Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the inaugural (and, for that matter, final) Bulgaria Awards ceremony! These are the awards for the coolest, the silliest, the funniest, the most wretched things (technical term) we have encountered this year!

This, the first half of the awards ceremony, is brought to you by Stu. My delightful wife Elly will conclude the presentation soon!

Best Cake and Coffee Establishment:

неделя (Nedelya – BGian for “Sunday”)

Humf – we took you here! Their coffee is kinda okay (which in Bulgaria means it’s exceptional!) and they have a huge range of yummy cakes. Like the majority of Bulgaria’s plentiful cafes, Nedelya is very nicely fitted out with a giant display fridge for the cakes and classy (albeit fake) dark wood panelling all over. If only smoking was illegal inside! We enjoyed being able to go there and chill out on a weekend afternoon – and the fact that you can get two coffees and two big slices of cake for around AU$5 is nice too! Just don’t ask for one of their branded calendars (they’re borderline soft-porn!).

Best Language Mistake:

Elly and I were at Mirem’s house for a Turkish lesson and we were learning Bible verses in Turkish. Actually, it’s worse than that; we were being given important verses by Mirem and being asked to translate them into Turkish to show that we could render them intelligible. This is difficult, since the English used in the Bible is very different to spoken English, and we really didn’t have the requisite Turkish to make it work! But we tried. And paraphrased drastically. Anyway, none of that excuses my language mistake…

What Stu meant to say: “Allah bize Kutsal Ruh verdi” = “God gave us the Holy Spirit”.

What Stu actually said: “Allah bize Kutsal Ruh vurdu” = “God struck us [with] the Holy Spirit”.

Gah! Definitely time for a mono-lingual holiday!

Best Dad-Joke in a Language Other Than Your First:

Another Turkish pun (on purpose this time). So… the Turkish word for prayer is “dua” (pr. doo-ah), and the Turkish word for wall is “duvar” (pr. doo-vahr). I’m sure experienced Dads all over the world are sitting there nutting out the possible puns already! Elly and I had gone to the Millet meeting (church) which had only just started being held in the church building you might have seen in our video (when it was half-built).

So, this one evening, Kemal was up the front praying loudly (with his eyes closed) to end the meeting. He was swaying from foot to foot a little bit, with his arms way up in the air. Without noticing, he started turning away from the rest of the meeting until he was facing the wall. His supportive wife started poking people and pointing at Kemal, sniggering openly. Before long there was an irresistable ripple of laughter happening, at which point Kemal finished praying, opened his eyes, realised he was facing a wall and joined in the giggling! And it was at that precisely timed moment when I pointed out that Kemal was supposed to giving us a dua (prayer) not a duvar (wall). Ha ha ha ha! Well done, Stu.

[start of slightly off-topic rant.] When they started gathering at the “church building”, the change in the meeting was profound[ly disturbing]! Whereas when we’d met in Kemal (the pastor)’s house, people would show up late, if at all, and Kemal would give surly, 10-minute sermons, things changed. Attendance doubled immediately, and people started bringing musical instruments, and Kemal was transformed into a yelling, ranting, enthusiastic preacher-man! If that sounds good, it isn’t. Really, all that was happening was that the people were mimicking the behaviour they might have seen at the Bulgarian (ie. “real”) meetings. It went entirely against their own cultural norms and while it might have made them feel good to be able to associate themselves with what they saw as a real meeting, it could really only get in the way of them genuinely engaging with Jesus in their unique cultural context. [end of rant.]

Best ‘Thank goodness no one else speaks English’ moment:

Okay, this one needs some explaining. Are you familiar with the Meyers-Briggs style of personality test? Elly tells me they were quite the rage on Facebook this year. The test is a way of categorising different personality types and your “result” takes the form of four letters – E for extrovert or I for introvert; S for sensing or N for intuition; F for feeling or T for thinking; and P for perceiving or J for judging. If that’s confusing, bear with me because it’s not strictly relevant to the story! In the last section, Elly is a “P”, meaning she generally needs to hear lots of info before being able to make a decision. So… there we were, walking down the road, with people around, loudly talking in English about our preferences in decision-making.

Elly said (something to the effect of): “But I like to know all the relevant facts before choosing…”

What Stu meant to say: “Yes, that reflects your preference for “perceiving” rather than “judging”.

What Stu actually said: “Yeah, but that’s because of your P-ness”. (Say it out loud; it’s funnier.)

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Is making bad jokes all we’ve done this year?!

That’s all for now. You can be sure that Elly will update you in a couple of days with the final few categories.

Hope you enjoyed the show. Cue the orchestra.

Cheers

Stu.

We love the Lada.

This is a Lada:

The Lada is a Russian-built, Soviet-era car “for the people”. They are famously simple under the bonnet, which is a good thing since they are also infamously unreliable. Dave has often jibed that they are the perfect car to drive if you’re looking to meet people – since you’ll almost certainly break down at some stage and need to ask for help!

