Round 2.

So after reporting back home about how much I enjoyed Bulgaria, the other half (Liz) agreed to come out with me to have a look at a few houses & to see if she liked the area.  We booked flights for October half term & arranged to be shown a few houses by an estate agent. Our daughter in the mean time decided she didn't want to come & booked herself in with a friends parents for the week so she could go trick or treating, flight non refundable of course. 

The day arrives & up with the sparrows fart at dark o'Clock we drive to Gatwick.  Another overpriced breakfast & were on the way. On board a new plane with posh Recaro seats & more legroom we get seated. We are now delayed waiting for another passenger, when along comes an elderly Bulgarian lady with her mentally ill son who seems to have overdosed on a lethal cocktail of sedatives & Maryland cookies. A battle then commences between the lady & her son involving lots of shouting, dribbling & biscuit crumbs, with the other passengers now getting agitated & trying not to stare & the non Bulgarian speaking cabin crew looking terrified the battle heads to the rear of the plane & into the toilets. After a few minutes of banging & screaming the old girl comes  back through the plane with the poor stressed fellow in an arm lock which was impressive as she was half his size, they headed to the front of the plane & were escorted off leaving a trail of broken biscuits. We get the usual pre flight announcements done & taxi off to the runway where we sit for another hour as we missed our slot!

We finally land smoothly thanks to our Russian sounding lady pilot (i expect a man parked it for her!) & get out into the sun to see which comedy budget car we have this time. We are presented with a not too shabby Dacia Sandero (James May would be pleased!) & this one had tires at no extra cost! So another road trip 120 ish miles to Stanevo, a swift drive through the Sofia pikey camp (Dobur den my chav), then a quick wave to the poor unfortunate ladys in the lay-bys that cant afford any clothes. Into Lidl in Vratsa for supplies & a strange margarine type substance that keeps the same consistency if you put it in the fridge or leave it out in the sun, I cant believe its not shit & fat!

We drive through beautiful sunshine for an hour or 2, then as we drive down into the valley towards Lom its thick fog, pitch black, freezing & the car steams up!  We arrive at house of Fuzz, give Liz the quick tour of the estate & go to the bar where she has the introduction to a few of the locals & more importantly Rakia! She politely drinks the local brew & then has the face of someone thats just stuck their tongue on a 9 volt battery for the first time, to be honest the taste is pretty similar. I politely smile through the pain of my shot thinking just neck it & get it over with, this again gives the locals the impression i like it & im handed a small mineral water bottle full of it. Liz said to me quietly, youre going to die, i know, i whispered.  I drank it, it went down & more importantly stayed down. Game over!

We wake on a bright autumn morning to the sounds of horses & carts, donkeys, various dogs & birds doing there thing. We went out into the sun & ironically it was warmer in October than it was in June. We spent a few days looking round the area, went into Vidin & visited the Pheonix cafe for a lamb pasty & a bun, English run would you believe! We eventually spent a day being shown various houses in even more various states of disrepair, the choices were either buy one to do up or dont be such a tight bastard! The tight bastard won!

We discussed it for a while, Liz & i liked the idea of holidays away from the tourist areas & more importantly away from gobby drunk English people (I fit this description very well myself). We decided to go for it, narrowed it down to 3 properties then agreed a very good price on one that needed the least doing to it & more importantly had an indoor bog! We spent a few more days with Fuzzy & Sue, we went out for Sue's birthday for a nice meal & then had to fly back to reality.

The reality being, oh shit did we just agree to buy a house in the middle of nowhere in a country we know bugger all about?

Yep, we now need to try to learn a bit of the language & look oaround to see what is in the area.

If there is a god, his name is Mr Google!