the computer would only let us buy that phone if it was in white. So white it was then. Thankfully it was not a pink phone!

We are starting to get used to the little nuances here and learning to roll with them. The funniest thing is finding out we bought our car off the mafia! Every Bulgarian we have shown the log book to breaks into a smile and says 'he's the mafia guy'. Well great, we asked everyone where to buy a car from and no-one told us not to go to him, so we did! Next week we take the car to the KAT police to get our MOT and registration documents. I am sure they will crack up too.

The work on the house is finally coming along fairly swiftly now. The new roof is now on our kitchen complete with our little white chimney which I love. All the doorways are now put in and today they started work on plastering the back wall to allow for our kitchen to be fitted which will hopefully be in a couple of weeks. Upstairs more plastering has taken place on our landing where they have re plastered the fire place. In fact, because we have been busy sorting out documents, every time we return home they have started plastering another bit of the house. Originally, we were going to do all the décor ourselves but they are now moving at such a pace and the place would be so dusty to live in we are letting them get on with it.

 Our little white chimney

 

 The shuttering now removed from the terrace

 Doorways now put into the kitchen

Chris about to start work

 

More of the second house coming down and more view being exposed

Our cats and tortoise have now arrived, unfortunately during a thunderstorm so Putin was totally freaked out and hid under the bed all night. However, they have now settled in a bit now and even roam out on to the upper terrace to survey the view.  A couple of days ago we though we would try to give them the run of the garden for half an hour. Carrying them down the makeshift ladder we plonked them in the garden. Putin made a casual beeline for the fence and after a bit of exploration, snuck under a two inch gap and decided that after two months of being couped up, being a tiger sneaking though the long grass was much better suited to him and no amount of kitty treats would entice him to come back! Trouble was, we were losing sight of him and Chris had to wade through next doors thicket to find him.

As for Sebastian, he is so pleased to be back in his market house he has refused to come beyond the doorway for the last two days and takes his banana hand fed to him whilst tucked up in his house. He can't even be bothered to walk onto the ramp to get it. He certainly didn't get this treatment at Sue and Phil's in Elhovo so is milking it now!

 Angel and Putin surveying the garden from the terrace

 

Sebastian refusing to come out of his house.

The wildlife we have seen here has been amazing. Firstly, the birdlife is very vocal. Every morning I open the bedroom patio door to listen to the birds. Every now and then we get a flash of bright yellow and black in the trees. They are golden orieles which are absolutely stunning. We have also seen nesting storks on telegraph poles and chimney pots, eagles and buzzards circling above and hoopees. A duo of house martins are making a nest under JP's terrace and also a duo are sitting in a nest under the beams in our lounge. We hope the babies fly soon so they can continue with the building work. We have also seen jackals early in the morning out on the roads, snakes in the grass and so many frogs up at the reservoir the noise is deafening. The bug life is pretty weird here as well, many, many different beatles, plus hairy centipieds which keep coming in the house. Yesterday we had a gigantic hornet in the kitchen which hastily got evicted.

Meeting the neighbours can take an a whole afternoon. After being invited to Sue's house for goats milk coffee and Turkish delight bisuits, (we also secured our regular goats milk supply in the process), we then went next door and met Dimitri and Ivanca who dished out freshly made chilled elderflower juice and proudly showed us their lovely garden. We left clutching home made plum jam and a promise for me to visit Ivanca in the autumn to see how the Bulgarians do their bottling and preserving. Walking back down the lane, another lovely old lady also called Ivanca thrust a huge bunch of freshly pulled garlic into my hands with a promise of more to come! Talk about a food fest, we will make sure we are nice and hungry before going visiting again.

Next week I start my Bulgarian lessons with Ellie, a lady from Gesha, a village 5 miles away so really looking forward to have a decent conversation with people.

We usually sit out until it gets dark as its now warm enough in the evenings. However tonight, we can hear the jackals howling and getting closer as they move through the woods. There is a stream and steep bank which seperates JPs garden from the woods but we are taking no chances and are heading in. I am sure they would not come near us but it is such an eerie cry that its making me nervous!

 The rose bushes here are lovely. They are all so healthy and have fantastic displays

 

 A couple of photos of Bojensie, a traditional Bulgarian village

 Cherries from our tree

 

 

 A fantastic sunset over the 'Guardians'

A Week On......

We are now well into our second week and looking back we have got loads done even though we arrived on a Bulgarian long bank holiday which lasted until Wednesday. Typically, it rained all Bank holiday!

