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