The Architects, Part Two

On the flight back from the previous trip I was not too downhearted; yes I had not managed to meet the architect this time but I had been able to make some really good progress on cleaning - I had expected to spend the best part of a week achieving what we had managed in those two days.

Baby Swallows in the nest waiting for their parents

I was, however, slightly irritated at being let down particularly as a trip to Bulgaria involved me missing work and losing a fair amount of money every day I wasn't there; the cost of a trip is not completely contained within the airfare, care hire and fuel expenditure

When I got back I dug through all the emails I had received from Chaz looking for where he confirmed the meeting and, embarrassingly, I found Veselka's phone number in an email from several months before. If only I had realised I had this before I could have rung to confirm and either changed my flights to a date she could make, or at least known she wasn't going to arrive so could have freed my Monday up.

I gave the number to my good Bulgarian friend who lives in the UK and he rang her. The upshot of this was her apologies as sadly Chaz had not been able to confirm the arrangements and so she had not know that I was expecting to meet her. If only I had found the phone number in the week before my trip I would have been able to confirm the arrangements and be sitting there with my architect organised and the pressure mainly off.

As it was I was able to make another plan to meet up with Veselka a few weeks later, and also E managed to contact an old friend of hers who knew an architect so, on my next trip, I would be meeting two.

Not an architect, a donkey

It wasn't just the architect which I had been unable to do the previous trip; I also had to talk to the water and electricity boards to arrange for them to provide me with these utilities. To enable me to have time to do this I made arrangements to meet Veselka on the Sunday morning at Martin on the Sunday afternoon, leaving Monday free for town based tasks.

So it happened that once again I was on the plane from Manchester to Sofia and once again meeting my usual car hire people who had upgraded my car from the requested hot hatch to an executive saloon. This trip saw me bringing a second suitcase (I'd also brought one full of clothes the previous trip) full of books as I start the process of moving my things over and taking advantage of the visits to reduce the volume of crap I was going to be trying to fit into Thomas and Trailer.

E was waiting up for me with a wine and I sipped a whisky before bed called; the previous summer two bottles of nice whisk(e)y (one of scotch, one of irish) had been bought and left at her house for my consumption and had managed to survive various attempted depredations by different visitors.

The next morning we picked up Gouldjan who was one of E's friends and would be acting as a translator for us and headed straight over to the school. I had the great joy of driving onto my land for the first time and parking the car on the play ground right by the front door of the school. What an excellent and exciting feeling it is to be on your OWN property, to look around and feel so at home, so comfortable.

Shortly after arriving Chaz phoned me to say that Veselka was on her way but running late and would not arrive for another couple of hours; this is an example of Bulgarian time but at least a message had go to us. We spent a few very pleasant minutes sitting in the sun, and experiencing the shade from the many trees which line the edge of the play ground. It was a magical time for me as I was imagined sitting in a relaxing chair in the shade, with the cooling breeze, in the heat of the day watching nothing much happening.

The shading trees. You can make tea from the leaves

We met the architect in the local town having gone for a bite to eat and they were happy to follow us back up the hill and over the ever-so-narrow bridge which necessitated you pulling your wing mirrors in to get over.

The first part of the visit was taken up with me showing Veselka and her two companions around the property, explaining my visions for it, and getting into trouble attempting to describe to them what "humanure" is and why I had no plans for a flushing toilet anywhere on the property. She explained to me that my original idea for putting a new stairs in down the side of the living room into the kitchen below was not going to work; the space available and the height of the ceilings meant that the would not be able to get down in time. She said she would come up with another idea.

I will go into detail with my plans for the school, in fact I probably should already have blogged this but never mind, in a future post so I won't expand much here.

We went into the roof to look at that and while we were up there I Chaz appeared out of the blue having decided to come see the property and meet me. It was a great pleasure to meet him finally.

