And so it begins....

After our eventful first day we decided to chill out for the morning. We went for a long wander around the castle in VT before setting out on our next long drive. This time from VT to Silistra, about 4 hours I think.

 

To those that haven't driven in Bulgaria, it is very typical European driving. Not at all like the UK. So much so that my husband refused to drive for most of the honeymoon (he had never seen driving abroad before!). The motorways are in ok condition as they are fairly new but the white lines don't reflect so it can be hard at night. The side roads are full of holes and in some places just dirt tracks. The drivers are NUTS. To overtake they will pretty much get to within an inch of your bumper and then go round you..... Usually whether there are cars the otherside or not. They hate it when you stick to the speed limit, instead they rely on other drivers flashing them if there are speed cameras or police nearby. I personally just ignored them all and pootled along in my own little world!

 

Thankfully the village and guest house were well sign posted and so we found it problem free.

It was a little one bed flat above the home of a Bulgarian couple who didn't speak a word of English! It made for interesting conversations using hand gestures! They even left us a bottle of wine and a bar of chocolate to celebrate our marriage.

 

We went to the village restaurant for dinner. We sat outside and I sent Matt in to get menus. He came out complaining about the lack of manners offered by the server. Another reminder that he isn't well travelled!! He has yet to learn that not every country offers fake smiles and pleasantries like ours does. I am trying to teach him that it isn't a lack of manners, its just that their culture doesnt work the same way as ours. It's going to take time for him to adjust!
So the server, who doesn't speak a word of English, brings out menus. Luckily the menus were in both languages so we could read and then point!!
Yes, at first she came across as a little standoffish but strangely the ice breaker was a tattoo on my arm / hand. She pointed at it and then to one she had. From that point on she was really friendly and helpful!

 

So the next day was the first day of viewings. We were picked up by an agent who took us to about 8/10 properties (we lost count!) in various state of repair with land ranging from 2000 to 5000 sqm. Most of them we disregarded within minutes. Too much work, too little land, wrong lay out of house / land etc. The first one we liked we nicknamed the grey house (3 guesses why?!) and this remained the only one we liked until the last house. It was stunning. The land wasn't perfect but it was doable. It certainly gave us something to think about.

 

The agent dropped us back to the village restaurant as we were starving after a long long day with no food. I had the joyful experience of using the restaurant toilet. Think a hole in the floor, quite literally. Being a girl wearing jeans made for an interesting peeing experience!

 

The next morning was spent walking around the nature reserve. We were accompanied by 2 dogs that appeared from no where and stayed with us for the whole of our walk. We lovingly named them fatty and longy. It turned out that they belonged to a lady selling souvenirs in the car park. She didn't seem surprised that they came with us, hand gestures suggested they did it a lot! Fatty was actually called Oliver. We can't remember the other ones name though.

 

The afternoon was then back in the car for a few hours drive to the next location! More on that soon x

First day of honeymoon / house hunting trip

Our honeymoon was eventful..... And not in newly wed type way!

 

We landed in Sofia, after some waiting got our hire car and, with me driving, we set off..... With me chanting 'I must be in the middle of the road' to remind myself which side to drive 

We drove for a few hours taking in the lovely sights before arriving at the place we booked to stay for that night; in a village near VT. We found it on Airbnb and on paper it looked perfect. In reality it was awful. We were greeted by a man who was a friend of the owner (it turns out he went to stay for a few days many years ago and never left!). He made us a cup of tea and told us all about the salvage hunting he did for a living. If we ever needed ANYTHING he could get it !

The tea mugs were filthy and the tea didn't taste quite right, sound have guessed then that the room wouldn't be great! To be fair , he was nice and friendly, just a little too dodgy for our liking.
He said he has 'upgraded' us from a private room in the hostel (we had no idea it was a hostel until then!) to the private bungalow because it had a wood burner and the rooms had no heating.
Well we managed about 10 mins in the bungalow before asking Google to find as a hotel with vacancies nearby!
It smelt dirty, it was dirty, there was mould on the ceiling, the window was broken so wouldn't close, it was just manky. Even if it wasn't the first night of our honeymoon we wouldn't of stayed there.
We later spoke to a friend who lives near VT and discovered it didn't have a good reputation and that a lot of young girls seem to spend time there.

