Just had a visit from the postman:

Just to be clear, “ВИЗА” is the word “visa” in Cyrillic!

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!

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!