There was a rather unpleasant period of time for me just around when he arrived which he actually helped resolve. I am not sure who it was who started saying it but it was strongly indicated that I would not be able to use wooden beams in the roof and would need to use steel beams. This was put to me very firmly by various people, including the employee who Chaz brought with him, until Chaz was able to hammer home the fact that I was looking to renovate as a home, not as a business. Once this was cleared up I started calming down as the idea of getting steel girders onto site, and having to find someone who was able to work with steel, was making me very concerned indeed.

Looking through the roof space

With the initial survey completed Veselka and company then started the process of measuring every inch of the building.This took them several hours during which we investigated the construction of the building (stone up to the ground floor windows and brick above) and we also chatted to Chaz about his school.

I managed to delay Martin and his architect for a couple of hours but unfortunately the visit of Veselka was a lot longer than I had ever imagined and so she was still there, measuring, when he arrived. This visit was much briefer as he was not taking any measurements and apparently had to rush off to another appointment. The advice from each tied up at most points (which helped me feel slightly more confident of it) however Veselka's attitude struck me as slightly more in tune with what I was looking for.

After the measuring was done, and Martin had gone, we went to our favourite hotel for a meal and sat outside while the thunder echoed in the hills around us, ate a lovely meal (they're ALL lovely meals there) and watched while Veselka sketched out a quote for the work. I left them that evening promising a decision by the next morning but really my mind had already been made up.

The next day was just as profitable; our first port of call was the Electricity board where the security guard allowed us to jump the queue into the tiny office (we think this was because the other people waiting were waiting to complain, and we were not). The lady there was super helpful and she filled the form out for us (written Bulgarian is not a strong point) and also rang the Obshtina to get approval for transferring the account to my name.

From there we went to try and get a Power of Attorney for E so she could sign the paperwork once it was ready for submission. Unfortunately the notary was not in his office, the people waiting outside the office saying they had been waiting for several hours already. We decided to not wait and headed off to the water board which we had found while driving around before meeting the architect the previous day.

Once again we had excellent help from the staff who listened to what we were requiring, and then the head of the survey team, who just happened to be the man who met us at the door, said "I will see you up there in an hour" so off we went again to the notary office to try and sort out the power of attorney; once again he was not there.

The final task of the day was to open a bank account for myself at a bank with a branch in the local town. This was, as I was starting to enjoy a lot, made much easier than expected by the overly helpful staff. It was not a quick process but eventually the forms were filled out and I paid my 2lev admin fee and was told to come back in a month to collect my bank cards and internet banking information.

We headed back up to the school to meet the water surveyor and I got time to take pictures of every single room in the place, and a load from around the land, as I had always felt that I didn't have quite enough pictures of the school. These will also feature in a future blog (or series of blogs) so I won't overload you here.

The outdoor table tennis table

The water surveyor showed us where the water main was (right down the middle of the track by the school) and said "yeah, just show me where you want it and I'll do it, my mate has a digger you can hire if you want" as is normal as they try to get business for their friends. He also helped us out with a question that Veselka sent to Gouldjan which made absolutely no sense to either of us.

Thus we headed back into town to the Obshtina to try and find someone there to answer our questions; on the way we went past the notary again and found out that he had decided to take the day off; the only alternative was all the way in the next big town and that was not something either of us were happy about.

As we walked into the same council offices as the auction was held in we bumped into the harassed looking lady from the auction and she immediately recognised us, hustled us up to a top floor office, and got into a long discussion, which E entered, in Bulgarian. It was with much amusement when after about ten minutes the young man said, in English "well, what can I help you with?" We explained and he gave us his phone number to pass on to Veselka saying "just tell her to call me". Which was excellent news. E then had the brain wave to check if we could start working on the roof before the approval and this man, who was the head of the planning department, said "so long as you build it exactly the same there will not be a problem". What great news!

So it was back to the house and more fantastic spicy sausage and onion and then bed and in the morning, I drove both of us back up to Sofia to catch separate flights back to blighty.

I am now nearly caught up to today there may well be one more blog entry in the catch up style.

Thanks for reading.

Baby storks in the wing mirror on the way to Sofia