27. A visitor, visiting and getting back to Bulgaria

Wow it seems like ages since I last posted and I suppose it is.
Since our last post we have had a visitor. My brother Phil came to stay with us for a wèek and I flew back to the UK for a week with him.
He arrived on the 5th April and it was good to see him. We did all the tourist things had a day in Ruse and showed him the city and we had a walk along the Danube, we had a trip to VT and even went for a Chinese meal when we were there the first one we had had in four months boy was it good. Although in true Bulgarian style the prawn crackers came when we had all eaten.
On the 13th of April we flew back to Manchester.
Apart from going to see family I had to go to court. Not as a defendant I might add but after 8 years of being divorced I had finally got my Ex wife to sort our financial separation out. All I will say is I've had cheaper weeks in the UK. But finally at last I now know where I am financially and can move forward, she has been a massive millstone round my neck and a weight has been lifted and I can finally close that chapter of my life and never have to deal with the stupid bitch again enuf said.
Whilst I was in the UK I filled my boots with all I had missed.  I had a chippy tea, 2 indian curries, a kebab, a Chinese and a full English breakfast obviously not all at the same time so that should do for a while.
Oh and I also saw my family.
Whilst I was away I had a phone call off Julie in a panic our dogs had attacked one of our chickens and killed it. Fortunately I was able to call one of the other two English couples who live in our village and they went round to our house to help. We have had to seperate dogs and chickens and I have since getting home diverted their run to the land behind the house. Julie said it was probably Daisy our 4 month old puppy that was the villan of the piece as she had feathers sticking out of her mouth whilst Bailey the pampered pooch was stood looking gormless

The not so tiny anymore chicken killer

It was with great joy at 3 am on the 18th April I left my brothers house in Stockport in my hire car off to Manchester airport for the flight back home.
After dropping the hire car off it was a short 5 minute bus ride to the airport and an as usual on time flight back to sofia airport with easyjet.
Our nearest airport is Varna or Bucharest in Romania but I flew to sofia as Varna is a pain to get to from the north of england out of season although whizz air start a regular flight from Liverpool to Varna but not till 1st July, that will be used next time I visit the UK.

As I flew to Sofia I had to get back home under my own steam so to speak I've always had a car when we've been on holiday and it was somewhat of an adventure to get home. From terminal 1 I caught the free shuttle bus to terminal 2. From there I got the metro to Sofia central train station. The metro is ultra modern and very good all the stations are clean and appear new and it is 1 lev 60 stinkies per trip (80p) its quite busy and the carriage soon filled up. It was good to see a young lad stand up and give his seat to an elderly baba who got on.
I got to central station and had just missed my train to Popovo and had to wait another 3 hours for the next one.
First class from Sofia to Popovo is 21 levs about £10 and that's for a 5 hour train ride.
Eventually I boarded the train which was like a train out of a Humphrey Bogart movie. It had a cubicle with 6 seats a sliding door and a corridor down one side.

First class !

I kept expecting German soldiers to walk down the corridor opening the doors looking for spies. Except it was a Bulgarian female ticket inspector who checked my ticket after every stop all 17 of them ?

"Papers ve believe you are a British spy"

Although I was first class the toilet on these trains are not. I have seen better toilets in crack houses. It was disgusting and although there was a toilet of sorts it went straight out to the track.

On the whole though it was a good journey and on time and i got to see some stunning parts of Bulgaria I had never seen before. There are no announcements on the train so I had to use Google maps to track my location after 5 hours so I knew where to get off.

When I got back to Popovo Julie and our neighbour were there to pick me up. I was glad to get home it had been a long day. A 30 minute drive home and we were back in our village taxi fare being a bag of licourice allsorts. From a 3am start it had taken me 17 hours.

It's good to be back 

We bought a meat grinder and after watching several you tube videos we made some sausages, you can get all sorts of sausages in Bulgaria some are nice some are bloody awful so we wanted to make some good old British bangers. Oooh they were nice.

Putting the sausage skin on the funnel, no rude comments please

It was quite easy and the finished article was NOT too shabby

Proud owner of some British bangers.

Since being back we have have been concentrating on the veg plot. We now have growing potatoes, garlic, onions, radish, broad beans, peas, peppers, chillies, beetroot, tomatoes, red cabbage, cauliflower , strawberries and melons as well as having grown lots of flowers from seeds.

