Rural Bulgaria is about as peaceful as it gets. All I can hear right now is birds, birds, birds – including a very chatty cuckoo – chickens murmuring to themselves as they scratch at the ground, Elly, one of my hosts, sweeping the kitchen… and Tina Turner playing loudly on the stereo as the sun pours through fruit trees near the front step and lazes over the rambling garden.
I am volunteering on a smallholding in Voditsa. The work is mainly weeding, planting, sowing, building, painting, plastering… most things, really, which is good. I have helped to fix a hen house with rubble and mud for a new batch of hens, pulled couch grass out of the soil in a field, weeded flowerbeds, tickled piglets and cuddled chickens.
The facilities are simple – a compost toilet made from a bucket with a bench over it for serious things, bushes for less serious things (the phrase watering the garden can mean two things here). The buildings are cosy and homely – a warm kitchen with a wood burning stove, comfortable bedrooms, a cosy living room with another stove and cats on the sofas. There are outhouses for summer living – an unenclosed barn that has a kitchen, a sofa and a bed in it, a bar. There are big vegetable plots, flowerbeds, a pigsty, a trampoline.
Voditsa seems to be a mini-haven for Brits who buy falling-down houses on large plots of land and fix them up to live in. The life here is idyllic; it’s not hard to see the draw.
Cheap house prices, cheap land prices. If you’re not as hands on as Elly and Dancho, there are skilled local tradesmen on hand to help you re-build your property. You can end up with a gorgeous three bedroom house with a plot of land for about £7k, once the work has been done. It’s hard work, though, and there’s a lot of it.
Jo from Manchester, who is staying with Elly this week, has a place down the road. It has two buildings in an L shape, plus a barn, a sizeable garden and an orchard. Stephen, a retired man originally from Birmingham and now resident in Merthyr Tydfil, has a place a ten minute walk away. He got a three bedroom house with land for about £3,000. It needs a hell of a lot of work, but after another £4,000, he should have a gorgeous country cottage with a large but manageable garden. Kiwi Olivia, a tall, willowy woman in her fifties who has just arrived from England, has a bigger place with a larger plot of land, for which she paid £4,000. It too needs a lot of work, but that’s half the fun.
A Morning in Popovo
It’s market day in Popovo. Elly and Dancho want some chicks. “How many shall we get?” asks Elly. “Can I have that one? Chicken, do you want to come and live with me?” “Let’s get five. Or maybe ten,” replies Dancho. They get twelve young chickens, about two weeks old. “Shall we get some more?” Dancho asks. “What about these?” We walk over to some older ones, which are ready to lay. “Let’s get five of these, too.” They do. Dancho looks at Elly. “Shall we get some more?” “How many have we got?” “I dunno. Maybe 15?” “15?” She does some counting. “We’ve got 17.” “Shall we get some more?” “You want more?” “I don’t know. Maybe.” “How many more?” “Maybe we’ve got enough…”
We meet Olivia and Stephen and go for a coffee. Stephen goes to the nearby chemist while we take time over our drinks. Olivia and Elly discuss Olivia’s cashflow problem – her UK cash card won’t work in Bulgaria. She had tried to transfer her money into Elly’s account so Elly could withdraw it for her, except the transaction didn’t work.
Olivia looks a little abashed, biting her lip. “Gosh, I swore so much. I think Stephen was shocked. I don’t think Stephen likes swearing much.” She pauses, pondering. “Also, he doesn’t know about the trans thing… when I get angry my voice gets lower, so that might have been a little bit of a surprise for him too…” Elly goes off into peals of laughter. I chuckle into my espresso.
A Day in the Forest
Elly and Dancho need wood for next winter’s fuel. Dancho takes us volunteers to the nearby forest in the van with Stefan, the forest manager; three of us in the dark in the back, jolting over the bumps in the road. The other volunteers are all friends from Britain – Maks, Ieuan and Ewan.
