Our first week.

We've had an amazing and productive first week. I know it's a long post, but please enjoy...

 

Tuesday

As we'd had a few early mornings we decided not to set an alarm for today. We still woke up naturally at about 8 though and got up and packed our stuff. We checked out the hotel and drove around the corner to the builders merchants to look for some tools. The two shops in Chirpan are great, but neither of them had what we wanted - although we did buy a wheelbarrow! By about 10 c'clock we were back at our house. The weather wasn't great - it was quite cold and cloudy - but at least it wasn't raining, so we cracked on with making somewhere we could live. My task was to put the big tent up at the bottom of the walnut orchard, whilst Pete was down in the garden clearing the path from the gate to the house. We were currently using a track through the grass but could see there was a stone path underneath all the overgrown plants.

 

 

The tent is big and took a while to put together but as soon as we had it all pegged down we realised we hadn't eaten yet - or even had a coffee! So we got a table in from the house, set up the cooker (camping stove we had from travelling) and put the kettle on. After a cuppa and some eggs we carried on. We got the bed in from the van and assembled it in the bedroom, bought in shelves and food and put down a tarp with rugs over to make it nice and cosy. I even hung the curtains and put up fairylights! We had all the essentials inside and it started to drizzle - good timing. So we sat in our tent and had another cuppa whilst waiting for the rain to pass. It wasn't too long before the rain died down and we decided to brave it outside as we needed a toilet. We decided to put the loo behind the house as there were two stone walls we could use as one corner. We had a really cheap windbreak thing that had an awning and after some time of tying string around trees and climbing over walls we eventually had a pretty good shelter. We even used some of the large flat stones from the broken wall as a floor! It looked great. Obviously we have no running water yet so we drove down into the village to fill up the toilet tank, as well as our big water container.

 

Bed going in.

Larder.

 

Collecting water.

When we got back we assembled to toilet and then got a few last things from the house to take with us to the tent. It was getting late now and starting to get very cold so we quickly cooked some pasta for dinner. We stayed up for a little bit after eating - we had the tilly lamp on and did a crossword - but it was so bloody cold we had to go to bed! With all of our clothes on! We watched some TV on the laptop but fell asleep pretty early. Not a great nights sleep though as it rained very heavily all night.

 

Making space for the loo.

Lovely toilet with stone floor!

Our first dinner.

Wednesday

It was very hard to get out of bed this morning as it was freezing!! We managed to drag ourselves up though and warmed up a bit with a cup of tea. After tidying the tent a bit we drove out to Chirpan to go to the supermarket for food. The shop they have in town in a Pennymarket - quite similar to Lidl - so we went there because it was easy. Pete was very excited to see that in the veg section they were selling wild garlic and stinging nettles! After stocking up on food we popped by the builders merchants again to get a few bits and then tracked down the petrol station to get petrol for Petes strimmer.

Back at home we decided to have some breakfast before starting work. After we'd fed ourselves we headed to work - Pete was in the garden cutting down trees and clearing everything around the house and I was in one of the upstairs rooms clearing it out. I got rid of the old mattress and cleaned under the bed. Then ripped out the flume from the old wood burner and scrubbed the mould off the wall. Basically gave it good scrubbing! I then put all of our stuff in the nice cleam room and made sure we knew where everything was and that we could access it all (it was chaos in the room we had originally put our stuff and we couldn't find anything!)

 

Lots to clear!!

Hard at work, burning stuff.

Before

After

Before

After

 

At some point in the afternoon I went to text M & D (our estate agents) and realised we didn't have their phone number! Becuase of this we stopped working at about 4 and cleared up. We then drove out, with our laptop, to Hotel Trendafiloff, 10 mins away. We got a beer and used the free wifi to get M & D's phone number and of course check facebook etc. Not long after getting home M & D text us back and said they would pop around in about an hour. We quickly got the tent looking lovely and got some extra chairs out the house. They arrived with wine and after showing them what we'd already done in the house and garden we invited them to our tent to drink it with us. We had a really fun evening chatting and drinking - it didn't even seem too cold (but maybe the wine helped!)

Thursday

This morning was much warmer so it was easier to get out of bed! We woke up quite early, had a cup of tea and relaxed a bit. We also got a bit clean (baby wipes!) and put on some clean clothes because we were off out to Chirpan. The day started off very nice and sunny and at about 9.15 we set off to M & D's house in the next village (we call the village SG.)