Spuds

Onions and garlic

Strawberries under netting to keep the birds off

Broad beans and peas 

Tomatoes

Red cabbage under netting to keep the butterflies off

My plums are swelling oooh errr  missis

All is good here

Take care Mark n Julie

26. Bumps & lumps amongst other things.

Hi
I am a mahoosive 5'8" tall thats 1.73 metres for anyone not from the UK. Now I know am not the tallest person in the world but in the 55 years I've been on this earth I've never really had to worry about banging my head on doorframes. However move to Bulgaria and that all changes. It appears the majority of doorframes especially in our house are around 5'4"  the majority of you will already of worked out that that leaves a shortfall of 4 inches. I used to work with someone who was 6'8" tall and I asked him once how do you remember to duck when you go through a  door his reply was " you soon learn. Well I'm at that stage now.  I'm soon learning after banging my head about 50 times the last time I swear I saw stars. Feck me does it hurt and my head is still tender after 5 days.
Bulgarians are small people I stood in a queue the other day and towered above everyone, something I've never had the chance to do before it was quite nice really.

We have also purchased some chickens for eggs we bought three initially and another 3 a few days later. So far in 10 days we have had 10 eggs. Including buying the chickens and chicken food although they are also getting kitchen scraps they have cost 44 Levs so that's 4 levs 40 stinkies an egg about £2.20.... Bargain it is 20 Stinkies an egg in the shops. Obviously as we get more eggs we will be in profit.

Our first egg

Some of our girls in their coop

I don't know how old they are and were a bit straggly when we got them but they are being well fed and have free roam of one of our gardens and are starting to look a bit better.

In other news and as promised I bought a strimmer. I got everything with it a harness several blades little petrol pot to mix petrol and oil even a hard hat which I now wear around the house for going through doorways.

Me assembling said strimmer with instructions in Bulgarian 

It's made good work of chopping down our veg plot and top field and this also helps us keeps the snakes at bay as apparently they like long grass. It won't be long now till we get invaded by millions of snakes so I'm getting in early so they go next door.

Action shot minus my head, probably for the best.

In the veg garden I have been doing more digging and now have 5 beds dug but at times its hard going. It seems you have to pick your time of day to dig otherwise you get swamped by flies which take great delight in biting my forearms which now look like a map of the rhodope mountains.

Veg bed starting to take shape.

In the background you can see the cherry blossoms that are now out in force all over the village, spring is definately here it's gorgeous. We are having our wood burner on less and less and are able to have breakfast outside. We have had some gorgeous weather today is 25 degrees with clear blue skies.

Onion starting to sprout

Garlic growing 

Tomatoes from seed.

I have planted all sorts. Tomatoes, beetroot, purple broccoli, melons, leeks, peas, radish, broad beans, onions, garlic and strawberries. Not knowing much about gardening we will see how it goes.
We also got some more  fruit trees from Opaka market we bought 3 another cherry tree and two plum trees. The guy who had the stall also gave us three more smaller fruit trees but not being able to understand him I have no idea what they are. Also on Friday we got a nectarine tree all have gone in the ground in the land behind the house.

One day last week I was trying to tidy the front of the house up when I heard a car with what I would describe as boom box grind garage funk jazz shit music blaring out the window. It was efan our neighbour he is a lovely guy aged I would say in his mid sixties " I don't know where he got his shit taste in music from". Efan always stops to say hello and shake my hand, his favourite saying in English when he sees Julie is " COME ON BABY". Always makes me chuckle.
He abandoned his car in the middle of the road thankfully turning off his shit music.
He came into our garden to see what we had been up to. He looked at my grapevines which I think i have killed by trimming them back to nothing when we got here.
Shaking his head I said OK He said Dobre which means good so maybe I haven't killed them. He then gave me a masterclass on pruning some of my fruit trees which I had already pruned and told me my secatuers were crap. Then he was off back in his car up the hill to his house with shit music blaring out his window. I love how the Bulgarians will always help and are so friendly. I'm not used to it being from England but I like it.

Lovely cherry blossom

Today we saw the storks that have arrived in our village which signify the start of spring for Bulgarians. When you see the storks you hang your martinitsa on fruit trees for a productive crop. Martinitsa are red and white bracelets given out by people we even got one given to us with our shopping in Lidl. So we duly hung ours on some of our trees. Here's hoping we get fruit.

Storks have arrived

Martinitsa hung on one of our Apple trees

Well that's all for now
Take care
Mark n Julie

25. Spring might be springing hopefully.

Well we have now been in Bulgaria for two months and we love it. There are 3 things I miss from the UK.

