Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler

An awfully long time away from the site.  Why?  Stuck in Bulgaria away from net access; that's why.

A generally stressful trip about sorting out our house and then looking after my folks on their first trip there.

People

• Nikolai and Zoya : lovely people who picked us up at the airport despite it being 1.30am.  Best news of the trip too; she's well up the duff.
• Police : Mental levels of road blocks stopping all and sundry from driving between towns.
• Tzetzko and Katya : Still lovely and he's looking more hippy like than ever.
• Maiko : I knew she occasionally got a bit stressed but the way she nearly burst a corpuscle just because my folks were coming was not nice to see.
• K : Nearly went as mental as her mum.  Worryingly poor at communicating at all through most of the trip.  Really don't know why. 
• Denchu and Ivanka : The previous owners of our house.  We really did manage to give her 2 days of extreme hypertension and him a mini-stroke.  The dark side is strong in this one!
• My parents : Seemed to enjoy their holiday.  I think they were surprised by some of it; non-plussed by others and fed-up with all the waiting around we had to do.  Turns out my dad doesn't eat cucumber - a mild inconvenience it's true as the staple diet of the bulgs is cucumber.
• Totevi : useless tosspots the lot of 'em.

Weather

• The weather was astonishing.  Mainly extremely hot (well into the 30's), 2 days of ridiculous rain; one session of huge hailstones and lightning above the Tsaravets light show.  K got burned!

House

• What a mess!  Needs an awful lot of work.  Needs furniture.  Needs the previous lot to actually shift their crap.
• Previous lot were nice and "whitewashed the walls for you" and managed to get it on everything else that really didn't need whitewashing.  Messy!
• K spent the trip trying to get someone to help out or do the whole thing for us.  Managed to get one person's number but he then managed to avoid answering his phone; then didn't respond to messages and then switched his phone off.  So how exactly are we going to get this house ready for guests in August?

Animals

• Dogs are happy and I like them a lot.  Aaahh.
• Cats are cats.  Still trying to sneak in the house and one went mental when trapped in the house with me and realised he was in awful trouble.
• Snake, snake ooohhhhh a snake!  I saw my first real life wild snake. And not just a dinky one neither.  This fellow was about a metre long.  It was also not out in the wilds but in K's mum's garden.

Places

• Dryanovo is still lovely.
• Tsaravets is still impressive.
• Tarnovo is still a nice place to visit.
• Hotel Yantra had a Jeckyll and Hyde persona.  We went in the first week and had a lovely time with ace food and a stunning view.  The next week we went with my parents and we had a good view of the citadel but as the night wore on (and it was hot) they opened the bloody windows.  Cue vast swarms of flies, midges and mozzies around us and in the food and our hair.  My mother has never been so emphatic in her life when she said "Never bring me here again!"

Food

• Lots of restaurants. An oddity noticed before but really obvious on this trip is that all the restaurants are exactly the same.  Well not exactly but their menus are.  Imagine every restaurant and caff in the UK doing the same menu.  How would you choose which is the one for you?  I don't know.
• We did try a different place that was officially a chinese restaurant but they didn't really want to serve us.
• Still no Indian places.  Boo.
• Still no western crap fast food - yay!

Travel

• Chavs on the plane.  Travel is clearly too cheap at the moment.
• K driving, yes driving.  An experience to be sure but not one I'll impose on possible future guests quite yet.  Did manage to hit the gates of the drive when trying to reverse out.
• Lots of driving done in ancient Lada and hired car (a well knackered Vectra - but still plenty better than the Lada).
• Lada died on main road.  Cue lots of K blaming me for "not knowing how the car works". I blamed a knackered 27 year old Lada that hadn't been driven for 2 years.  After rescuing the car the mechanic said that the fuel pump had died.  After replacement it worked fine.  I thank you!  Perhaps a dead fuel pump is a symptom of not "knowing how the car works".  But probably not.

Oddments

• One day I was woken up by an all mighty rumpus outside.  Opened the window to see a startled cow running up and down the drive.  K's mum eventually got a chain round its neck but this only led to the spectacle of Maiko "water skiing" behind a cow.
• Had an eye test and turns out that my eyesight is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago.  New pair of glasses ordered that will be quite nice for driving with.  (How middle aged do I sound?)
• Party for 6 that ended up with 11 guests.  Cue more frantic doings by Maiko and K going mental over preps.  My folks did get to hear Tzetzko and Sashu doing their music thang though.  That was fun.

Oh there was probably more but that'll do.

Have fun.