 

Anyway we found a cheap but nice looking hotel on Google so put it in the sat nav and set off. For those of you already in Bulgaria you will know that sat navs aren't that good over there. We drove round and round and round VT for over an hour trying to find the hotel. Bear in mind we had been up for about 19 hours and I had already driven for 3 hours on Bulgarian roads. We were stressed!
In the end we parked (I think illegally but I was past caring!) and decided to find the hotel on foot. A Bulgarian man decided to try to befriend us to get money. Now I am a hardened traveler who is used to this and am very capable of telling them where to shove it (how nicely I tell them depends on how much they are harassing me!!). Matt however isn't well travelled (this was only his second trip abroad) so decided to stop for a chat despite me trying to drag him away. He is too nice for his own good most of the time! So there was me ranting under my breath about wasting time talking to some bloke who just wanted our money when Matt told him we were trying to find the hotel so he walked us to the door, told us how to drive from where we had parked (dumped!) the car and then asked for £1. OK, OK I am happy to admit when I am wrong. He wasn't so bad after all! In fact he saved the day. We didn't have much change on us but we gave him all of it..... He might of thought he scammed us but I think we did better out of the deal!

We checked in, opened all the windows (to them it was winter so the heating was on full. It was 20 degees outside and about 40 in our room!) and went to a restaurant recommended by reception. It was our first meal in Bulgaria and it was amazing. You get a lot for your money in restaurants!
 

As you can imagine it was an early night for us. We were absolutely exhausted.
 

Enough for one post i think. More to follow soon x

Oops...... I seem to have bought a house 😁

Omg it's been so long since I updated this. I must try harder!

So the whole court / finances thing took much longer than anticipated and it finally ended in November. By which time we had got married, spent out honeymoon house hunting in Bulgaria and found a few houses we liked.

I feel, for the benefit of anyone else house hunting and reading this, I need to dedicate a post to the viewings and then update you as to where we are now. I will do that this week I promise!

Hope you are all good and your Bulgarian life is treating you well ❤️

Like buses .....

No posts for ages and then 2 at once!

Progress on the money front ...... he upped his offer for the first time ever (for over 3 years he has been offering me the same low amount !!). I counter offered .... he hasn’t replied. Still its made me happy to know he is obviously worried otherwise he wouldn’t have changed his offer after being so adement for all these years!

So I have braved looking for houses again. And we have changed our areas a little. While we were favouring VT we are now looking at Silistra or Pleven. We are leaning more towards Silistra. We have decided on a fairly specific business to start once we move and these 2 areas offer us what we would need. We have also decided that, while we are getting settled in the early years, we shall return home for 3 months in the winter to work, work, work to save money for the rest of the year.

We have found 2 houses that we are really interested in. They couldn’t be any further apart in terms of work required!!  House number one is already renovated to a really good standard, the outbuildings have been done too. There is over 1.5 acres of land and a swimming pool. SWOON!  House number 2 is small and pretty much needs everything doing to it including roof. It has the same amount of land but over half of it is forest...... Owning a forest has been our dream! Obviously there is a HUGE price difference too but the first one is still within budget.

We have decided to come over in July or August to have a look at those and others. We will probably fly in to Varna seeing as we fly into Sofia in October. Been looking at flights ..... there are plenty of them but ‘strangely’ going out is really cheap, but coming home is really expensive! They get you every way possible don’t they?!

I can’t wait to have a bolt hole over there. Things with my step daughter are, umm, strained. I thinking having somewhere I can run to for some time away might help!

Off to browse for more houses now. Watch this space :)

Language ...... or lack of it!

Ok so I've always been crap at learning languages so can speak a grand total of one .... English! I must admit tho, I'm pretty fluent in that one :)

I have distant memories of learning French at school. And a rather prominent memory of being kicked out of my French oral exam for losing my temper and swearing at my teacher. Something along the lines of 'why the f**k do I need to know this s**t anyway, I'm never going to f**king use it'. Oh the naivety of a 15 year old farmers girl!! Although I'm not fully to blame, farmers were a little behind the times back then and I was being brought up with the expectations that I would work as a secretary and then marry and become a housewife! I didn't want to become a secretary but that was the only course I was allowed to do at college ...... I think I have spent my life rebelling against the 'norm' purely because of that! My parents have since given up trying to tell me what to do and just shrug and say 'whatever'!!

Anyway back to the language.....

I have tried to learn Spanish as an adult, kinda, in a half hearted type of way. I'm not so good at being motivated if there isn't a reason for learning something new. There was no real reason for learning Spanish other than I thought it would be nice to know. Turns out, that's not a good enough reason for me!

But now we are moving to Bulgaria, where they speak a TOTALLY different language with no latin alphabet and where English is only really spoken in tourist areas by younger people. And we have chosen to live in a rural area surrounded mainly by older traditional people. UMMM PROBLEM!!

I have looked at various different ways to start learning. Thankfully some of the words are very similar to ours; but the rest are totally different! And the alphabet?!  Whats that all about?!

 

This may take some time!!

 

So top tip number one ..... listen to Bulgaria radio as often as possible. You can not learn a language if you have no idea what it sounds like; which is why it is easier to learn a language when you are already living in the country. During the day I only have Bulgarian radio on, its just in the background. I don't understand a word they are saying but it is training my brain to the sounds and pronunciations.

