Karen's Blog about her move to Bulgaria

Archive for September, 2009

Our first month in Bulgaria

Our first month in Bulgaria

 

We certainly had a very warm welcome – besides the weather being hot and sunny – our Bulgarian neighbours ran out to greet us with hugs and kisses bunches of grapes, fresh bread, and offers of help if we needed it.

Our British friends sent ‘welcome home’ texts and invitations to meet up for a drink whenever we felt up to going out.

We spent the first few days showing Karl (son) around the houses and gardens, and we spent a day at the beach for a little R&R.

Bought a petrol Generator as in Bulgaria the electricity supply can be interrupted for a few seconds, minutes or even hours in the winter when the snow is 3 metres deep and the lines are down.

Also bought a petrol strimmer as we have acres of land to look after with the 3 houses each with massive gardens.

All too soon it was time for Ron and Karl to head back to the U.K. with the empty (and underweight!) van.

I followed their progress as they travelled back through Europe and then again as Ron returned.

When Ron arrived back we spent a few days just chilling out seeing friends and getting used to the house.

We were invited t a BBQ in a nearby village.  We have quite a few friends here now, and we arrived at the BBQ courtesy of our friends and neighbours Anne and Julian who own amongst many other things a mini bus.  As eight of us piled out of the mini bus, the host of the party plated the theme from ‘The ‘A’ Team’, which got the evening off to a great start.  Had a fantastic evening and met lots of people – British and Bulgarian.

We have been practicing our Bulgarian language skills and we do know lots of words.  We still struggle with the masculine and feminine verbs, but this usually causes great hilarity rather than embarrassment.

We called our builder ‘wealthy woman’ when we meant to say ‘wealthy man’.  This caused much laughter and teasing by his workers as the builder has a rather large pot belly and his colleagues were saying things like ‘he is a wealthy woman – look he is expecting a baby!’

Things like this break the ice and having a laugh is as important as getting the language  perfect all the time, and the Bulgarian people really appreciate that we are trying.

The most important thing for us was to get a good internet connection.  Ron had limited internet via his phone but it was not ideal, so we went to the nearest large town General Toshevo to speak to the Toshevo Net people.  Ron had been in touch with them several times beginning when we were still in the U.K. so they knew our requirements already.

Internet was arranged and the engineers came out within a couple of days to fit the equipment.

We were now on line and could contact everyone at home via SKYPE.

Our Grandchildren already used to seeing us on TV (SKYPE) as we had practiced at home for a couple of months first, so they were comfortable chatting to us and we could show them around our house and gardens.

The next thing was to arrange T.V. reception.  We were shopping for a hoover in Technopilis (a shop similar to a massive U.K. ‘Comet’ or ‘Dixons’ store– lots of choice) when we came across a salesman who could supply a satellite receiver to access  T.V. channels from Bulgaria and the rest of the world.  We were there at 3 in the afternoon and he said he would come to our house at 7pm to install the service.  He did!!! 

We are always amazed at the efficiency of the Bulgarian workforce.  If they say that they will arrive same day / next day they actually do.

In general we have found people to be kind and helpful.  We were in Mr Bricolage (a large store similar to B&Q). We didn’t really need any assistance, we were just looking at curtain tracks and trying to work out what we needed.  An assistant asked if she could help, and because her English – and our Bulgarian – is pretty basic, she sent for an English speaking colleague to help. 

Having bought the curtain tracks and Hoover, we thought that we had better put then to some use so we spent a hot day hanging curtains and cleaning the house.  In retrospect we should have been sitting in the garden with a cold beer, but work ethic habits are hard to break.  I expect we will learn to adapt very soon !!

The worst thing at the moment is looking for things that we think are in the house or in one of the packing boxes only to realise that it was one of the things we had to leave behind in Dover.

Last night (Sunday) we had a spectacular thunder and lightening storm.  It began as we were sitting in the courtyard of the village bar.  We saw both sheet and fork lightening, but no rain.

We decided to stroll home and sit on our bedroom balcony to watch the lightening show.

We have a big sky here in Malina with views for miles so watching the lightening light up the whole of the sky was something that we had seldom seen before.  The thunder came next and we sat watching and listening for about an hour until it began to rain. 

The storm lasted from about 8pm until 4 or 5 the next morning.  Storms do seem to go on for many hours here unlike in the U.K. when they are usually over within a couple of hours at most.

Speaking of big sky here, star gazing here is incredible.  Because we are well away from industrial areas the air is very clean and clear, and there is no light pollution.

We can easily see the milky way with the naked eye, and I have never in my life seen as many stars!

We often see shooting stars and sometimes we can make out the international space station or satellites overhead

After we had been here a few days I noticed a rash on my upper arm.  It started as a small red flat mark, like a spot.  Then suddenly it expanded and formed a perfect circle with a small ‘dot’ in the centre.  Because it did not hurt or itch I ignored it until a Bulgarian friend spotted it and told me it was a bite.  I looked it up on the internet, and discovered that this was a erytherma migrans or bullseye rash which is a sign of infection by a tich which causes Lyme disease.  I wish I had taken a photograph of it at the time, but as I didn’t realise that it could be serious I didn’t do that.  I did feel quite tyred and lethargic when we arrived, but I put that down to stress and the long journey.