In the meantime we busied ourselves making space in our barn to put our furniture which was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday. However, Tuesday came and no furniture arrived. By Wednesday lunchtime we had still not heard from the driver but text reply confirmed that he was on a bad road between Romania and Bulgaria for the next 250km. Good to hear from him as he had not set up a car boot sale in Serbia but would our furniture be matchsticks? Eventually at 3pm he turned up and we set about unloading helped by the stone masons who found each item that came off the back of the truck highly amusing!

One of the pressing things we needed to do was purchase a car as we only had our hire car for a couple of weeks. Purchasing a car and getting it on the road involves a long list of things to do. It all seemed a bit daunting. However, firstly we needed to obtain our residency cards but before we could do that we needed to collect our Bulstat cards from Stara Planina our estate agents who were holding them from us and to obtain bank statements from our Bank. These two tasks took the best part of Thursday and Friday mornings as they both involved trips into Veliko Turnovo. However, now armed with the correct paperwork we are now ready to go into Gabrovo Tuesday morning to apply for our residency cards.

Early Friday morning we also went into Selievo to visit their weekly market. The growing season was now well underway and I wanted to add to the cucumber plants Tanya our Bulgarian neighbour had kindly given us. Arriving at Selievo market, trade in all manor of vegetable plants was brisk. Everyone seemed to have a large bag stuffed with tomato plants, chillies, aubergines etc. This was my chance to practice my Bulgarian language skills. Wading into the throng we managed to purchase tomatoes including the famous pinkish Bulgarian 'Bison Heart' tomato, chillies, aubergines, pickling cucumbers, melon and water melon and a variety of herbs. Many of the plants were bare rooted and sold in bundles of about 10. Cheap enough to wonder why anyone would bother to grow their own from seed.

Heartened by our purchases, Chris took them back to the car before we started a second round of buying market produce. This time we bought fruit and veg, honey, eggs and famous kalamata olives from Greece. Amazingly, everyone understood what we asked for!

Back at Arkadia, the task of planting out our plants now began. Even though it had recently rained, the ground was still hard going to dig over. Firstly, the weeds had to be cleared, and then the process of removing tree roots that were sprouting new shoots and decompacting the soil began. It was a bit of a race against time as the bare rooted plants were beginning to wilt. Eventually they were all planted and given a thorough watering. However, the next morning they were all looking a bit wilted and sick so the only thing we could do was give them another drink of water and hoped they picked up a bit. The good thing was that we had so many plants that it didn't matter if we lost a few.

 

All planted

 

On Sunday we decided to take a break from rushing around and drove down to Gabrovo to look at cars and then onto Uzana in the Stara Planina mountains to have a look at their little ski resort. The drive up the winding mountain road was gorgeous, The hill sides were carpeted with beech trees and the tiny Bulgarian villages looked quaint nestled into the hillsides with their fresh meadow grass and flowers. Eventually we reached an alpine plateau with a smattering of chalet style hotels with looked like they had seen better days which was a shame. On the drive up we saw many marked walking trails so stopped at the tourist information centre to hopefully pick up a trail map. Unfortunately, the information centre was rather lacking on any information at all and efforts to ask for a walking trail map were either not understood or they just didn't have one. However, the lady did try to direct us to a place where the view was supposed to be spectacular so after a drive around the plateau we eventually came to a hotel which provided us with the most breath taking of views over looking Gabrovo and way beyond into the distance. From this height the canopy of beech trees looked like a carpet. This was a place that would look spectacular in the snow and also in the autumn when the trees turned golden yellow.

 

 

 

 War Memorial in the typical Soviet Style seen from the Sofia to Veliko Turnovo road

 

 

Our village water trough. Every village has one and the water is drinkable. The gypsies bring their horses down to drink and the ladies do the washing there. (To the right you can just see that they left a pair of blue pants behind!)

On Monday we spent all day purchasing a car. I wont go into the process but its a hell of a lot more complicated that buying one in the UK. After deciding on a car we spent the rest of the afternoon registering the documents in Gabrovo. However, we are not done yet as we still have to go to the Police station with the car and register it in Dryanovo. Its a good job it already had insurance and MOT or we would still be running about now.

Today was mainly spent applying for our residency to make us official residents of Bulgaria. A load more form filling ensued but apart from picking our cards up on Thursday that process is now done.

We were also given the good news today that the bedroom is now ready so tomorrow we are going to pick our cats and tortoise up from Elhovo which is about a 3hr drive away. Hooray, we are so pleased to be finally bringing them to their new home. Putin had been poorly on Sunday so was taken to the vets but after some tablets and injection he is ok now.