I will soon start watching TV in Bulgarian; not local TV, shows that I would watch here which have been translated. Hopefully I can find some with English subtitles but I'm sure it will still help without them, especially if I can find films or TV shows that I know well ..... I could quote pretty woman or dirty dancing word for word!!

 

I have searched the internet for children's type worksheets which I have printed and will start using to learn the alphabet. One positive of the Bulgarian language is that the words are pronounced as they are written so if I can learn to read the letters and understand what each one sounds like then I am a step closer to understanding the language. I need to be able to read as well as speak it, menus and road signs are rarely translated so if I want to eat and find my way around then reading is vital!

 

I have watched various YouTube videos and looked at many web sites but haven't yet found anything that I think will help me. Traditional teaching methods bore me so I lose interest and don't learn. I have decided just to focus on learning the alphabet my way and then decide from there ..... wish me luck!

 

Oh and as for getting Matt to learn the language .... hmmmmmm, that will be an even tougher task. He doesn't get much spare time and he doesn't have the same OCD level of researching and learning as I do. I suspect he will just pick it up from me when I am using it while over there. Speaking it will be the priority for him which will be easier to pick up when he is surrounded by it.

 

That's me done for today. Thanks for those who read and comment, its greatly appreciated.



Earning money

My one and only concern that I keep coming back to over and over again is earning money. Yes, we will have some money saved to start us off but it wont last long considering we will be renovating a house and having to buy everything we need for our new life.

Currently I don’t work and, as we want to be as self sufficient as possible when we move, I will need to be at home as much as possible. I also don’t want to do what everyone else seems to do ..... teach English online.
Matt manages a concrete batching plant. He is a hand on type guy so gardening and building type jobs would do him. He has experience with scaffolding which I understand might be in demand over there so buying a tower to bring over might be an option. Obviously his knowledge of concrete might be useful too. His company does own 3 plants in Bulgaria but they are not in areas we want to live and I guess they will be fully staffed with Bulgarian staff. Maybe we could do some type of partnership working with them.

I don’t like the uncertainty of this part of the move. I know we always have the option of returning home for the winter and earn money back in the UK to last the rest of the year in Bulgaria. I know we can always return to the UK if we fail. I just wish I had some definite answers!  I know, I know ..... I just have to go with the flow on this!

Anyway I will be doing some courses to gain some new skills. It will have to be online courses as we are no where near any colleges! What courses I choose remains to be seen. I keep changing my mind!! I have a HNC in Housing Studies ...... that’s not going to be much use to me over there!! I know how to be a housing officer, an estate / letting agent, a housing support worker and an area manager in all those areas. I can’t see that experience being any use! Yes, I guess I could set up an estate agency, but is it really needed? And would it actually make any money?! It’s not really a country of high sales or profit. Maybe a holiday let management company. But we don’t really want to live near the coast and that’s where the tourist money is. And do I even want my own company?! I don’t think I do. I just want to earn enough to pay the bills.

Sigh.
I just need to win the lottery so that money isn’t an issue!
I’m off to ponder some more.
I may be some time.
And I doubt I will be any closer to an answer!

Flights booked!

So we have booked our flights for our first house hunting mission. Well technically it will be our honeymoon but we are spending it house hunting! We get married on 26th October and fly out to Sofia on 29th for a week. Children and pets are kindly being looked after by nanny (Matts mum).

We have a good idea of the area we think we want to live in but obviously cant say for sure until we have been there. It’s quite a large area so hopefully our trip will help us narrow it down a little. Because we want a property with at least 4000sqm of land we don’t have as much choice as most people which is good ...... otherwise I would have no idea how to narrow down all those houses for sale!! That said there are still a lot of places suitable for us to choose from. I have ruled out places where the house needs to be demolished and rebuilt .... too much for us to take on. We would prefer a roof in a water tight condition but it seems they are fairly hard to find! I guess we will just learn how to roof. We have the added bonus that Matt is experienced in putting up scaffolding. We are considering buying a tower to ship over. It might provide us with an option for paid work as well.

My time still seems to be spent researching. I read blogs, facebook groups and books about all different subjects that will help us in future. Today I got a readers digest book of hints and tips for gardening .... its amazing! So much helpful information. I have grown veggies in the past but not at the level we will need to in order to be self sufficient. I grew up on a farm so have some basics to fall back on. From what I have read there will be people I can turn to for help and advice once we have bought somewhere over there.

I am hoping we can have a few days over there during the summer but that is subject to the various court dates / outcomes that I have going on right now. Divorces are rarely nice and easy are they?!

That’s me for now. More soon I’m sure!