Apologies to anyone who is not from the North of England who may not understand the title of this post.
In proper English it means my head is full of so many questions that it feels like it's going to explode.
For the last couple of years maybe longer we have been aiming at getting to Bulgaria this has involved researching all we could. Joining numerous ex pat Facebook pages and Bulgarian forums. We pretty much eat sleep and dream Bulgaria.
Now that it's getting closer my head is in overdrive. I have so much running around in there there is not much room for anything else. Below are a few of the multitude of random thoughts I have on a daily basis.
TRANSPORT . We have a very small car ( Chevrolet matiz) my wife couldn't drive for a couple of years ( not in a drink driving banned way but she suffered from vertigo) so I sold my car and have been using hers. Do we go to Bulgaria in this do we get a bigger car, do we get a van, do we try and buy a left hand drive, do we take a trailer ? Question after question and I keep changing my mind current status is we are going to get a transit van but that will all change again.
RESIDENCY We need to sort this out when we get there , how long does it take, will brexit affect it will we have to do it before march, if not will we have to get a company.
AD HOC THINGS
will I get over my fear of snakes, how fast are snakes, can I run faster than a snake, if I can't what do I do ?
How many tomato plants do we need
What is a brassica
What does perennial mean
Where will I get my hair cut
Will I ever be able to understand the Bulgarian alphabet , let's be fair I still struggle with the English one
Will I ever be able to count past eight in Bulgarian
Will I ever like leeks
Will I be able to live in 40 degree heat.
What does a cube of wood look like
Will I cut off a body part whilst using a chainsaw
How do you make wine
What will I miss from the UK
does comfrey really smell that bad in water to make fertilizer
What books should I read when snowed in
Will I be able to get the ingredients to make a decent curry
Where will I get my blood pressure tablets from
What's the biggest snake in the world.
Will I wear out you tube and Google with random questions
Well in 7 months time we will start to find out the answers to some of these questions and we are looking forward to it so much.
Anyway I'm off to Google "what to do if a snake bites you"
Till next time
Take care
I had to laugh at some of your questions!! If I remember correctly you read several expat Bulgarian blogs, they should be your best friends. I know that they all talk about getting friends to bring certain things from the UK when they come to visit because they are not available in Bulgaria. I know Bulgaria gets a lot of snow but it doesn't seem to stay for a long time, not like here. They have a much better and longer growing season than we do in W. Canada. What an adventure you are going on, looking forward to read all about it!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Janice, Canada can be cold in the winter indeed, I have a friend who lived in Hamilton Ontario and I have been there in February,they still had snow last week.
DeleteIn England last week we had 22degrees but only for a few days it's raining now. They say you can tell when it's summer in england as the rain gets warmer.
Hello! Perhaps I can be of some help. My wife and I have had our villa in Kalotina for many years now and we also have an apartment in VT. We are going to be back in BG this summer, 2018, so please get in touch with us.
ReplyDeleteOn the question of snakes, yes, there are some in the Bulgarian countryside. Most of them are quite harmless and even the dangerous ones usually get out of the way. The snakes in BG seem to be nervous and they want to disappear as soon as humans appear on the scene. Occasionally we get a snake in the irrigation channel next to our house, but they seem to be interested in hunting the frogs and so they do not come out to bite us!
ReplyDeleteAs for learning Bulgarian, I recommend a CD ROM called produced by a company called "Eurotalk". It will help you to learn some simple Bulgarian phrases and you can buy it on Amazon for about 10 euros.
We have been going to BG for the last fifteen years and the temperature does not get up to 40 degrees C. Well, maybe 37 or 38 for an hour or so, on a very hot day. In the mountains, the air stays fairly cool and the temperature drops quite quickly when the sun goes down. On the coast, the temperature stays quite warm because of the humidity. Having external insulation on your house keeps you warm in the winter and cool in the summer!
Yes, you can make your own wine and Praktiker and Bricolage sell a lot (if not all) of the equipment that you will need. On the other hand, things can go wrong and they usually do because winemaking really is an art. Most of the homemade wine I have tried in Bulgaria has been horrible, but you can buy boxes of wine at METRO and they are cheap and cheerful.
"Perennial" means a plant that will appear every spring - they go dormant and do not die completely in the winter. Firewood is usually sold in cubic metres. A brassica is a green vegetable like brocolli or cabbages.
Okay, any more questions?
Hi Simon thanks for your reply and answers we will have to get used to the weather but there again were English so used to strange weather ha ha.
DeleteI like pod101 on you tube to try and learn Bulgarian there podcasts are brilliant and easy to follow.
When we hired a van to take our stuff from the UK to BG, there was a big problem at the Bulgarian border. The border guards insisted on seeing all of the documentation for the van, but of course we did not have all of the documentation because it was a hired van! Therefore we had to hire another van in Bulgaria, drive to the border from Sofia, and then take all of our bits and pieces out of van A and put them into van B, so that we could take them all to our new house. It was horrible and stressful and expensive and I would not wish all of this on my worst enemy! However, this was about fifteen years ago and BG was not part of the EU, so maybe things have changed. If you are going to hire a van, then please, please make sure that you have COLOUR copies of all documentation, just in case you come across some awkward border guards.