There are still thousands of Ladas driven around Bulgaria, despite the fact that they are no longer made (except in Egypt, apparently) and most are getting quite old. Like many other Communist cars, their simple charm is somehow quite charming. We wish we’d been able to buy one and drive it around Bulgaria, but alas, they are becoming something of a collectors’ item and aren’t that cheap!

This is how you spell Lada in Cyrillic:

Ladas are very useful:

Here are some posing as taxis, police cars (though not in high-speed chases, I suspect), utes and, importantly, 4WDs!

Ladas come in many colours:

Don’t think that just because they were Communist-made that all Ladas are boring blue or beige!

Some Ladas are well looked-after, some are not:

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And that’s about it. We just thought it was appropriate to share some of our Lada love with you all.

Take care,

Stu (and Elly).

* – Stu wishes to apologise for this pun.

We went to London.

A few months ago my dad very generously offered us some money to go on a little holiday somewhere, his reasoning being that we couldn’t possibly spend nearly a year in Europe without seeing at least one major city. We chose London because it was the only place we both really wanted to visit and the thought of an English speaking country was very appealing. London won over the closer and probably cheaper option of Venice because our friend Imogen is in England at the moment and we wanted to see her. So, off to London we went!

How did we get there?

It snowed in Bulgaria the week were supposed to leave so to be cautious we bussed to Sofia the day before and stayed the night in a rather charming hostel in the centre of the city. We went out for dinner at a place called The Ale House which was a brewery and each table had beer on tap which you helped yourself to. It transpired that Stu couldn’t pull a beer and I could (to be fair, I did once work in a pub).

The next day we caught a 1 lev bus to the airport (gotta love finding cheap airport transport in Europe!) and spent a few hours in arguably the most BORING airport in the world. Yes, worse than Launceston.

We flew with a budget airline called easyJet and they did the job – sort of like Jetstar. Arriving and clearing customs was easy peasy  and we were soon on the 50p shuttle to London-town, playing ‘Zitch [insert spotted London/British cliche]!’ For example: ‘Zitch red double decker bus!’ ‘Zitch Marks and Spencer!’ etc. Kept us entertained us for at least two days!

Where did we stay?

We stayed on the 6th floor (no lifts and yes, it was painful) of a dirt cheap hostel called Astor Quest (huh, I did NOT see a pool table). I say ‘dirt’ cheap because dirt was certainly present. It was the kind of place that makes you pay a deposit for just about everything and talks you into bringing your sheets and towels down when you check out so they don’t have to leave the comfort of the first floor. The showers worked sporadically and the toilets were filthy (and the toilet brushes had DUST on them!) They did supply you with breakfast and it was cheap so we can’t complain too much. It wasn’t too bad considering how little time we spent there.

What did we eat?

We were probably more excited about the diversity of food that would be available to us in London than anything else. Bulgarian food is nice, but we’re spoilt little Australians and wanted some of that diversity back! We enjoyed Thai, Indian, something that can only be best described as Tapas, focaccias, French flans, Cornish pasties… and of course English pub food. It was gastronomically very exciting.

Oh, and coffee! Stu did some research and we visited some cafes that served us some very awesome coffee. Stu’s favourite was Milk Bar in the Soho district but I still remember fondly the rich and creamy taste of the coffee made for us by the funny vague humming girl in Wild & Wood.

Actually, Stu made a Coffee Map of London which you can keep for reference.

What did we do?

Ooh, lots of things!  Most importantly we were joined by Imogen for most of the weekend. With the combined forces of Stu and I not being too big on the touristy scene and Imogen having recently seen most of the major sights, we ended up doing things that appear a little further down on the ‘What you should do in London’ list. Like visiting the Portobello Road market in Notting Hill and Imogen’s idea of a tour around London: walk in a random direction, pick a landmark (eg. the Gherkin), then find the least straight path to it. Was tiring and fun. We also saw Avatar in 3D (and I still haven’t lived down falling asleep in it) and had dinner with all the London Wegmans we could cram together in one apartment (ie Imogen and her brother Alex and his wife Emma and their baby Sophie).

Oh but of course, we did go and gaze at Big Ben (and the surrounding parliamenty things), Downing Street, Hyde Park, the British Museum, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Picadilly Circus, Harrods, Tower Bridge. We had a go at looking at Buckingham Palace but caught up in crowds waiting for the changing of the guard ceremony and since we were supposed to be actually meeting Imo in Notting Hill we left without seeing either.

Best fun: The London Eye. It was actually good value really and a nice way to see all of London at once and remain sitting. We entertained a nearby elderly couple by taking dozens of photos of Imogen and I jumping in the air – to make it look like we were ‘jumping over London.’ We discovered that anything that claims to be a ’4D Experience’ is actually 3D with bubbles blown at you.

What did we think?

We loved London! Even though it was only a very small taste, we’re so glad we got the opportunity to go see it and a massive THANKS to dad for making it possible.

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So now we’re back home in Haskovo and having a go at making a start at packing (yep, procrastination at it’s finest). So far we’ve made a number of piles around our living room that are looking promising. We’re trying to reduce our lives again to two 20kg packs and an up to 20kg box to post – not that we want it to be that heavy!

Only 2 weeks left in the country!

See you all very soon!