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Sean, that's wonderful! I'm so glad you had a fab time, and PTL that you were able to help that dog.

We had Baba Marta in England, but I'll be travelling to our Bulgarian house in a couple of weeks. Our household includes six crazy special needs rescue cats, so one of us always needs to stay with them. And hubby doesn't cope well with being alone, meaning the longest I can leave him for is a week.

Because life got complicated last year I haven't been back since August - left the place with open windows and the water on, intending to return in a couple of weeks! Then my elderly cat got sick and hubby's mother broke her hip, and that was the end of any more travel plans. Thankfully my neighbour, who I gave a door key, went in and closed the windows, turned off the water, and drained the water system before the weather got cold. I expect to have to deal with serious weeds and plenty of cobwebs and dust, but hopefully no bigger issues like broken windows and water leaks.

If possible, my goal for this trip is to support the local furniture shop in the nearby small town by ordering my kitchen cabinets and appliances there. Also hoping that with it being spring, the builder's merchant will be willing to give me a better price on the wood-burning cooking stove I want! It will be nice to finally have a proper kitchen rather than the temporary set up in the front room!

@janemulberry - That's great news that things are finally moving forward for you, especially after going through the mill with life at home. Slow progress is better than no progress, pretty sure you'll find a deal, they seem to like a good haggle over here 馃槈

I've seen those petchka stoves selling between 199. - 499 leva, dunno bout you but for 拢200 or less seems amazing value for the heat they produce. On the point of kitchens and petchka, not sure if you know this already but a couple days ago, I was told if you speak to your local mayor... he or she will put in an order for your annual wood supply? They also give discounts for people of pension age.

Amazing what you learn down the pub in Bulgaria 馃ぃ

Anyways best wishes, look forward to reading about your adventures in the coming weeks

@S25 - Sean

That sounds busy and fun.

We are flying over Sunday and will do some exploring of VT initially, then some house hunting to see if we think we will like it here. Wish I found the language easier, finding it more difficult than Greek 馃槀

I will keep an eye out for your channel. I only watch YT or Netflix, occasionally French TV via VPN.

@jeanmandredeix

Good luck for Sundays trip!!

Something I completely missed (and regret) you might want to visit. There's an old town area of the city in VT, which kept all its traditional old architecture with wooden fronted buildings, quaint cobbled streets and hide away cafes, bars and shops. It's not a place for a property hunt but it looks like nice place to unwind for a few hours out of the hustle & bustle of heavy traffic and concrete tower blocks.

Hope you find your new house. I believe if you managed to cope with the French and their funny quirky attitudes you will love how friendly and laid back the Bulgarians are.

It took me a few days to ignore the dilapidated buildings mixed with new, the wierd code language written on everything... but in all, if you use a translation app with mobile data switched on, people will certainly help you no matter where you go or what problem you encounter finding or understanding things.

My second trip ended today and this past week was so much easier. I'm sure you'll have a great time 馃ぉ

Sean, yes, I need to ask about wood supply. We were blessed that our house already had a decent petchka in the聽 living room, and so far when it's been cold enough to want a fire I've cut up wood that was lying around or salvaged from the roof replacement. I asked the builders to save any wood, and they kindly piled it into the old tumbledown woodshed for me. It's tough work to cut - dried out black locust burns well but is hard as iron!聽 I also want to buy a cube or two of wood to go in the second woodshed so it will be well seasoned when I need to use it. For the kitchen I'm going to be extravagant, I could buy cheaper, but the cooking stove I want also has a glass window to see the fire and is about 750 leva.

Jean, VT is a beautiful city, especially the historic centre and the old castle. It's hilly, so make sure you have good walking shoes! We originally started our Bg adventure with several trips there and love it, and there are many good villages an easy drive or bus ride away with reasonably priced houses. It was more by accident that instead of buying there I ended up in Dobrich region, which I also love, but in a very different way.

for the language, I've found Google Translate isn't 100% accurate. Like the time it said my lovely neighbour called me a bastard, and she was horrified when I explained. I hate to think what it's told her I've said! But it's almost always helpful. Google Lens is also a useful app for translating text from images. It's less accurate than typing a transliteration into Google Translate, as it also needs to do OCR, but still worth trying for reading signs, forms, ingredients lists in the supermarket.

