Random photo's

Below are some random photo's we took whilst in Bulgaria that I haven't included in the last few post's. Everyone likes a piccy.

Our house (in the middle of our street)

Wild flowers on the roadside

Horse grazing on our street not the runaway one

Say cheese

View of the barn

Street outside our house

Sunflowers picked from the roadside

Watching England crash out of the world cup in our local shop/bar

 

Natural spring in Karan Verbovka

Monestry at Karan verbovka

On the road to Palamartsa

On the road to Dve Mogili 

A view across to our village

Busy village of Krepcha

One of our wood stores which might become a chicken coop

Our house through overgrown grapevines

Another view over our village

 View up the hill with smoke effect from our 13 day fire

Our 13 day fire

View to barn with some of my ultra modern tools

Nearby Chervan

A stray dog in our village he was so friendly

 

View down the hill to our house

Till next time

Take care

And other things

I promise I will come up with some better titles in future.

We have been back now for nearly two weeks, and are already counting down till our next trip 9 weeks to go.
It's quite daunting for me anyway, how much land we have 2000 square metres in old money that's half an acre. Here's me never had much more than a small back garden and currently live in a two up two down terrace with a concreted back yard.
I left all the garden tools I owned in a past life along with a lot of my other worldly goods seven years ago to be precise. Isn't divorce brilliant 10 years of marriage an I got the TV lol.

Anyway I need to get some tools, I have found a few at the house in Bulgaria but I think they were made when God's dog was a pup they are that old.
I think the two main tools I will need will be a chainsaw and a brushcutter/strimmer. A chainsaw for cutting wood to keep us warm in the winter and a strimmer to tackle the garden and the jungle (which has thousands of snakes in it by the way).
I was toying with the idea of buying a good quality strimmer like a stihl but boy are they expensive.
So me being financially astute (read tightwad) I have done a bit of research on the tinternet and have decided to see how I get on with this one.

Screwfix strimmer

 It's £100 with a 1_year warranty not that that will be much use in Bulgaria but all the reviews are good for it and it's fitted with a snake alarm (I made that  bit up). If I get a couple of years out of it it might work out cheaper we will see.

It will need to be good to tackle the jungle

Plenty of gardening to be done

WILDLIFE

our village and garden is full of wildlife we regularly saw little lizards in the garden and one day I saw a large green and blue one, we have birds flying round from swifts or swallows I don't know the difference,sparrows and a  Jay seemed to visit regularly.
We have flies (not so good) wasps, bees, caterpillars, crickets, scorpions (only tiny ones thankfully) dragonflies and all sorts of weird bugs. One day we had a bat fall out of the barn which seemed to sleep all day on a path but flew off at night. Also one day in the road we saw what we thought was a fox but later discovered it was a  jackal !!!

this little fella fell out the barn.

Nice blue dragonfly

One day as we were sat outside the front of the house a car pulled up . It turned out to be one of our neighbours not that we have many. He wanted to know what we were doing at the house, he knew the previous owners and with the help of Google translate we managed to get across to him that we had bought the house. It's good to know he was keeping an eye on it.

His name was Ivan and lives at the top of the hill at the back of our house.
Later that day about 2 pm I could here some metal dragging along the road, I stuck my head out of the gate to see a horse trotting past with a 20 foot chain around its ankle and a large metal stake that it had pulled out of the ground and obviously escaped from somewhere at the top of the hill.
I got in the car and drove up to ivans house and started to beep the car horn and shout ivan.
a couple of minutes later Ivan came out wearing his underpants obviously woken from a sleep. Where else other than Bulgaria can you stand outside your house in your undies and think nothing of it.
again Google translate to the rescue he must of thought I was mad but eventually I got him to understand.
Ivan put his shorts on and we drove around the village looking for the runaway horse.
After about 30 minutes we found the horse on a street near ivan's.
Ivan shouted at the horse and it came towards us I swear it was smiling. It turned out it wasn't even his horse.

