sedemnayset

A Trabant and a cow pat are sat next to each other in the road. The cow pat looks up at the Trabant and says "hey Trabant, you are a cardboard!". Offended, the Trabant replies "Who are you to call me a cardboard when you are a shit?" to which the shit says, "yeah, well I used to be a baked alaska".

A brilliant piece of bulgarian humour I'm sure you will agree, had me in stitches for literally milliseconds. How we all laughed. I promise more hilarity from the foot of the balkans soon in my next proper update. However, for now, see Clayson's account of his trip below under an equally hilarious title (be kind, he thinks it's a clever play on words the poor love).

ps: my side was thicker

Pizza, pussy and pants weather!

Enjoying Bulgaria is all about having the right frame of mind and getting beyond your first impressions. My last trip was a whistle stop tour and I spent more time on trains than in the actual country. This time I was really looking forward to sampling the real life or at least the one Mark and Sam have been living for the past couple of years.


After arriving in Sofia and having a quick drink in a swanky bar (if you can call a smelly converted barn devoid of electricity and a name a swanky bar) we headed through the fog on our way to Gabrevo - Mark and Sam's home. Gabrevo is the most eastern block of eastern block cities I have ever been to. When I say block I mean tower block, and my first impressions weren't great when we pulled up to Mark's parking space below a decreped, depressing high rise tower. However, the following morning relaxing on the balcony with a cup of tea things looked very different, and what appeared to be the type of place in England where you get mugged by hoodies for your chewing gum turned out to be a real thriving community, centering around the local home made gossip bench.


My relaxation was short lived as we left Gabrevo to drive to Mark and Pete's renovation project to begin 3 days of hard graft. On the way we picked up the mandatory salty cheese filo pastry accompanied by 6 litres of grease and drove through the superb dramatic countryside that makes up the central plateu of Bulgaria.



It is difficult to describe the house. The photos on the blog don't really do it justice. It is also impossible to compare the work involved to that required to renovate a house in the UK. I think Mark has been rather modest in the descriptions of the labour required. For starters it would certainly of been easier to build a new house than renovate the existing one. Secondly to their credit Mark and Pete are attempting to recycle as much material as possible, which makes the simplest of jobs time consuming, for example instead of sawing a new straight piece of wood you need to spend half an hour searching for an old warped piece scattered around the site, that you can make straight. Thirdly, there is still no electricity on site, so all the work has to be done by hand using equipment which on the whole is pretty shite - digging a 10 metre trench with shovels rather than spades being an example. Finally and probably the biggest obstacle is the language, Bulgarian is tough, not only is it difficult to pronounce it is impossible for a novice to even read as the alphabet is completely different, this coupled with the fact that no Bulgarians speak English has meant that Mark and Pete have needed to learn fast in order to deal with contractors and suppliers. Being forced to overcome these obstacles has resulted in Mark and Pete learning DIY very quickly and I will not hestitate in employing Wels on his return as a general handyman.




Apart from working on the house during the day we also took on the responsibility of caring for a kitten that decided to make the house her home. Mark as we all know is not famous for being an animal lover, however Gary (it was a female but I liked the name) soon melted Mark's heart, he couldn't put her down, he made little beds for her our of his workman gloves, fed her filo pastry and cheese along with sour yoghurt and was overjoyed to find her waiting for him at the beginning of each new day. Sadly the last I have heard is that Gary is probably dead, as she hasn't been seen for days but maybe this experience of pet ownership will influence Mark to buy a pussy on his return to blighty!

Like many things in life the ultimate goal is not the most important thing but how you get there. Although the house is far from complete and may take a few more years of hard work, I don't doubt that the experience Mark, Pete and Sam have had simply living in a very different culture and learning the skills required to overcome the many daily obstacles (like goat herders blocking the road) is the greatest thing they will take away from the experience, and I envy them for having the courage to leave the security of 9 to 5 life and do something that everyone should at least try once in their lives.

Anyway enough bullshit philosophy for one day. I had a great trip with the exception of it being freezing and wet. Some highlights included getting pissed in the local bar while playing backpacker, followed by a 4 hour debate on the state of the welfare system in the UK. Seriously poor Wels did a great job mediating the polar views of Sam and myself which became quite heated as we drank over half a bottle of whisky. The next day Sam spent the day in the toilet and I spent it in the rain so I am not sure who came off best. Gabrevo nightlight was once again also a surprise with more swanky bars than Leamington spa and delicious food such as the wonderful "meatball fantasy" dish that I tried. A word of advice if you are ever offered cheap meatballs on individual skewers with cold cooked mushrooms and cucumber - give it a miss.

However one of my favourite moments that I am sure will always be remembered and exaggerated on by Wels was the 2.3Kg pizza challenge. To set the record straight the pizza had a diameter of 1m and no matter how much Wels bitches about his half being thicker than mine, I finished first!

Finally as Wels mentioned in his earlier post he has been distilling some rakia, here are my "official" tasting notes for his fine must try spirit.

