Bulgarian life

How to survive January

How to survive January

How’s January treating you so far? I was livid – actually livid – to see that other parts of Bulgaria had a lovely sprinkling of snow in the past week, while our area is still a sea of brown. Brown trees, brown fields, brown roofs. So although we always ease into...

Worried about winter

Worried about winter

Early January. Even though 95% of your body is under the duvet, you can tell it’s going to be cold when you get out. Cold wooden floors, maybe a thin film of ice on the single-pane windows. What little you can see through the window is bleached, the grey and white...

It snowed without me

It snowed without me

Greetings from the UK where I have been mostly screeching about the price of everything and wondering why there are so many people everywhere. So, you know, my standard UK experience. It doesn’t even feel that Christmassy here, and that’s my main reason for coming...

Putting on a show

Putting on a show

How splendid has this autumn been in Bulgaria? The colour of the leaves has been stunning, and because the days are so warm (verging on hot, really), they’ve stayed glued to the trees for much longer than usual. A few years ago, we had a really hard frost pretty...

How we make cider

How we make cider

I say ‘we’ but this is mostly an annual Rob endeavour. I help out with the picking and chopping of apples, then I entirely check out of the process until it’s time to drink the stuff. Writing this post therefore meant shaking the details out of Rob’s head via a...

Mushroom season

Mushroom season

It’s been a dry month, with hardly any of the afternoon storms that usually punctuate June. Which is great. The garden has enjoyed the abundant heat and sunshine. But it’s not so great for picking mushrooms. Every time we’ve been mushroom hunting this season the...

Lost in Lyulin

Lost in Lyulin

After so many years here, it’s always fun to find a new Bulgarian thing that confuses me. I mean, it’s not always fun at the time but it generally makes for good blog fodder. And so we found ourselves wandering around Sofia’s Lyulin 5 neighbourhood – a nice, leafy...

Recommended reading

Recommended reading

I’ve got just the thing for you this week. A good book to lose yourself in, but something deeply thoughtful – so you can distract yourself from the scary state of the world, but with something a bit … worthy, if you know what I mean. Look at me, recommending an...

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