DeleteOn the subject of keeping cool in the summer, the external insulation blocks cost us about 2000 euros and the guys who stuck them on took four or five days to complete the job. After sticking on the insulation blocks, they covered them with a plastic mesh and then plastered over that. It all looks very smart and it was a job that was definitely worth doing.
I am not sure about making my own wine, as it is really rather difficult and it may take quite a while before the wine is ready. Making your own cider, however, is a different matter because there are loads of orchards near to us and no one seems to know what to do with all of those apples in the autumn. Cider should be ready in a month or two!
I hope all of this is helpful and that you are enjoying my blog, www.bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com
Best wishes from China!
Thanks Simon. When we move to BG whatever vehicle we go in will be ours. At present we are thinking of a transit size van but we won’t know what vehicle to use until we next go over in July. The house we have bought is fully furnished so when we go in July we be able to establish what we don’t need to take if that makes sense. I test drove a 7 seat Zafira the other day which was nice but we will wait till after July to make our decision.
ReplyDeleteThe house was also fully renovated in 2016 and has external insulation as well as a new roof, electrics, doors and windows and plumbing. We stayed in the house late 2016 so know what it’s like. Although it has been empty for about a year so no doubt it will need some maintenance but hopefully not too much. Monica our estate agent is arranging for the garden to be cleared before we get there in July as she says the weeds by that time will be taller than her !!!!!!
I will definitely have a go at cider making sounds good there is a small orchard at the house, we are so looking forward to our new life.
Regards
Mark
P.S. I have read your blog I bet you can’t wait to retire, I know I’m counting the days.
DeleteWhat about central heating? This summer we are planning to get a boiler installed that will burn either wood or pellets. I think that it would be good to have a choice of fuels. Then we will have an electric pump to push the hot water to radiators all over the house and we hope that it will also provide lots of hot water in the bathroom too.
DeleteWhat to do about buying a car? Last summer we bought a Nissan X Trail and in some ways we are very pleased with it. The bad news is that the engine needs some serious work. Well, we paid 5,000 euros for it and an engine rebuild will probably cost another two or three thousand. Generally speaking, car repairs are much, much cheaper than in the UK. Second-hand cars in BG tend to be more expensive, as hardly anyone buys new cars. A lot of the second-hand cars really have done a lot of km and so you could find yourself paying out again for repairs. Well, that is what happened to us!
Hi Simon, as our new house is effectively split into two accommodations, our living quarters and a separate apartment we have a large petchka and this heats all the living accommodation. There is an electric cooker and gas rings and an outside wood stove, we shall see how we go.
DeleteAs for cars whatever you have it seems you never have your hand out of your pocket paying for things, that’s life I suppose.
Thanks for reading and commenting. Mark
Oh Mark you have made me giggle during a time when not much is making me smile so thanks for that!
ReplyDeleteYour questions are oh so similar to ours so please feel free to share the answers when you find them :)
I think the only thing we have decided on is that we will buy a large van when the time comes for the move. We have 4 dogs and plenty of things we will want to bring over, plus we know we will need a big vehicle once over there so that was a fairly easy decision to make!
I feel your pain re the snakes ....... I am the same with spiders .... its one of the reasons I’ve stayed living in the UK so long ...... too many other places have spiders that can hurt you!!
So happy to see you have bought a house ...... One step closer for you!
22nd of this month should be the day I discover roughly when I will get some money and how much it will be. Can’t wait to be able to plan properly!
It’s weird what questions you have isn’t it ? Vans are useful but I have pros and cons for everything, I want a van but the tightwad in me thinks of the running costs but there again we won’t be doing the mileage we do now. It seems forever we have been planning this and it’s now only 7 months away so time will fly you will soon be there.
DeleteI am sorry to be negative, but there are some serious issues when driving a vehicle from the UK to Bulgaria. You will have to re-register it when you get to BG and that can be a pain (Peter and Minty had some problems with this). Secondly, I think that Serbia is not part of the EU yet and so you may have some paperwork difficulties if you are coming that way. And what will you do if you breakdown somewhere in Slovenia? When we brought all manner of junk from the UK, six months later we were asking ourselves, "Why did we bring all of this?" A lot of the stuff we brought from the UK we either sold for almost nothing or gave away!
ReplyDeleteWell, I am sorry if this sounds negative!
DON'T let your fear of snakes stop you from enjoying the beautiful Bulgarian countryside! My wife and I have been in Bulgaria for fifteen years and in all that time I have only seen ONE snake. This was a harmless one, swimming in the irrigation channel in our garden. Snakes can feel the vibrations we enormous humans make when we are walking in the countryside and so they get out of the way very quickly because they do not want to be trodden on.
ReplyDeleteFar more dangerous are the awful holes in some Bulgarian roads. Those I really have seen and they certainly could be fatal if you drive into one of them. Unlike snakes, holes don't get out of your way!
I am very disappointede not to see my blog, www.bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com, in your list of "recommended blogs"!
ReplyDelete