As well as selling property M & D also do renovations. The house they are in currently is their new renovation project so is looking a bit like a building site - we had a look around and got to see some of things we'll have to be doing soon. Anyway after a quick cuppa we set off with M to Chirpan, stopping on the way back in our village shop - we wanted M to talk to the shop lady for us. We wanted a bread order (which we now have on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays!) and also apparently the shop lady's cat was pregnant, so we wanted to ask if we could have a kitten when they are born. The shop lady is very friendly and nice (it's her old house we are living in), she showed us the preganant cat and was very happy for us to have a kitten! She also asked if I wanted to meet her for coffee some time to do Bulgarian/English lessons.

So eventually we headed into Chirpan. We spent the day with M sorting out lots of things:

We went to the electricity company - they will be coming in 5 working days to turn on our power (annoyingly Bulgaria's Easter weekend is this weekend as they are orthodox - so there is 4 days holiday now!)

We went to the water company - they have reconnected our water we just have to go home and find the stop tap to turn it on.

We went to the bank - we now have a joint Bulgarian bank account, with cards arriving in 2 weeks.

We went to get on the list for an internet connection, but it seems they can usually come out on the day you want them so we will wait until we have electricity.

We bought a huge new gas bottle for our camping stove (and eventually our cooker in the house.)

We also tried to go and pay our council tax for the year but the municipality had already gone on holiday!

Between doing all this we also went for lunch at the pizzeria (10 quid for 3 of us!) M is amazing - we have no idea what we would have done without her! Especially as all these official offices are in buildings that just look likes someones house with loads of doors to choose from and not overly friendly people (maybe they were just waiting to start the holiday.) We have noticed already that Bulgarians love to postpone their work until after lunch and have no problem letting you know they are about to go on their break! Anyway, a very good and productive day.

It was gettng on to 4 o'clock by the time we'd dropped M home and got back to ours. The day had turned a bit grey and very windy and when we got to the tent we found thatour food shelf had been blown over and there was jars of food everywhere. Annoying. We cleaned it up though and put the shelf away from the side of the tent incase the wind kept up. We then had a coffee and chilled for a bit before heading down to the garden to see if we could find our stop tap. This was not as easy as it sounds because we had to cut down several trees and strim alot of overgrown plants just to get to where the stop tap should be. In a straight line from the outside tap is a little brick hut which seemingly has nothing in it. We thought this must be where the tap is but even after digging down a bit we couldn't find anything. In the end we decided to look further along the garden but got distracted by the fact thatall our trees were completely covered in clematis - so started cutting this down instead! We did this for an hour or so and managed to uncover an apple tree, which is hopefully okay, and a very dead looking other kind of tree. The clematis is everywhere and properly tangled around everything in the garden - we would try and finish the job tomorrow!

Looking for our water.

Going in with the strimmer.

First proper view of our house.

At about 7 we went back to the tent and made some dinner. It was pretty cold again this evening so it was an early night, watching a film, wrapped up in bed.

Keeping warm!

Friday

This morning was absolutely gorgeous blue skies! This was of course very welcome, but also meant it was FREEZING. Literally; there was frost all over the tent and our glass of water was frozen! Anyway the sun slowly rose behind us, and with a coffee in our hand we walked up to the top of our land to take in the sunny views.

 

Sunrise over the village.

 

 

At 9 o'clock we set off to Chirpan - Friday is market day! The market was not huge but it was very busy and insanely cheap. We mostly bought fresh veg, but we were also persuaded into buying 2 tomato plants, 2 pepper plants and a cucumber plants - but at 20p each we couldn't really say no!! We came home fully laden and had only spent about 3 pounds. So good.

 

Chirpan market.

 

Back at home we planted our new plants and left them out in the glorious sunshine. As we had said yesterday we planned to spend the day clearing the bottom garden of clematis - before it killed the rest of our trees. This was a mammoth task but after about 4 or 5 hours we had managed to do quite alot of it - even though we found that it was not only clematis that had over taken, but roses as well which were even worse and we are now both covered in scratches. We stopped eventually as M & D had invited us to a BBQ this evening at their friends house. We were by now quite grubby so we filled up some buckets and had a wash with some very cold water - luckily it was a very warm day and we had been working hard! So we were nice and clean, with some nice clothes on, when M & D came to pick us up at about 4.30.

 

Our first plants.

Before

After

Before

After

Just one of the many pile of brash.