“Do you think this is what it’s like to be kidnapped?” muses Ieuan in the darkness of the back of the van. “Probably,” says Maks, unconcerned. “Or smuggled out of the country.” “Hmmm,” says Ieuan. “When they open the doors in a minute, we should probably grab those axes and run. Just in case.”
The forest is only 30 years old. The leaves are new and green. The trees are tall and straight; a mix of young oak and beech. There are stacks of timber piled up neatly here and there. We walk to Dancho’s area. His father came a few days ago to cut down some trees with his chainsaw. We are mainly chopping and stacking the felled trees, sorting them into thick trunks, medium sized branches and small thin bits that aren’t much use other than kindling.
I discover I’m a crap aim with an axe. Don’t panic – every one still has all their toes, but it takes me at least ten swings to get through a branch only about three inches in diameter. Shameful.
The boys start to get itchy to chop down actual trees. “Dancho, can we chop down a tree?” they ask, having chopped down all the saplings that could be vaguely described as being in the way of the tractor when it comes to collect the wood. Dancho grins. “Maybe. If it is a marked one in this area and not over there. That bit is not our area.” Ewan takes first go. His aim is not much better than mine. We stand back and laugh quietly. Stefan shakes his head, grinning. I don’t know why I’m smiling, I couldn’t do any better. “What do you say in Bulgaria when a tree is about to fall down?” asks Maks. “Falling tree,” says Dancho. “Falling tree? What’s that in Bulgarian?” Dancho says something in Bulgarian. “Blimey. That’s a bit of a long word,” says Maks.
Stefan has taken the axe from Ewan now and is chopping away expertly. He gestures for us to move and then puts some weight on the trunk. It moves about an inch and is caught in a neighbouring tree. Ewan and Stefan strain to pick it up and pull it. It comes down. “Falling tree,” I say.
“Well, I chopped a tree down,” says Ewan, coming over to us. Maks shakes his head. “I’m not letting you have that.” Ewan sighs. “No. I suppose not. I don’t know what went wrong.” “A slight hand-eye co-ordination problem perhaps?” Maks replies, drily.
A little later, Ieuan attacks a tall, slim tree near the track. His aim is better and after a while it starts to fall. We move, quickly. “Timber,” he says, belatedly, with no sense of urgency. “That would have hit my head if I hadn’t moved,” Maks says, with an unconcerned, slow smile. “Yeah,” agrees Ieuan with a shrug.
Some Days Later
I’ve suddenly realised that where I want to be is where I’ve always wanted to be, pretty much since I was about 17. On the water, under trees, next to a tow path. I’d almost given up on the idea.
It got lost among the everyday Manchester; buried in the notion that owning property will provide security in later life. I bought my lovely little flat. The canal got hidden in the decorating, the earning a living and the sensible, grown-up thoughts that inevitably followed. The bulk of my savings went on the deposit for the flat. Half of what was left went on fixing it up.
My savings pot shrank to the size of a rubber dinghy. After that, it seemed almost pointless trying to save the amount of money it would take to buy a boat. I wasn’t even sure I wanted it anyway.
Seems I was wrong.
Since I’ve been travelling, I’ve seen many, many different ways of life and they all seem to work. The only thing that remains is to pick the one that’s right for me, regardless of everything else. I’ve had thoughts on location, sure; wildly geographically different locations, although all on the same rock. Northumberland. Cumbria. Cornwall. Devon. Cambridge. Hertford. London. Manchester… Manchester… Manchester. Or somewhere totally else. Bath is lovely. Oxford is beautiful.
All of them have canals. Well… the one in Devon and Cornwall isn’t joined on to the rest of the system, but there still is one.
I’m not sure why it’s suddenly struck me, hammerlike. Why now? Perhaps because the people I’m surrounded by at the moment are a lot like the people you find on the canals. The life is rural. Birds sing everywhere. There is a DIY, make-do-and-mend and grow-your-own ethic. The earth smells damp and wet. The air is as fresh as the breeze over water. Here at Elly and Dancho’s there is such a positive attitude that suddenly I believe I can actually do it. Here they say, “I’ve no idea how to do that, but let’s give it a go anyway.” Suddenly there is a new set of shelves in an awkward corner, a plastered room, a chicken coop, a potato patch in the couch grass, a fixed-enough washing machine.
