pet

I am currently sat playing cards with Sam and two Bulgarian girls. It’s not what you might think. It’s a bit like rummy kub, a game which my grandad taught me how to play many years ago. His expert training has not helped as much as I would have hoped, as we are getting our ass kicked

The two girls, Kristina and Simona, stay at the flat we are renting in Sevlievo every Saturday as they come to study English at a house across the road. Apart from beating me at cards, they also smoke like chimneys, eat a lot of sunflower seeds and neck gallons of sugary squash drink. In their spare time they also teach me swearing in bulgarski… mamcamoo… see. They have also taken to cooking a range of Bulgarian national dishes for us which, to date, we have managed to fight our way through in order to keep the british end up. It’s fair to say that what they have cooked for us has been edible, unlike the tripe soup, chicken hearts with liver and gizzard surprise which appear on almost every restaurant menu. It has also been easier to digest than some of the food provided to us by our friendly neighbours in Burya… my favourite being stewed pumpkin in rice pudding, mmmm mmm.

Have you ever seen a Bulgarian restaurant anywhere except bulgaria? Well what does that tell you? Don’t get me wrong, I like salty cheese, pizza and barbequed minced pork sausages, but not every meal. It’s safe to say Bulgarian cuisine is never going to make it into my top five (currently Thai, Indian, Italian, French, British) and I certainly have no plans to come back to England to set up a bulgarian restaurant. Gordon Ramsay would be pleased to know that vegetarianism may have been outlawed here and I have a feeling that if Sam is caught, she may well end up as a kiofte (mince pork balls).

We accidentally found ourselves in possibly the only Chinese restaurant in Bulgaria recently… had we known it existed six hours earlier, we could have been fortunate enough to pre-order the “fish that look like squirrel” which in hindsight may be worth subjecting ourselves to a further visit. Although the thought of another msg filled ‘chicken in Chinese sauce’ does not fill me with excitement.

The market in Sevlievo is becoming a regular hang out for us. They have a few small huts selling fags, booze and kebabs, a fish and chip shop (well, deep fried whitebait and French fries), and a butchers full of various animal heads. There is also a brilliant fruit and veg market which is only limited by the fact that they can only sell seasonal produce. On a Friday the market grows from 10 stalls to 30 stalls all selling the same 5 items, which at the moment is salad, spring onions, courgette, tomato and cucumber; all of which are deliciously fresh, with the exception of the cucumber which is the spawn of the devil, except when skinned, chopped and added to live yogurt, which is a Bulgarian speciality.

You will see, being the smart arse that I am, that I am now numbering my posts in bulgarski: pet, or five, is easy to remember as it is the same as in welsh, yet another language in which I am nearly fluent… hedlou. This is not the only similarity between Bulgaria and Wales however, Bulgarians also have the same fascination with shepherding, mountains, his and hers tracksuits and unemployment. Haven’t seen any male voice choirs yet, but will keep my eyes peeled.

Its also been graduation weekend in the last week, which is celebrated by closing the town centre and parading hundreds of 18 year olds dressed in their dads suits through the town, counting to 14 in unison (presumably to prove they should be allowed to graduate). I can’t imagine them closing down the centre of Bristol, or Daventry for that matter, to honour the towns’ youth once a year… it was great.

House Update

They say that a mud house needs a good hat and good shoes. We are finding this out the hard way at present. Apparently Bulgaria has suffered the driest and mildest winter since records began, which has been bad for the snow lovers but is probably one reason why we still have a house standing? However, having had the roof removed in preparation for our new and improved stone lid, Bulgaria has proceeded to have some of the biggest and unfortunately, wettest storms I have ever seen. Good for our garden (more of which another time) but bad for our mud; mud which covers every wall of the interior; mud, which is holding all of the stone work together forming the structure of the building; mud which provides 50% of the insulation for the building; basically, the most important mud I have ever known. Mud so important that we spent a day attaching a pvc sheet to the top of the house… twice… which has got to be up there on the 5 stupidest things to do in an electric storm. Sorry mum. That said the pvc seems to be helping, as the plaster work inside seems to have stopped sliding off the walls, which has got to be a good sign.

Our water has also now been connected and the man with the tash is installing our meter tomorrow! Woo hoo.

We are also negotiating with the cake man and his mate to see if they can help us with some digging.

Our roofers.

Ciao Ciao, and lek den.

chiteri

As you can probably tell from the last posting, my bulgarski is coming on a storm. I have almost mastered the first of what seem to be three ways of expressing the alphabet: capitals; which is most commonly used for signs, labels, menus etc. The other two ways of writing it are by hand and in lower case, both of which differ almost entirely from the capitals… for ease of learning I assume.

The language here is based on the cyrilic alphabet, devised by two bulgarian monks: St Methodius and St Cyril who, it seems, decided that the Slavic people needed an alphabet which responded to their native language rather than trying to use roman. Bulgarians celebrate the language this month on my birthday (that’s may 24^th for those who want to send money) which is just one of what appears to be 365 national holidays per year along with St Georges day, Liberation day (which is at least 3 times a year judging by the amount of times this country has been occupied) and national celebration of salt day. Personally, I will be celebrating st cyrils day by speaking only Bulgarian, which at present means I will be able to do a lot of eating and a lot of drinking and perhaps asking where the post office is if I feel especially brave.