Lunch with our market fresh veg

Very cold shower

The friends lived in another village, not too far away. They were a Russian couple with a friend visiting from Amsterdam. They had made the most fantastic food (one of them used to be a chef for Putin!) and we drank lots of wine and had a really fun evening. They were lovely guys and said we were welcome to their house anytime. We didn't leave too late and after we'd been dropped home we stayed up to have one more beer sitting under the most incredible stars (the night was completely clear.) Great evening.

Yummy food!

Saturday

We had quite a relaxed morning this morning - clearing up the tent and faffing about until about 10 o'clock. We then drove down to the water tap in the village to fill our tank, as well as our two solar showers now the sun was shining. Then we drove around to the local shop to pick up or bread order. The shop was very busy and we did alot of smiling and not understanding all the old ladies!

Hot water coming!

Back at home we spent the rest of the day clearing. Pete was back in the garden cutting down big trees and removing more clematis and horrible thorny bushes. The sun was properly out now which meant Pete's shirt was off - but also meant all the bugs had come out and were flying/crawling everywhere. I was inside clearing one of the rooms downstairs. This was alot more gross than upstairs as the floor is built directly on to soil and there were some very freaky looking insects behind everything I touched. Eurgh. Got there eventually though and I even managed to clear the hall way upstairs as M & D had found out that we might find the old water metre up there (we didn't.)

Before

After

Before

After

Forgot the before - but clean hall!

Sandwich break

The house may be tidy but we need to go to the dump!

Getting there

Another hard days work in glorious sunshine so we stopped about 6 and had a beer, sitting in the sunshine on our front steps. After a beer we got down a big bucket to stand in and had a HOT SHOWER each from our solar showers! So good!! I washed my hair and everything and it was so nice to be properly cleaned with hot water.

Beer!

Hot showers!

Simple couscous for dinner and Pete went to bed at about 8 (it was still light) as he was so knackered! I stayed up for a while writing up the blog, but also went to bed pretty early.

Cooking in the tent

Sunday

Today we planned to go to Stara Zagora (SZ) with M & D as they needed to pick up a new shower and we needed loads of stuff! We thought we were going to pick them up at 9.30 but at about 9 D arrived at ours. We showed him around the house and told him our plans for where we wanted stuff. As were had not made a final decision on the where the loo was going to go he gave us some good ideas. He also came up with a great idea for where to have a balcony - which we are definitely doing! We also had another look for the water metre. The old metre wasn't inside, as we'd found yesterday, and D said the stop tap would definitely be in the little brick hut which we'd originally thought. So Pete got his work cloths back on, went in the hut and started digging. It was almost a metre of digging until he finally found it. Anyway the tap was looking very old and rusty, as was the piping. The other weird thing was that there wasn't a metre to be seen - although there was some dodgy plastic piping where it should have been. Anyway we decided we'd have to replace whole lot, including new pipes to the house.

So off we went to SZ with a very long shopping list. We got all the stuff for the new water pipes, tap and metre. We got all the stuff for a new fuse box and sockets and switches for when we eventually re-wire the house. We also got stuff so we could temporarly have power when the guys finally come and connect us. As well as all this we got several new tools and went for for lunch at a grill (this is very Bulgarian to eat meat and bread, and the funny thing is the grills are usually outside supermarkets! Very strange - but good!) Feeling very happy with all the stuff we'd got, and at how outrageously cheap it all was (less than 300 pounds), we headed back home, stopping for a coffee at M & D's on the way.

Lunch at the supermarket!

Our purchases

It was already gone 4 when we got home, but we had planned to have some labourers and M & D to come and work on the house tomorrow. The labourers were going to dig the long trench from the stop tap to the corner of our house and currently there were a lot of trees, a concrete path and a collapsed outbuilding in the way! There wasn't much we could do about the concrete path but we got stuck in clearing the trees and long grass and tearing apart the fallen in roof and smashed tiles. What looked like a huge job (and probably would have taken us longer if we'd had the time) took only a couple of hours and we were pretty pleased with ourselves once we'd finished.

Before

After

Before

After

We had a nice veg pasta for dinner and had a beer whilst watching a lovely sunset. Another productive day! Not too cold an evening - watched another film in bed. Oh also, just to mention - I was expecting the nights here to be very silent, but actually the wildlife is quiet loud! There are frogs in the stream and there are a lot of wild dogs in the surrounding forest that howl all night. This also sets off all the pet dogs in the village barking! It's not annoying though, and the birds and cockerals in the mornings are great.

