15-08-08

Many things have happened since the last post, not surprising since it's been such a long time between posts I spose.
Where should I start?
Ok here's a pic or 2 of some fireworks I bought at the local gun shop up the road.
One thing I have always wanted to do here is buy some decent fireworks, & with my money in my hand one evening I dashed into the gun shop just as it was closing at 6pm & grabbed a few bits and pieces.. The one in my hand is a cracker, more like a concussion bomb in my opinion. These things work under water too! Great for fishing!On the right there is Ogi, holding a Motar. This one is a baby compared to some of the others at the shop, but I couldn't afford the $35.00 for the biggie. All the same this one did a good job, I have suspected that the stuff here is surplus army stock...
See the writing on this one here? Skud! they didn't do a very good job of covering up the military labels ;)

Well even if it aint surplus military stock it's a darn site better then the lame stuff we get in NZ.
Ogi had a great time throwing the black crackers around, The explosions were massive, enough to take a hand off if you weren't careful I reckon.

When I get some time I'm gonna find what the biggest cracker is & buy a few!









This is Plamen & Ogi lighting a few up & tossing them around.



So it was a bit of fun rattleling the neighborhood up (to the applause of the Mostelers) & we were well satisfied with our ears ringing & the smell of black powder wafting thru the place.

What else has happened I hear you ask?
The hostel has been frantically busy been peak tourist season, & is completely immersive, which can be good & bad. Assen & Ira called me up a week or 2 back & told me to ease up on the hostel, I had become a lot more involved then intended, what with staff leaving & a difficult time trying to find Bulgarians that have a proper command of English & enough clues to know what westerners expect from the hospitality industry.
Sooooo officially from about 2 weeks ago I have been offered free accommodation & food here at the Mostel for the rest of my stay in Bulgaria & I can spend my time focusing on more pressing needs with the house or go off on a holiday if I want. That's the official line, which is great in theory but now we have no staff at this moment & I've pitched in again helping out with the tours & other bits & pieces... it's unavoidable really, once a backpacker realizes you might be staff they don't leave you alone unless I hide in my bed or something.

Ok time for more pictures I hear you say!
We spent a weekend tearing the roof off the house & replacing any old battens that hold the tiles on.....
I was helped by Ogi & Nickolai the farmer (where I was hay making a few weeks back) & 2 young guys, one which I called "Thousand mile an hour Man" because he would continuously ask me questions in Bulgarian speaking really quickly. When I failed to understand him, which was every time he spoke to me cause I don't speak Bulgarian, he would that ask the same question with more enthusiasm & speaking quicker because I think he figured that if he said it quicker I would miraculously understand him! This went on for 2 solid days, with him asking all sorts of questions about the type of renovation work to be carried out in great detail & poking me incessantly, to the point where I ended up hiding in the attic for a while just to get some peace & quiet.
So to the sound of much questioning & smashing roof tiles sliding off the house we slaved away for Saturday.... interesting to see the way these places were put together. The more I saw the more I like the concept. No messing around with pink bats & H3 tanalised timbers, everything comes from the immediate environment around the house apart from the roof tiles, plumbing & wireing as you can see from the picture below.
What you are looking at is my attic & one of the chimneys, As you can see there are no pink bats in the ceiling, before there were pink bats dirt was the preferred option for insulation! Seems to work fine as this house has a lot better insulation from heat then our old Kauri houses back home. Besides it would be "dirt cheap" stuff to use hey? I dare say it would also be a dope growers dream up there too! not that a lot of that happens over here (yet) Um no I don't have any growing plans either....
The beams making up the roof structure are simply branches cut from the woods, no treatment whatsoever & probably the original wood (80 years) The walls are local stone which most of the houses are built from & the floor is earth, in a bit of a state now but when done properly they are polished with linseed oil & very attractive, a technique that has seen a bit of a revival in some parts of the world in recent times.

This would be the ideal house if you were a "greenie", all low impact materials with low toxicity, unlike all the stuff we use back in our so called environmentally conscious western civilization. Quite a contradiction if you ask me.
After the first day on the roof peeling the tiles & replacing battens a huge black cloud came up from the south with a display of some nasty fork lightning & rain. Fortunately we had most of the roof back on by this time so we sat back & watched the show....
It was nasty stuff just like they have on the movies!
By now it was getting pretty dark & I wasn't feeling too great, which I had put down to all the dust from cleaning the barn out. Thousand mile an hour man was still doing his job & I retreated to the storage room for the night, which I figured would be the most peaceful place to hide.
The night was a bit long & cold & I woke in the morning to a full on fever & runny nose. On Friday I had a sore throat which I took little notice of but it appears that the sore throat was the beginning of a "wog" which rendered me almost useless for Sunday.
Waiting for me out the door was this fella in the picture above, very friendly & very hungry! He adopted us for the day & made himself at home. Later talking to Peter, one of the expat locals, I discovered his name was Beckham, I hope he's as rich as the Beckham he is named after.

Late Sunday morning the Sparkie turned up & got into th job of ripping out the old wiring & digging trenches in the stone walls for the new wires. It all went smoothly for most of the day until his colleague almost cut his eye open, how I don't know but it bought the day to a premature end. Fortunately his eyeball escaped damage & they returned the next weekend & completed the job.
By this time I was as good as trashed & the day was all but over & the guys had to get back to their homes & other commitments so we did the cleanup & headed for VT.

I managed to meet some of the locals, both expat & Bulgarian & the store owners were getting to know my face & became more friendly & obliging which was great to see as at first they seemed a bit suspicious of new faces.

The house still needs a ton of work done to it, basically plumbing & re plastering, concrete on the floors & it will be usable as a base over the summers.
It was a relief to get rid of the old wiring as it was so old & badly deteriorated the house should have burnt down years ago. Pretty crude how things were done too, just tack the wires to the walls in a lot of places & "she'll be right mate!"

So far so good, this week has been mainly at the hostel again as It took a bit of time bouncing back from the virus that had a go at me....