As with most languages, we are finding that there are one or two words which sound similar to words in English. I seem to remember French lessons were always pretty dull affairs until one had the opportunity to slip out a “la bonque” or a “piscine”. Similarly, a game of battleships in german class was never a let down in a blockbusters, “can I have a “p” please bob” kind of a way. There was nothing quite as good as “can we have G6 (gay sechs) please sir” to make mr block start to look a bit uncomfortable; which, thinking about it, would have been particularly difficult for him knowing what I now know… he probably would have been up for it.

Anyway, the following words may come in handy if you feel the need to act like a 5 year old when in Bulgaria… which I often do:

Kak – how

Crap (tragically said star) – old

Pissmen – written

Knigga – book

Funt – pound

Mush – man

Brat – brother

Bint – bandage

Krak – leg

Tvat – hard

Urina – ok it means urine but that’s funny in any language

I will be listening out for some more and report back soon. I’m hoping to find something as good as shiteburger, which if I remember rightly is cheese in Hungarian.

House update:

We have a builder called Niki starting work on the new roof this week. We are going to restore the old stone roof which, unfortunately in modern day Bulgaria, means that we will need to replace much of the old construction, unless we are willing to put all of the stone tiles (plotches) back up ourselves, which we are not, as some are bigger than me and therefore weigh a ton. However, Niki has agreed to help us reconstruct the fallen chimney stacks with a mud/horse manure render, which will be really in keeping and most importantly very easy to build and cheap. He is also going to use a substance which we believe is similar to LECA (lightweight engineered clay aggregate) aka kiln baked clay balls, to insulate the roof, which is a pretty sustainable material, and unlike the other option here mud, will not create huge amounts of dust.

I’m going to need to do a lot more research into wall insulation/cob/lime plaster in the next few weeks and perhaps go on a course when I’m back in August to ensure we can avoid the plasterboard trap which so many other renovated houses here seem to have fallen into. Wonky old house from the outside – wilcon box inside… tragic really.

We are also hoping to go and see the water board in Dryanovo again this week to offer them a bribe to speed things along. Apparently this is “normal” and if we do not do this, “we for 6 months may be waiting”. Both Pete and I are a bit wary of this course of action, and feel a bit strange doing it. This information is obviously provided on a need to know basis – Sam does not need to know, nor the "chenge" (cops).

Otherwise, with the help of mr purple and his 50 year old wife, we are proceeding with digging out the ground floor and our brand new septic tank. We may be gone some time.

In other news…

…my hammock is up and running (thanks CP)

We have some good grapes growing whcih will be turned into wine in the autumn... see:

... and I ate a spade and then had to pull it out through my stomach:


Ciao Ciao, and lek den.

tri

Only been here two weeks (well I was when I started writing this… now a month) – it feels more like two months. Everything is very different.

I haven’t wasted the last two weeks however: I can now tell you that I live in a run down shack with no roof in the village of…. Wait for it… Burja (Bur-iya). I say live, I really mean squat, on a temporary basis, between spells in hostels, Pete’s van (see below), mad artists houses (see below) and semi complete renovated houses, lent kindly to us by Tony (aka the tone ranger… yeah I know Broomhill posse there can be only one).

The village itself turns out to be really nice. It has a population of about 300, 2 shops selling the basics (tomatoes, cucumber and salt) a small bar and a big bar, which doubles as a disco on Friday and Saturday; a bit reminiscent of junior Madison’s in Daventry, but with more remixed folk music and less sick. Sam has described the dancing style as screwing in light bulbs which I think is fairly accurate.

I am pleased to say that the village is great; mainly due to the people. We have made friends with a few neighbours namely, Ivan (aka no-teeth ivan who’s sister, it turns out, used to live in our house, which may partially explain why he feels comfortable coming and going as he pleases; Hristo, who speaks a little English and used to work for Karl Ziess, he has kindly let us use his water supply until ours is installed; Minka (aka minky) who has decided that Sam needs to have showers and we need to eat walnut cake on as regular a basis as possible to ensure survival. Between them and a few others who’s names I cannot remember, we have been plied with eggs, honey, jam, the odd beer and plenty of Rakir (grape brandy) which we understand is probably better as a mozi repellent than a drink.

It’s fair to say that our initial visit to the house came as a bit of a shock, it’s a bit of a of state. Thankfully Pete warned us to expect the worst before we arrived. It’s not that it is any worse than it was 2 years ago – it’s just that now it is real… very real. Since our first trip, we have done a bit of clearance work and now feel much more comfortable about it. The roof needs a fair amount of work which we are contemplating having done for us… we will see. We are also working on getting water and electricity hooked up so that the place is a bit more habitable.

Despite the generosity of our neighbours and the success of the solar showers (would definitely recommend them) the lack of facilities has taken it’s toll. All plans of roughing it for 4 months have gone out of the window and Sam and I have decided that toilets are not luxuries afforded to only to the rich and famous. She and I are now renting an old ladies flat in a nearby town called Sevlievo – you’ve probably heard of it – which is ‘dobre’ (which means either “good” or “ok” depending upon how excited one is when one says it) and only costs £50 per month all in… so not breaking the bank just yet. It has a shower , toilet and tv showing dubbed versions of popular American daytime tv (loving the hanging with mr cooper re-runs).

Anyway, enough for now, as we have a few things to get on with! I’ll leave you with a snap I took of Veliko Turnovo from the window of our hostel. Ciao ciao