Welsby's Homemade Plum Rakia - approx 45-50%

Colour: Real Lemonade

Nose: Lots of esters and fruit aromas, floral with elderberry, confiers, damsons and gooseberries all evident, in the background underipe plums

Palate: Fresh and fruity, distintive citrus notes early on the plate, follwed by nutty tones, very green (young)

Finish: Smooth, warming with a light floral fruity finale.

Enjoy it while you can before Welsby gets round to burying it!

Thanks again Wels and Sam for the great weekend can't wait for your next crazy adventure. All the best Clays.

shestnayset

So, apparently I'm here in Bulgaria to renovate this funny old house? But judging by my last few posts, it might seem that my life has turned into a rakia fulled circus and the house has been left, once again, to fall into rack and ruin? Au contraire, take a look at my new dograma:



Yes, it might have taken 4 months, several arguments with the carpenter, a few threats about non payment and a lot of patience, but finally we have some freekin windows; and bloody good windows at that, slavu bogu. Pete is currently staining them up ready for the double glazed units to be fitted next week. A few more photos have been uploaded to flickr for those of you who have a slow day at the office (see links to the right).

With this boost spurring us on to 'get the damn thing finished' I thought it was about time for a boring post about the house, the whole house and nothing but the house (yawn).

As you can see, a huge mound of soil seems to have grown out of the ground in front of the house. That's because Sam and I have spent a considerable part of the last month digging out all the floors downstairs and removing all of the mud from the floor upstairs (yes the upstairs floor was covered in 200-300mm clay soil). This was not easy. This took a long time. Sam is still whinging about her fingers. After that, we scurubbed the floors/ceilings clean (ish) and shifted around 15 tonnes of gravel back into the ground floor to provide drainage and a sub base for our floating floors (more on which later). This photograph gives you some idea of the amount of much shifted - the pile of gravel on the left is about 10 tonnes the soil is the huge pile to the right:



We have also installed all of the waste pipes for the bathroom and kitchen linking them up to the septic tank in the garden. A trench has been dug for the water supply which is now located inside the house which would be helpful if we had some bloody water in the village. It has now been off for 4 weeks. Not very helpful.



We have also repaired quite a few sections of the exterior walls will clay mortar (thats mud to you and I) which is now ready for lime rendering, even if we are not and built a new step down into the main door to help us get some decent ceiling heights downstairs.



Needless to say, our programme has gone out the window. Days of pouring over my fabulously coloured excel spreadsheet has shown us that I definitely shouldn't go into project management - unless I have a much larger, highly skilled workforce, 12 specialist consultants and a least one jcb all of which I can control - not much to ask for really. We knew we were being a bit optimistic in wanting to finish by december 08, but it has become clear that with our extensive and highly experienced workforce of 2, we'll do well to have the interior, let alone the exterior ready for winter. This, i suppose is the challenge one must must face when taking on the roles of project manager, quantity surveyor, architect/designer and builder, in a foreign country where you cant speak the language and are unable to rely on suppliers and contractors who frankly could do without the hassle of actually having to do some work... the lazy bastards.

Still, we have re-prioritized a few things to increase speed and to save a bit of cash and reckon we have a reasonable chance of getting the place semi habitable by the end of the year. A bit of value engineering never hurt anyone after all did it? Changes to the plan include:

- less sophisticated heating system (aka. no radiators, just a wood burner in one room)
- fewer tiled floors internally (now just the bathroom and bits of the kitchen)
- 'floating floors' in the 2 bedrooms and hall way downstairs
- open doorways within circulation spaces.

Which all means that the building will be great in the summer and a bit chilly in the winter, which bearing in mind we haven't decided how to use the thing in the future, is probably a sensible decision. We are though, planning to install dual serpentine water heaters (dual powered by the wood burner and the electric which could be converted easily to solar later), a powerful wood burner with enough capacity to run 6 or 7 radiators (to be retrofitted if required), and we can always add a few doors at our leisure in the future.

Other proposals which didn't make the final shortlist included:

- open plan living spaces (aka knock down all internal walls to save plastering them)
- removal of first floor to reduce number of rooms by half
- 'rationalization' and removal of building foundations...
- ... and erection of a dome tent on the site of the former building.

To prove how brilliantly we are doing, here's a quick snap of our new bathroom and hallway which you can see is almost compete:



Off to buy a bath & sink on Monday and the free bog I got from a mate after rebuilding his dry stone garden wall should be in within the next 2 days - honest! Why do I sense doubters?

The good news is that our summer camp starts in just over a week which will give us a much needed injection of man power I'm sure. At last count, we have.... errm, oh yeah, one person coming over. Praise the lord for Darren 'yeah i'm bringin my cut off denim shorts and a sketch book' Clayson. We'll show em clays. S'gonna be immense.

As for the rest of you, excuses about holiday shortages, prior 'engagements', unmissable trade shows at the NEC (yes Collins thats you), redundancies, burglaries, lack of DIY skill, laziness, disinterest and dogs eating plane tickets don't wash. You will all be blackballed from my next venture: a nudist camp for recovering models with combined cheese dairy - unlucky!

Back in the UK for a flying wedding in cornwall next week - praying for some sun. If any of you change your mind (not about the wedding, about the work camp) then you know where to find me.

Off to the pool now for some sun, beer and a dip. Enjoy the floods - except you clays.