1. Family.
2. Tomlins meat/pork pies (technically that's 2)
3. Bonani indian takeaway in Stockport.

Other than that I can cope fine.
I don't miss anything else. Although I was a bit jealous when my mum and dad video called me last week from the UK and they were sat in the garden and it was 20 C in February ! and we were here and it had been -6 overnight and was dull and miserable here. However I believe normal service has resumed in England now and it's miserable, on the other hand here we are now back to +17 and it's set to get hotter it looks like spring is possibly here.

Our local market is full of seeds and plants and I bought a cherry tree last week so probably by next week we will have about 20-30 lbs of cherries from it thats how it works isn't it ?

Fruit trees for sale 

Seeds for sale everywhere.

We bought a good few packets of seeds which we have some sprouting nicely on our kitchen window. Also we bought some onion sets and garlic which have been planted if it's on the market it must be the time to plant it, thats my theory anyway. Our bulgarian neighbours are out in force in their gardens which are all neat and tidy and perfectly ploughed. Meanwhile back at walnut cottage I stand and stare at our jungles and think to myself "what would Monty Don do in a situation like this ".
We will get there though.

I have also been working on the area immediately outside our front door which we want to have roses, flowers, herbs and a sitting area. We are planning on having half of it paved so we can sit out in the summer. I have been attempting to do some crazy paving where we can put a table. It will be crazy paving too as I've never attempted it before and had to Google which end to open the cement bag.

Craaaaaaàzy paving 

I have also managed to sort out my driving licence and I collect my new Bulgarian licence in a couple of weeks. This for me was a bit of a priority because if the UK leaves Europe on the 29th March without a deal I would not be able to drive here and would have to take a driving test again here and pass a theory exam written in Bulgarian.
But I'm sure Theresa May will sort it all out I have every faith in her ( read sarcasm).

This week I finally got round to sorting out our outhouse and found three x 60 litre barrels of wine that must of been here from the previous owners so it had been there for at least a couple of years. It didn't smell to good and even Julie refused to drink it.

3 barrels of vinegar

Mmmmmmm

In other news I saw this cat in our village last week it looks like his mum has cut his hair for him

Basin cut cat.

So that's our latest update. The garden will take priority over the next few weeks so we should have plenty of plant photos to thrill you. Also next week I shall be buying a strimmer so stand by for an exciting update on that, and next month we have our first visitor my brother is coming over to see us.

.

Take care

Mark & Julie

24. A mixed bag.

What we been up to then. Well we've been our usual busy selves since my last post,  here in walnut cottage which is what Julie has decided to call our house as we have 3 walnut trees.
The weather (as a British immigrant) I feel I must mention the weather every now and again. Well we've had all sorts from +20 degrees to frost to thick snow and just dull cold rainy and miserable. Still its only February so what can we expect.

We took a trip to Ruse last week to sort a few things at the bank and had a nice lunch at happy bar grill which is a chain restaurant in BG I had a nice burger and Julie had some crispy pork dish but as most places in Bulgaria my chips weŕe only just warm, they don't seem to master getting everything ready at the same time. On our way back we called at Metro to do a big shop. We have never been before its a huge cash and carry and I can only describe it as like costco on crack, its feckin massive.

Costco on crack

Work has been progressing slowly on the garden and some things are beginning to look a bit better as if I'm making progress. Paths are looking tidied, jungles are slowly being reclaimed, my fire and woodchopping addictions have been in full swing and I've nearly gotten rid of all the shitty painted wood in my woodpile.

Slowly reclaiming the 

Tuesday's weather was a bit crappy for gardening so we took ourselves off to our local garden centre. We had heard about Morgan's plants but its in hotnitsa an hour and forty minutes drive. We set off nice and early to get there at 11am the time it said on the website it opened so we would beat the rush. We eventually found it to discover it was all locked up. Morgan's plants is a place set up by two english brothers im told. We knocked on the gate and one of the guys came out to say they don't open until the first week in march FFS.

Anyway as we had come so far he let us in for a look round but explained nothing was ready for sale yet although he did let us buy some roses so not an entirely wasted journey and he was very apologetic about not updating his website. It does look good though and we will definately be buying more from them although we may well get it delivered as it a right trek there. 

From here we decided to go for lunch in Veliko Tarnavo Bulgaria' s old capital. We have been before and its a lovely city with some nice cobbled streets and views.

VT

Cobbled steets

The main street in VT

There is a lot of graffiti art in VT

Julie the tourist dont ask about the hat

Me having a brew in our favourite bar. Just look at the size of Julie's wine glass

A friendly stray.

