We’ve just heard that our visas are likely to be delayed until slightly after our intended departure date! Frustrating, I suppose, but also very typical of Bulgarian bureaucracy (according to our prospective hosts!)… and since it’s happened three times now it’s almost a little comical (Elly may disagree, there).

And the reason for this delay? A week-long public holiday combining St George’s Day with the Day of the Bulgarian Army (of course!). Apparently many people (including several of my workmates) find the concept of 7 days’ public holiday rather amusing! David and Kathryn suggested that most government departments probably took the rest of the week following the official break off too, bringing the visa hold-up to about 10 days. Oh well; one has to laugh!

Anyway, thanks St. George! If only we’d been flying Dragon Airlines – the irony would have been perfect.

ps. our Farewell party is this Saturday (73 Rannoch Ave, 6pm – you’re invited, if we haven’t managed to tell you yet! RSVP asap). Here’s a picture of some of the fine Turkish cuisine I’ve been preparing!

Eggplant dip, parsley/mint, carrot dip, chickpea yoghurt dip, tomatoes and pide bread!

Elly and I just returned from a trip to Melbourne that was supposed to end with our leaving Australia. We knew a couple of months ago that we’d have to delay the international connections but we decided to go ahead with the trip to Melbourne – and use it as a “farewell tour” of friends and family in Victoria, as well as a final chance to relax before the frenzy of the next month.

Our nieces seemed particularly happy to see us!

Also of note is that we’re gearing up to start learning Turkish. We’ll probably be able to afford a private tutor in Bulgaria but for the mean time we’re familiarising ourselves with the alphabet, pronounciation and grammar. Not so much the grammar; we’ll find out how challenging that part of the language is once we have some words to put into sentences under our belts.

The Turkish alphabet is wonderful because it is 100% phonetic, meaning that each letter corresponds to one and only one sound, regardless of where it falls within a word. [I'm beginning to realise what a nightmare it would be to learn English as a second language!]

I like the fact that we have to spell our names (albeit slightly) differently in Turkish. Elly/Eloise would be Eli/Eloiz; Stu/Stuart would be Stü/Stüart. Of course, they might still be difficult names for Turks to get their tongues around, but we’ll see!

We’re going in about 7 weeks. Probably.

Only this time it feels a bit more real; a bit ominous, even. We’ve had to delay our flights twice now but the fact that someone in Canberra and/or Sofia has several thousand dollars’ worth of documentation pertaining to our stay in Bulgaria – including our passports – gives me hope that we’ll soon be on our way. Eastern European bureaucracy notwithstanding.

There are many great reasons to have delayed our flights (by a total of three months, now). We’ve had longer to prepare, longer to save some money and we won’t have to endure a Bulgarian winter (at least not this year). Those bleak -10 degree C days didn’t sound inviting.

I put a weather gadget on our computer desktop giving us live updates of the weather in Launceston and Plovdiv (near enough to our destination, Haskovo). I find it fascinating that our weather is almost identical at this time of year – a kind of climatic equinox. At least we won’t be experiencing climate shock!