Well that's about it for now. We are sitting outside writing this this evening as we do each evening but the sky looks like it is about to chuck it down with rain and there is lightning over the mountains so I will wrap this up for now as we are settling in for a light show. Better than telly!

 Chris at work

 The roof off of our kitchen with connecting doorway to lounge now put in

 

The roof is missing

 

 

 

Our arrival in a very wet Bulgaria

Our arrival in Bulgaria to start our new life was not the most welcoming. Firstly the seats on the flight over were the most tightly packed we had ever experienced. So tightly packed that it was difficult to bring the tray down comfortably.  Secondly, our flight bought us into Sofia at 2.30 in the morning where it was predictably raining. At least the car hire guy was waiting for us to take us to our hire car. However, it was absolutely chucking it down with rain, making it difficult to see the road. After one wrong turn we pulled into a petrol station and spent the rest of the night there trying to get some sleep in the car. At 7am in the gloomy morning light and after an uninspiring cup of tea in the petrol station café (coffee was off because the waitress had only just walked across the fields to work and had not yet had the chance to enjoy her morning fag before even thinking of switching the coffee machine on). At least it had now stopped raining and an hour down the motorway we got a more welcoming coffee and pastry before heading to our village.

The sun finally out. Heading to our village. On a previous blog five weeks ago this field was covered in snow

When we arrived in Slaveikovo a large gathering was outside The Thirsty Lizard bar. This was the support team for the charity walk that was taking place today. Too tired to stay and chat for long, we picked up the keys to JPs house and headed down there for a sleep. Driving past Arkadia, we saw the impressive new roof on the house but did not stop to inspect further. Sleep was calling us.  After a trip into Gabrovo to shop for food, we eventually ventured into the garden of Arkadia to see what work had actually been done. What a change from last time when we bounced through the gate to inspect the work. This time we were rather nervous about the whole affair, partly because we were worried that work might not have been done to our instructions.

On the down side, internal work that we took for granted that would have been completed had not yet even been thought about being started. On that note we were a bit disappointed.  However, of the work that had been done, we were very pleased with. We liked the windows from the rooms that they had been put into, the tiling in the bathroom was as we had asked and they had made a good job of it. Hopefully it would not be too long before we could move in upstairs. We are hoping two weeks at the most.

 Our bedroom wardrobe knocked through and in the process of being rendered

 

The old cupboard door now bricked up

 The bedroom French doors put in. This one looks out onto our upstairs terrace

 

 The doors open

 

 The views walking out onto the terrace. Note how lush and green everything has become

 

 The bedroom French doors looking out towards the road

 

 The bathroom French doors with the walls and floor tiled ready to fit the bathroom fixtures and fittings

 

 The view from the bathtub when it is eventually fitted

 

 Meanwhile downstairs there is still much to do. We do have a temporary ladder to get upstairs though

 The view of the house from the bottom of the garden

 Our new upstairs windows put in. View from the green

 

 A closer view. Eventually we will get an iron work balcony made

 

Looking up towards the village square. The old town hall recently painted but they ran out of green paint in the top left corner and it has stayed like that ever since!

Of course our most pressing problems were our cats and tortoise which we wanted to move into their new home and our kitchen which was originally scheduled to be put in late may. The room it is going into has not even been touched since last time we were there and the old roof is still on. And most urgently, we needed a place to store our furniture arriving in two days time. A new update soon. By which our furniture will hopefully be stored somewhere!

Goodbye Sunny Albion

At two minutes past eight in the morning a Serbian 7.5 ton truck appeared outside our house ready to load all our worldly possessions into it. It took 4 hours to carefully pack the contents of our house and garage into it plus one motorbike and as many garden plants and trees that I dared to take. Luckily it all just about fitted in and I was thankful that we had paired down our stuff only what we thought we would need in Bulgaria.

At midday, after providing our Serbian driver with directions to our village, we waved him off and looked forward to seeing him on Tuesday when he said he would arrive at our village in Bulgaria. Being that Serbia was next door to Bulgaria we were confident that he more or less knew the way and hoped that he wasn't going to detour to a few car boot sales on the way with our stuff.

 Everything on before the doors are shut

The lorry rounding the corner and on his way.

Of course although our furniture was on its way to Bulgaria, we were still praying that we had a house ready to load it into. However, it wasn't before long before we spoke to Billy who informed us that Bulgaria has had and is continuing to have unprecedented rain which has slowed up the work immensely. We therefore would be staying at JPs house until our house was move in able. Where our furniture will actually go is a mystery at the moment.

 

As you can see the upstairs terrace has been built but the house currently has no roof!