We had a good lunch a look around I like VT its nice and its nice to get a bit of city life but its too busy for me the traffic is busy and last time we stayed it kept me awake.

The next day we woke up to this

Bailey and Daisy enjoying playing in the snow

The snow lasted a day and is now gone.

Next winter we are hoping to use our barn as our living room but there is currently no heating in it. So we bought a new petchka the other day we plan to use the petchka from our living room as it is too big for our current living room so we bought a small one and have took out the one from our living room to eventually go in the barn.

Shiny new petchka 

Anyway theres our latest update
Take care
Mark and Julie

23. Time flies

Time flies cant believe a week has passed. I honestly don't know where the days go. I'm starting to wonder how I ever had time to go to work although I am not missing it one bit.
This week started with us going to collect our residency cards from the police station in Targovishte.  They base the length of time on your residency card on the length of, time on your E111 health card from the UK. As I had just changed mine before we came over I got 4 years and Julie only got 3 so she better watch out. If your planning on moving to Bulgaria its a good idea to get a new one before you come.
From here I went straight to Popovo and got my van insured with a day to spare as my English insurance would only give me one month in Europe as it is a van, a car usually gets 90 days.
Tuesday at 9 am i met Tanya my interpreter in Popovo and we drove to Targovishte again this time to the KAT office where they do all things relating to driving and vehicles etc. I have heard all sorts of stories about KAT and registering vehicles onto Bulgarian plates but as it turned out it was quite painless especially with someone who knows what to do and is bulgarian.
I was concerned about my headlights as they are UK ones with stickers on Tanya assured me they don't even bother with them. She said they just check the engine and chassis number match the V5 and check the brakes, handbrake and vehicle emissions then give you a 12 month MOT (Preglet).
I had to pay 350 BGN eco tax (no I don't know what it is either) the man checked my chassis and engine number off to get it stamped by an inspector then get bulgarian log book issued they changed my number plates and that was it. I think i blinked cos I didn't see them do an MOT check and we were off back to Popovo all within 2 hours.
So Vladdy the Caddy is now Bulgarian.

It doesn't have a black squiggle on in real life

The rest of the week we have mostly spent at home it has been nice not running round everywhere.  Everyday I have been working non stop in the garden and everyday it looks the same either im doing something wrong or its a big job hopefully its the latter.

I have built a raised bed for the first plot that i dug. Although it's not that raised as i couldn't explain to the lady in the builders merchants how deep I wanted my wood so i just settled for what i got.

Not so raised bed

I have filled this with strawberry plants there was a bed near our cottage that is really overgrown but there were strawberries in it so i have transplanted them to my dug bed. Time will tell if they produce fruit this year but we hope so.

Bed full of strawberries

I have also started to dig another bed and when i get the wood for it I will try to convince the lady in the builders merchants to let me have some deeper wood, I will pay for it honestly I will.

Next bed in preperation

They look like graves when i dig them !!!
How long did I say Julie got on her residency card ?

Talking of wood I think i have a chopping obsession I am slowly working  my way through our woodpile and am forever chopping logs and kindling. But all the wood we have is inherited and a lot of it has paint on which is not good to be burnt in a wood burner as its toxic, so i have slowly been burning this in the garden. Julie always knows where to find me poking my fire.

One of inherited woodpile with a shit load of painted wood in it.

We have another woodpile that is out in the open some of it has got saturated so i have been transferring the wet stuff to an old chicken house we have to dry out. The rest we have covered with a plastic sheet we found lying in the garden hopefully all this will be usable next year when it dries.

Outdoor woodpile

Beginning to stack damp wood

After we had snow a few weeks back the weather has improved massively this week I have been in the garden in T shirts. Today was 21 degrees Celsius it has been gorgeous and I started the day sat outside with a nice glass of orange juice.

Getting my vitamin C and D in one hit.

I have also planted some seeds, I have planted black tomatoes, yellow bell cherry tomatoes, bulgarian tomatoes, chilli and coloured chillies and put these in my potting shed with a plastic bag over the pots to act as mini greenhouses. However the weather is due to go colder this coming week so fingers crossed they grow.

Future food.

Today we also took Daisy to the vets for her first jab she has to go back in two weeks for her 2nd one we also got some calcium tablets for her and another worming tablet 

All in this came to 28 BGN about £14.

She is cute but im sure she has doubled in size in the last fortnight

Well that's all for this week, take care
Mark and Julie