Monday

Wow! What a day!! We were up early - getting the tools and drinking water ready for our labourers. By the time they arrived at 9 we were already in the barn clearing out all the rubbish. M & D were here too and everyone set to work straight away. M was just here to supervise the guys digging the trench (apparently they can be quite cheeky about how many ciggie breaks they have!) We were actually employing D for the day and he was getting on with fitting our new fuse box and temporary plug sockets. Me and Pete carried on in the barn - which was quite alot of work. There was alot of old crap in there and the floor was thick with straw and old animal poo! There was also a mountain of wood and kindling. We got stuck in and eventually we found that we had a lovely stone floor under all the crap and even found some treasures amoungst all the rubbish.

Before

After - there is a nice stone floor there somewhere.

More stuff for the dump

By about 1 o'clock we'd finished the barn and realised we probably had to feed everyone. As we had no food we drove out to the next village, SG, but found the shop closed as it was still a bank holiday. So we turned back and drove to Chirpan instead, where the supermarket was open. We drove back at full speed as everyone must be starving by now! Pete made a big salad at lightning speed, we had bread and meat and dips and finally we all sat down for lunch. These labourer guys were amazing and had already almost finished the trench - which was about 17 metres long and 80cm deep (at one end it was about a metre and a half deep). They had also got through the concrete path with just a hammer and a chisel and had dug out the roots of a big tree. Unbelieveable! And we payed them about 10 pounds each for the day - apparently quite a good amount.

Tea break

Amazing labourers

Fuse box and sockets - ready for power!

Hall before

After

Anyway, once we were all fed and watered we carried on. Pete and D started insulating the pipe and putting together the fixings to go in the trench and I got on with clearing the downstairs hall. By about 3.30 the labourers and finished our trench and they left with M to go and do some work on their house. Me, Pete and D got the pipe in the ground and after a lot of elbow grease (from D) we got the new water metre attached to the old stop tap. So we had it all ready to go - the plan was to turn on the old stop tap for good as we had attached a brand new one along the pipe which we could turn on and off as we pleased. We then had a tap coming up next to the house and some more pipe - with a stopper - that will eventually run off into the house. So D got down into the brick hut to turn the old stop tap on and it bloody snapped off because it was so old and rusty! Ahh! He was there for about an hour, trying several different tools, trying to get the rusty little nubbin to turn! He got it about a quarter way around - so we did have water coming out our new tap - but after that it wouldn't budge. By half 5 we decided to give up - we at least had water on the property, just not with much pressure. We sat in the sun and enjoyed a well deserved beer. D said they would contact the water company and let them know the problem and we'd go from there as with what to do next.

Pete helping D in the brick hut

New water meter!!

PIPE

Water!

Beautiful view from the house

Once D had gone home we used the little bit of warm water from the solar showers to get cleaner and then for dinner had the meat, cheese and salad left over from lunch. In the evening we stayed up and played scrabble. Very good day - we have water! :)

Sunset from tent

Tuesday

Today we decided to have a rest day as we haven't really stopped since we left Brighton! We had a relaxed morning and cleaned up the tent a bit and did all the washing up from yesterday. One thing we did need to do was empty the loo, so Pete dug a big hole at the top of the field and poured the waste in - the most disgusting thing we've ever done! We covered it with straw from the barn and covered the hole with a plank of wood - ready for next time. Gross.

Tent

In the morning we got a call from M saying she was coming over soon with the electricity men. We couldn't believe it! They came over, M told them what they needed to do and then they left again - of course they would be back after lunch to actually finish it. We burnt some of our rubbish and I walked down to the shop to collect our bread - I managed to find out that the cat hadn't had her kittens yet. Then we had some lunch ourselves. Later the electritians came back and hooked us up - we have electricity! We got an extension lead all the way up to the tent so are now charging all our things, soon we will buy a toaster and a fridge so can buy proper food. The rest of the afternoon was spent blogging. We did get a visit from the village mayor, she came with an English guy who also lives in our village, and were told we need to go to her office tomorrow to 'register' and show her our documents etc.

Little rubbish fire.

Photo from around the village

Electrician

POWER

We had a quick dinner and then drove over to M & D's for a beer and to use their internet so I could finally post this blog!! By the end of the week we should have our own internet, so I will try to update more regularly.

 

Dovejdane! x