Between working on my flat and doing the Workaways I’ve done on this trip, I know I can do basic DIY and maintenance. I can probably paint a boat. I can strip and stain wood; I can probably tart up a boat interior. I know how plumbing and electrics work; probably not enough to tackle that myself, but enough to talk knowledgably with tradespeople about it. I could probably learn enough about carpentry to put in the easier-to-build bits of made-to-measure furniture that I’d like. I can buy a bit of a fixer-up boat, fix it up and live on it, or use it as an escape from city life and keep my flat. Once I have the money, that is.
The rubber dinghy is being spent on this trip. Irony, I think they call that. I’m spending my boat money to remember what I wanted to spend it on. Life is not without a sense of humour (and, luckily, neither am I).
Weekend Jaunt to Veliko Tarnovo
I’m now one of those local villagers who get to stand in the road to flag down a bus at not a bus stop. Get me and my Balkan ways.
There is a part of me that is slightly concerned that drivers will think I’m one of those ladies that hang around in laybys wearing very short skirts and high heels, mysteriously bereft of transport. I hope I look too dishevelled for that and I’m not sure you’d catch any of those ladies wearing sensible walking shoes. As an aside, one of those layby ladies near Vratsa is actually a man. On a trip to a monastery with Keti, Orlin and their friend Kalina, Kalina pointed out of the car window and said “I know that one, she’s a man.” Careful all you drivers out there after something a little extra on your journey. You never know what you’ll get.
We bump our way over the winding roads. Rural Bulgaria is a lot like rural England, but on a gigantic, massive scale. The fields lie over hills that roll gently, lined by trees. The mix of brown ploughed, yellow mustard seed and green new wheat makes for a pretty patchwork. Here and there are crumbling barns and cottages. The villages we pass through still have a definite trace of communism in the architecture. Dilapidated houses sit hunched next to concrete municipal buildings, large, empty squares with big, strong, masculine statues standing in them; statues with large, bushy moustaches and big feet. The cars on the streets have an average age of about 20 years; a mix of ancient BMWs, Ladas and the occasional Trabant along with cars I don’t recognise, such as the Moskovitch. Hunched old ladies wearing head scarves are bent double in their front gardens, weeding between irises and tulips, onions and potatoes. Men drive ponies pulling carts laden with logs through the streets.
Veliko Tarnovo was once the capital of Bulgaria. It is ancient and picturesque, with a huge, partly restored fortress on a hill, a wide, lazy river meandering through it in a deep valley. I disembark the bus, looking around for a street name so I can follow the directions to the hostel.
I really am utterly sick of crap hostel directions. I copied my own directions from a map yesterday, but I’ve no idea which street I’m on. This doesn’t look like a bus station to me. I head up hill. I find my bearings, but the hostel directions of “aim for the fortress and we’re two minutes below it” aren’t helpful, and the tiny roads in the old town have different names to the ones that I got from Google Maps, which doesn’t always give the names of the smallest streets anyway.
Fuck it.
I walk down the main high street, see a hotel, go in and enquire as to availability and price of rooms. 60 Lev (roughly €30) for bed and breakfast in a single room with en suite and view (although if you’re in Veliko Tarnovo in a room without a view you’re very, very unlucky – this place has views in all directions). That’ll do nicely. This is a four star hotel with two bars and restaurants. There’s also a spa and gym. Shame my bikini is back in Voditsa.
I explore the small, but clean and comfortable room. I have a mini bar. I have a balcony overlooking the widely meandering river below and the gigantic monument opposite and the trees, trees, trees beyond that. To each side, I can see ancient houses clinging to the steep hillside, looking like they could slide into the river at any moment. I investigate the bathroom. Oh, my. A flush toilet. I’d almost forgotten about those. Wait, is that a bath? That’s a bath.