Learning to read Cyrillic is relatively easy, but learning what it means and to understand spoken Bulgarian is a far slower process, at least for me! I have a slight auditory processing problem, so reading is always easier for me than listening, even in English. I've been doing an online course, so hope that next time I can understand more of what is being said, and maybe even say more than "Dobre."

@janemulberry - It's definitely worth investing more when you're thinking long term, that's a good shout. I seen the old Babas cutting wood with a tiny chain saw, perhaps they might be good for you. When I say time, they look like a black and decker power drill size, the blade is like 6 inches or something. Pretty sure you can get them to run on electric rather than petrol too.

Any tips what apps and programs work best for learning Cyrillic, tbh I'm struggling with that ATM.

Conversation is hilarious between my neighbors, when signal drops we tend to jump up and down acting out the words and often Crack up laughing at each other 馃ぃ

I'm thinking of getting a small electric chain saw, though probably not the tiny ones. I'm not convinced they're up to the job for these old roof timbers. I bought an electric drill, a Bulgarian made brand, Raider, which seems pretty good. They do a whole range of electric tools including garden tools, and the batteries are interchangeable. I'm hoping I can provide at least a little of our wood by coppicing the wild plum and black locust trees on our acre. I don't feel safe trying a petrol chainsaw. I am just too clumsy, and I'd prefer not to lose any of the body parts I'm quite attached to! But it's hard work doing it by hand with a not-very-good bow saw and my pruning saw.

I 'm not sure which site I used to first learn Bulgarian Cyrillic. Bulgarian Pod 101 I think. There's plenty of good free resources on their website and YT channel: 聽 They also so a paid course. I am reasonably good at reading uppercase but still struggle with lowercase and can't read handwriting at all unless they print it in capitals. If you use any online resources, make sure it's Bulgarian Cyrillic as though the basics are the same, some of the letters are different in other versions. I tried a few free and paid courses for learning the language and picked up a bit but didn't get on so well with any of them. IIRC, Bulgarian Pod was the most useful. I'm now using Glossika, a paid course. It's very buggy and can be frustrating, but seems to be slowly working for me. Everyone has different learning styles -- hubby did the free trial for Glossika and hated it.

LOL, yes, acting out what we want to say if the phone goes down! Thankfully our village has good signal. I'd be completely stuck in some of the nearby villages that have no mobile signal at all!

Are you guys using Google Translate to chat with the neighbours?聽 If so, you don't need to be connected to the internet to use it: you can simply download the Bulgarian dictionary onto your phone/tablet and that's it...

Yes, I forgot about that. I discovered it after my first visit so I can still use it if the mobile network goes down.

@JimJ - I use instant voice recognition with Chat GPT integration, it's fantastic when signal works and as you say G-translate offline as a backup. Only trouble with Google translate it does get it wrong sometimes with funny results. But I wouldn't know if it makes a mistake. 馃檲

@Janemulberry - Yes the chainsaws terrify me too. The prospect of losing a limb or somme digits doesn't appeal much 馃ぃ

Update about the street dog.

They named him Jerry. He almost didn't survive and is currently in critical condition.

He has severe anemia, almost no white blood platelets and heartworm. They spent most of yesterday looking for a compatible blood donor (which thankfully they found from another rescue dog "freddie") and he's currently having a blood transfusion.

If he survives that process he will be on a drip with fluids and antibiotics for the next week. Next week I will share the story on my YouTube channel, and I'm encouraging the team to set up a GoFundMe page because currently they can only accept support via revolut app.

Fingers crossed and much prayer, hopefully he survives 馃檹

Thanks for the update on the dog. Praying. Be sure to post a link if a GoFundMe or similar is set up.

Every translation system going isn't going to be perfect, online or offline, but it will always get you by.

When speaking English it's not always said how it is in the tongue you want.

Even with Germanic words translated into English come out like: bastard, shitter, shit hole, gold fish. (Will let you guess the English words)

There are quite a few of them and always amusing.

Just an update here's the I tried to help.

Turns out he was dying and needed a blood transfusion. He is now being helped by a rescue foundation and they are on tiktok, my vid links to them for people who care to help or follow their story with the dog.

They called him Jerry 鉂わ笍