Right, I'd seen Bulgaria on 'A place in the sun'
My extensive research shows me it used to be behind the iron curtain but is now a member of the EU.
It has land borders with Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey.
Also, well that was enough research. I wanted a holiday home and a place to eventually retire and EasyJet and Whizz Air did cheapish flights but the properties were less than the price of a caravan in Skegness.
The wife and I booked flights and back onto the interwebby to sort out a point of contact in the form of an Estate Agent. All straight forward so far.
So, you land in Bulgaria, Varna, at 7pm in February and to be honest, all on a bit of a whim.
The first thing we noticed was not the lovely Amanda Lamb (from said TV show) waiting to greet us in T shirt and shorts but Ivor, the taxi driver arranged by the agent, to drive us up to Ruse. He was decked out in boots, jeans and a big secret police style leather coat. On the way out to his 1980's Mercedes the main topic of conversation was just how far away from Manchester it was to Rotherham, our home town, and we surprise that we did not in fact support Manchester United.
No. not Liverpool or Chelsea or Arsenal either.
Using my best sign language I got him to understand that below the Premier League featured on Bulgarian TV there existed a Championship, a League One and a League Two. After finally grasping that my team, the mighty Rotherham United, sat proudly near the top of League Two, we settled into a long one sided conversation about Manchester United in which the entire squad was cited and that each player was declared either 'dobre' or 'ne dobre'.
The second thing we noticed was that the snow at the side of the road was a good 30cm deep.
Eventually, Ivor exhausted his knowledge of Man. United players so he began to point out some of the interesting sights we would have been able to see had it been daylight.
Passing Shumen for instance, we would have had a great view of the hilltop monument and ancient fortress. All we could actually make out was a light which was on top of the barely visible hill.
On an uphill stretch we managed, after several aborted attempts due to oncoming traffic, to pass a Romania registered HGV who was declared 'ne dobre' together with a few other words which we were probably best not understanding.
On a downhill stretch we were harried by the same truck flashing his lights a couple of feet behind us until he managed to overtake on a blind bend before swinging in forcing Ivor to brake. Same words as before only louder so they must have been swear words.
Then it started to snow, heavily.
Finally, after our rather interesting introduction to Bulgarian motoring I saw a sign to show we were entering the city of Ruse with both the English 'Ruse' and Cyrillic 'pyce' written across it.
And, in Ruse the snow was about 60 cm deep and an illuminated sign in the square read -23°.
Where had we come to?
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