I went back home and about an hour later Ivan turned up at our gate with a large watermelon for us to say thank you , how kind, the villagers are so friendly.

A random picture of a bottle of vodka £4.50 think we will like it here.

Till next time
Take care

Things

Not the most original post name I know but below is a list of things we did/saw/thought/said/liked/disliked etc etc etc during our two weeks in Bulgaria.

1 number of flies swotted 24583
2 number of times we said WTF is that bug 1508
3 number of times we said ITS TOO HOT 36
4 number of times we said IS THAT RAIN 6
5 number of fires we had in the garden 1 for 13 days
6 buckets of sweat sweated 9 (if you move an arm you sweat, if you cough you sweat)
7 weeds pulled out 548376299
8 lizards seen in the garden 8
9 bats seen 5 or 6 a night
10 fireflies seen 1 a night
11 stars in the sky thousands (its amazing)
12 beer drunk lots
13 wine drunk, more than the beer
14 mozzie bites too many
15 Skoda Fabias are crap cars (we usually get a clio much better)
16 number of brambles that wrapped round my leg in garden 250
17 number of brambles that wrapped round my leg in the garden that i thought was a snake ready to bite me 250
18 snakes seen in garden 0 but i just know there are thousands in the jungle waiting for me when i get my strimmer.
19 snakes seen 1 but it was dead on the road, phew.
20 wasp nests we have 1 will be gone in the winter
21 bulgarian tools are crap, i bought some secateurs and hedge trimmers both brok
e
22 donkies heard 1 every day, eeh aww eeh aww ehh awways brayed (sorry)
23 there are lots of chickens
24 restaraunts sell chips chicken pork,pizza and chicken livers never anything else.
25 if you order chips they come 20 minutes before your meal.
26 Bulgarians are really friendly people
27 its difficult to buy two drinks in our local bar for more than a quid
28 our local bar is also a shop
29 english people spoke to in 2 weeks 4
30 snakes i thought i saw in the garden 478

Crap Skoda Fabia hire car

This little guy was dead thank god

My left leg got mozzied big time, sorry for the Eric Morcombe shorts in shot

A blue Bulgarian drink

Dont wear ankle socks before going to the pool

Lovechs answer to weatherspoons this is a great bar overlooking the river, run by an old lady who must be 90 everything was 1 lev and it was busy, away from the posh part of town. If I lived in Lovech this would be my local.

The toilet in Weatherspoons, at least you didnt have a 2 mile walk
and 4 flights of stairs to get to it

Thats all for now see you soon.

We are back in reality

I cant believe nearly two months has passed since I last wrote a blog post. It seems we have been waiting to go to Bulgaria for what seems an eternity and unfortunately we had to fly back to the UK on the 19th July after two fantastic weeks there.
We flew out on the 5th July and Easy jet deposited us on time as is usually the case, at Terminal 1 Sofia airport. We picked up our hire car and headed for an overnight stay in the town of Lovech.
it was late afternoon when we arrived at Lovech and we were hot and tired after checking in it was time for a beer, as we sat in the bar area outside we got talking to two guys Kiaren and Ken who were brothers in law and on their first trip to Bulgaria and had been there about 3 or 4 days and had just bought a house in that region.
So after a couple more refreshing beers and a chat about all things Bulgarian and how bad England is we got cleaned up and went into the town for a meal.

The following morning we had arranged to meet Monica our estate agent at 11:30 am at our house, but we were that excited we were awake about 5am so set off early for the 3 hour drive to our village.
We got there around 10 am so I gave Monica a quick call to see if it suited her to come any earlier and she was already on her way and was about 30 minutes away.
Monica arrived and we got to access our house for the first time.
The house is already renovated and we had had half the garden strimmed before our arrival courtesy of Monica.
What I hadn't expected and I dont know why was the amount of cobwebs dead flies and spiders that were in the house. It has been empty for about 16 months and is in the country side so why shouldn't it be cobwebby (if thats a word)
It was like a house that had been dressed up for halloween inside but it was ours.