Hostel Mostel? Hostel Schmostel. Even if it is supposed to be one of the best in the Balkans.
Now. Where’s a café? Where’s this fortress? How do you get to that amazing monument across the river?
Later
I’ve explored Tsarevets Fortress, which is a rubbly pile of ruins on the hill with a couple of respectfully restored parts and one of my favourite churches on the whole trip right at the very top.
From the outside, the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Holy Ascension of God looks much like any other eastern European Orthodox church. Inside, however…
I’m so glad I wasn’t expecting it.
Instead of the usual frescoes and artwork and dark, brooding gothic atmosphere, there are murals that were finished in 1985, all in a striking, modern style. There’s a lot of Jesus being upside down for some reason; perhaps they’re taking him from the cross, but it’s all a bit abstract, so who knows… but despite all the upside down Jesus, I love it. The altar piece is painted on what looks like a floating door. It is of Mary and the Christ Child. It is lit up from two angles, giving it two shadows to either side that look just like angel wings.
I’m now sitting in the hotel restaurant with a view of the Monument of the Assens and a rainbow arching down the steep hillside over all the higgledy-piggledy old houses.
I have to admit to being a little scared of Bulgarian restaurants. Bulgarian food is delicious – the things that Keti cooked for me were so good I ate until I was almost in pain. Pork that falls apart at the touch of a fork. Cheesy banitsa, stuffed peppers. However, so far the food in restaurants has all been just a little strange. Carrots salad is just that. An entire plate full of grated carrot, sometimes with an olive perched on top, but with no dressing. I had something in Vratsa that was a salad made of carrots, egg, tomatoes and cheese; possibly some other things. It came unexpectedly liquidised all together in a kind of strange, gloopy paté and looked a lot like vomit. It tasted nice, but the consistency was … otherwise.
There is a singing duo near me, with a keyboard and a bass guitar. They both wear black. He is balding with long, tied-back hair. She is approaching middle age and wearing something very sequined. They manage to ruin several of my favourite songs – he sings Wonderful Life by Black in a manner that suggests life is painfully dull. She sings Upside Down by Diana Ross as if she is very upright and stiff as a board. They even manage to make Ob-la-di Ob-la-da sound far worse than it usually does… and it usually sounds horrific.
I rush dinner so I can go back up to my room where there is a bottle of red waiting for me, along with my book and lots of quiet.
Voditsa Village Festival
Elly and Dancho usher us into the village library. At the back of it, up some stairs, is a 500-person capacity theatre. There is an orange man on stage with dark brown hair that looks a bit like that of a Playmobil man. Apparently he is Aleks. He wears a black shirt and black trousers, with very shiny shoes. His belt buckle is a large, shiny A. While he sings cheesy pop music, villagers in traditional dress perform traditional dances behind him. His finale is ‘Viva La Diva’, that best forgotten Eurovision win by Israel’s Dana International.
Next on is a very smiley blonde woman who, it transpires, was a famous 80s pop star over here. The theatre is full to overflowing, with people sitting on the steps and standing at the edges. She gets a massive cheer. The crowd sits and claps along appreciatively… apart from the Brit-led contingent at the back. “Shall we get up and dance? Come on, let’s dance,” grins Elly. There are seven of us. We dance and cheer noisily in our corner, causing several grins from the audience along with several other slightly odd looks.
Afterwards, there is music playing loudly over a sound system outside. A huge circle has formed, consisting of people of all ages performing a traditional dance. It’s something like three steps to the right, small kick, five to the left, mingled among which is a small hop. Elly drags me over to join in. It’s the hop that gets me each time. It looks so easy. It isn’t. I’m holding hands with a 12 year old boy on one side and a 15 year old girl on the other. They manage it effortlessly. The 90 year old woman opposite me is a wonder, no step out of time.
It’s getting late. A bunch of Bulgarian men are dancing in the floodlight. They are preening and strutting their way through it, stuffing wine bottles in the front of their trousers as if to show the impressiveness of their manhoods. Elly instigates a more fun, less cocky dancing session by our table. A few women join in. It’s funny how it seems to be the men here who get up and do so-called sexy dancing, trying to impress each other as well as the girls, while back home it’s a total role reversal.
