Bir saat sonra, biz İstanbul’a otobüslen gideceğiz.

Huzzah!

Yarın saat dokuz buçukta, biz havaalanına gideceğiz bizim uçak için.

Hoşçakal bizden Bulgaristan’da!
Byeee
Sevgiden bizi.

Welcome back readers to part 2 of our famous Bulgaria Awards!

I’ll kick off today’s proceedings with a favourite among you all: Bulgarian fashion.

Best Example of Awful Fashion:

When we arrived in June we were confronted by this most horrible fashion trend for women. Think big crimped hair, tight short and low cut tops… and tight pants with a dropped crotch and baggy bum. We couldn’t see the attraction in them and dubbed them ‘nappy pants’ or ‘the skinny-leg pants for those with a colostomy bag.’ Maybe it’s so that everyone’s bum looks big in them? I could write a thousand words, but here’s the picture:

Best Faux Pas:

Here’s the scene: We were in Romania. It had been a slightly stressful day for me after I’d somehow got the power cable for the Nairn’s macbook half-severed in the mechanism of a recliner chair. Soren and Carmen (friends of Jon and Margot) arrived for a visit and introductions were being made. However, I was distracted saying goodbye to a friend I was chatting to online and as I was holding down the ‘e’ button (to make a normal ‘bye’ ‘byeeeeee’) I turned and shook hands with Soren and said ‘bye’ out loud to him. It was mortifying and Jon very helpfully teased me by saying repeatedly that I just committed the most carnal etiquette sin known to Romanians.

It all ended well. As he was leaving, Soren took my hand, shook it, and very solemnly said ‘hello.’

Best Practical Joke:

Way back in the day Stu wrote this post. The second photo featured in the post was that of a field of sunflowers with the challenge to find me hiding in it. The truth is, there was a photo taken with me hiding in the field, but this wasn’t it.

Sorry guys. We liked the attempts of Amelia ['pretty sure i found elly…under the third flower at the front on the right, holding a leaf??'], Humf ['I reckon you can see elly’s eyes & nose… bottom middle (but a tad to the right).'] and Lynne’s compliment of ‘Love the sunflowers, but even with my glasses on and all the hints I could still only see sunflowers! Elly is a pretty flower!!!’ Good try guys, but Stu had you!

Best Tricking of Aydin Moment:

David was recounting the list of things he and Kathryn were selling in preparation for moving back to Australia. Aydin’s ears pricked up when David mentioned selling Kathryn’s laptop. The following took place purely to distract Aydin from the terrible news of a sold laptop:

David: Quick! Look out the window, at the chimney pot!

Aydin: Why, what is it?

Stu: It’s a diversion! [Aydin runs over to look]

Aydin: What’s a diversion?

Stu: Something to distract you.

Aydin: I can’t see it.

Elly: Oh you missed it, it just flew away.

Poor Aydin spent the better part of the rest of that morning trying to work out exactly what a ‘diversion’ was and not entirely being sure whether he had fallen afoul to another of our tricksy tricks! Sorry kiddo.

Best Example of Bulgarian Playground Equipment

Seeing the playgrounds in this country makes us nostalgic for the good ol’ days when there was no such thing as public liability and no one blamed anyone if their little darling took a tumble off the 5m high slide at the Bluff Playground (in Devonport. Was there ever a better playground?)

Even so, this slide terrified us. No, we didn’t go down it – because that would be weird – but we did watch a number of kids struggle to muster up the courage to take the plunge. We later found out both Aydin and 4-year-old JongIn have been down and we’re impressed.

Look at it! Concrete, no barriers, massive pothole two-thirds down, and at it’s highest it’s way above our heads. People who are passionate about old playground equipment can return to our favourite blog about the awesome things in life with the entry about Old, dangerous playground equipment. [Thanks Imo for posting this entry on facebook and getting me hooked on the blog!]

And that just about wraps up our one and only Bulgaria Awards. Thanks for tuning in.

Better get back to the cleaning and packing!