A small cobweb !

There were some strange looking bugs and insects inside

                                                         Just a selection of insects

It was to battle with a vacuum cleaner and a couple of hours later the upstairs apartment we have was spick and span and liveable in so we decided to call it a day on the cleaning and live in the apartment whilst we cleaned downstairs which had more cobwebs in it.

We popped to the nearby town of Opaka which is about 5 miles away and stocked up with some food, beer and wine (beer and wine being the essentials) and that night we sat outside eating and drinking listening to the crickets and watching bats fly around the garden and firelies flashing their bums with the sound of the odd donkey braying and chicken making chickeny noises and the odd village dog barking before crashing out after a long day.

Our House next to the not strimmed land affectionately called THE JUNGLE

THE JUNGLE !!!!

What will be our veg patch

View up to the jungle

The road outside busy busy 

A selection of more weeds for removal

View over the middle garden to the village

hire car on drive , even the outside needs weeding

An 80p bottle of wine I know its expensive but we splashed out on a housewarming drink.

Rush hour

I will end this post here and update further in the next few days as my tablet seems to be having a mind of its own 

Take care see you soon 

Nothing happening and all change

Hi folks just a quick post to let you know we're still here. Not much has been happening on the Bulgarian front since we purchased our house back in April. All except it is now just over 5 weeks till we head back to Bulgaria and believe you me we are counting the days down.

We have been sorting the dogs passport out for when he comes with us in December, but not quite got there yet as I can't get him to sit still on the seat in the photo booth but I will persevere

We fly to Sofia on the 5 th July for two weeks and after an overnight stay in Lovech we finally get to our house in the 6th July where we will stay for the remainder of the fortnight
It was September last year since we were in the Bulg and it seems like an eternity. How good will that first Kamenitza taste ?

The all change bit is that we were having a beach/ house hunting holiday but as we have now purchased our house we will be staying there and have cancelled the coast.

The house has been renovated but has been empty for about 16 months. Hopefully there won't be too much to do in it when we get there although I'm sure  there will be a few bits and bobs to do and maybe a lick of paint here and there.

Maybe just a lick of paint required

Till next time
Take care.

Swede is cabbaged !!!!!

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

We bought a house.

Well we have done it. Last week the sale of our house went through. We are now the proud owners of a lovely house in a village in the Targovishte area but just South of Rousse (about 25 miles).
To say we are excited is an understatement it 's a major milestone in our move to BG.
we stayed in the house on our first trip to Bulgaria in 2016 as guest's . The house has a two bedroom self contained apartment above it which we stayed in as well as living accommodation downstairs. It has a renovated Barn and an outside kitchen with a wood burning oven and has 2000 sq metres of land.

Shortly after we stayed in it the house went up for sale but we weren't in a position to buy it then, but as I now only have a few months left at work and it was still for sale we have plunged in and bought it.I

It feels strange as we have been planning our move to Bulgaria for about the last three years and it's getting closer. We sit here saying " I wonder what we will be doing this time next year ".
When we decided to move we knew we could afford it but as we don't have a house to sell in the UK (we rent) we couldn't afford to get it wrong.
The house was for sale with an estate agent, but it was an estate
agent that had been recommended to us even before the house was for sale. We looked at houses with Monica the agent in 2017 so we knew her too.
So when we decided to buy this house we were happy to deal with Monica.
Her office is in Rousse and all the dealings were done whilst we were in the UK. This meant giving Monica power of attorney but she has done everything she said she would do and more she is a godsend.
I suppose the most unnerving thing (read twitchy bum time) was sending the money from the UK to my Bulgarian bank which Monica had control off, but all went smoothly, Monica even set up internet banking for us so we could see each and every transaction.

All that remains now is to figure out how to transport ourselves , our dog and two cats to Bulgaria bearing in mind we own one of the smallest cars in the world.

keep tunes in folks for updates