Viva la Diva.
Midnight comes and goes. I’m getting cold. It’s time to wobble my way back. Miraculously, I avoid all the cowpats in the street.
Work Exchange Day in Osikovo
Elly and Dancho do work-swap days with a few ex-pats in the area. Today we go to the house of Lisa and Ewan and Lisa’s teenage daughter Zoe. It’s raining. The original plan had been to go to the forest and collect wood, using the family’s two horses and carts to transport it, but due to the wet conditions we end up laying stone paving on the terrace that runs along the front of the house, under the eaves. My job is chiselling out old cement from under the loose paving stones on the step and then re-laying them using fresh concrete.
Playing with concrete! Brilliant! Just call me Bricklayer Barrett.
Under Ewan’s tutelage, I even manage to get it level. After that, I help Lisa in the bathroom. Or is it the kitchen? It’s technically the bathroom, but as the kitchen hasn’t been built properly yet, they are currently using what will be a wetroom to cook and eat in. There is a massive wood burning stove in there temporarily, along with a large table and all manner of dried herbs, teas and other produce.
As I strip sage stalks and rub the dried leaves into a jar to use in cooking, a herby scent fills the room and gets us all sneezing. Zoe sits next to me, turning the bottoms of a ripped pair of combat trousers into a top. She shows me photos of the house before they started working on it. It was a falling down shell. Lisa tells me about the work they’ve done, the work there is still to do and how they manage to either grow most things they need or barter for them.
They refer to the outdoor compost toilet as the electric loo. It contains the household’s only plug socket, which is wired to solar panels on the toilet roof. Outside, by the kitchen/bathroom, is a bathtub that collects rainwater. Under it is a stove, which will heat the water for the family to enjoy an outside bath after a hard day’s work in the fields. Ingenious.
I finish the sage and move onto cracking walnuts.
There is a sack of walnuts under a cushion upon which sits the tiniest cat I’ve ever seen. Sugar, her name is. She’s one year old and unlikely to get any bigger. I’ve seen larger kittens. She was found in a hedge as a baby and suckled by Lisa’s dog, Foxy, who produced milk for the kitten as soon as she saw it, which is possibly why she’s so little; perhaps dog milk that is produced without a pregnancy doesn’t have all the nutrients cats need.
Elly shows me how to crack walnuts with my bare hands.
Laying paving stones and cracking walnuts barehanded.
Ugg. I am woman.
Dusty
Dusty is a barky dog. She is big and white and tail-waggy. When I first arrived, she was a very growly dog. She doesn’t like too many people about at one time, which she had had to put up with all day. She had bitten Ewan quite badly on the finger when he held his hand out to her. As such, she was chained and being shunned. I was told to give her some space and that I should be introduced properly before I went near her. As she was in trouble and as she was stressed, this wasn’t going to happen until the next day. Then, while sitting with her, Elly suggested I come closer. Dusty bared her teeth, growled and then barked loudly. A lot. I retreated quickly, unsure how long the chain was.
The next day, we were weeding the field across the road, preparing veg patches for planting. “I might go and get Dusty,” said Elly. She looked at Ewan, who was weeding the same patch as me. “Is that okay? Do say if it’s not… I know she got you quite badly… but she’s been chained up ever since and that is only going to put her in a worse mood. It makes her go into guard dog mode. She’ll cheer up if she can run around.” Ewan looked up from the couch grass at his feet. “Errr… okay then…” Elly grinned and went to get the dog. Ewan shot me a look of gloom.
Dusty bounded over, tongue lolling, ears perky and happy, face smiley. She nearly licked me to death before Elly could finish saying, “Dusty! This is Vicci. You’ll like her, be nice.” Dusty then turned her attention to Ewan, sniffed him a bit and then tried to snog him. “See? She’s sorry,” said Elly, pleased.
A bit later, I walked to the shop for beers with the boys. “So what do you think of Dusty?” Ieuan asked me. “She seemed okay today,” I said, cautiously. “I suspect she might be a bit schizophrenic, though,” I added. He smiled grimly. “You got that right. She went for the back of my leg the other day while I was walking away from her.” “Ah.” I said, taking heed and making a mental note not to approach her unless she approached me first (smiling, rather than growling).
Dusty was a rescue dog in a very real sense of the word. She was found in the street in the village, her fur more red than white from scabs and blood and scratches. She was skin and bone. No-one is quite sure how old she is; Elly guesses she was about seven when they found her. She doesn’t like lots of men and can snap when you hold your hand out to her for her to sniff, which suggests she got hit a lot in the past.
After about a week and a half of keeping a respectful distance from her unless she came up to me with a waggy tail, we are used to each other. She often sits and sleeps outside my door, smiling up at me as I come and go. I can’t remember the last time she barked at me when I passed her or when I came in through the garden gate.
I head into the overgrown part of the garden for my morning garden watering (yes, euphemism). I’m squatting behind a bushy lilac tree. I’m in full flow (so to speak) when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I jump out of my skin and nearly pee on my trainer.
Dusty is behind me, grinning, her tail wagging furiously. She paws me again. “Okay, okay,” I say. “I’ll stroke you when I’ve pulled my pants up, you daft dog.”
Insects and beasties
I don’t mind an ant or two. I can cope with the odd wasp. Bees are wonderful little things. Earwigs freak me out a little, but I can handle them. I don’t run away screaming at the sight of spiders. I quite like spiders, once I know they’re there. It’s just when they jump out at me that I get a little nervous.
Gardening here is a slightly different kettle of beast, though. I’m weeding a border in Elly’s garden. ‘Garden reclaim’ or ‘garden rescue,’ Elly calls it – with good reason. There is so much couch grass in this bed, tall grass, along with massive dandelions, a ferny thing, a couple of rogue plum trees and the odd stinging nettle, that I can’t immediately see what is supposed to be in it. There’s some sage in here somewhere, I think. I can smell lemon balm. That there could be calendula. I grab a handful of grass near the roots and pull. Hard. When it eventually comes loose, I fall backwards and end up sitting down hard. I grin to myself, wipe the sweat from my brow, tuck my hair behind my ears and stand up, stretching. The hum of flies and bees is ever-present, as is the song of birds. One of the cats stalks something in the undergrowth near the trampoline. Next, I tackle the giant dandelion. All I achieve is a ripping of the leaves. I grab my hand fork and attack it at the roots, one hand pulling the plant as the fork levers it out. Something dark brown and nippy darts away and huddles in the edge of the next clump of wayward grass. I lean into the bed to inspect it.
Oh my good god.
Yes, I’m too shocked even to swear. I stand back a little, dropping the fork on the grass at my feet, reaching for the gardening gloves that are dangling over the handles of the wheelbarrow, never taking my eyes off the scorpion that crouches in the couch grass.
Fuck.
The shock’s abating somewhat; my vocabulary has returned to its usual bad state.
Fascinated, I get closer again, keeping a watchful eye on it. It is about two inches long, with a stinger curved up over its back. I part the grass carefully, keeping well out of range. It darts off into the long grass next to the bed. I sit back on my haunches, wondering what to do. I’m sure someone would have told me if there were venomous scorpions that could do serious damage. Maybe they’re territorial and that was the only one?
I keep going, although I keep the gloves on, too. I’m about half a metre further along the bed, the wheelbarrow is filling up fast with grass and weeds. I’m tackling another stubborn dandelion. I lever it out with the hand fork and am just about to sling it in the wheelbarrow, when I see another scorpion clinging to the small amount of mud that cakes the root. This one’s not quite as dark as the first one – milk chocolate as opposed to 70% cocoa. It jumps off, or falls off, before it hits the wheelbarrow and is hidden in the grass before I can track it.
I search out Elly, who is cooking lunch in the house. “Elly, what do you know about scorpions here?” She wipes her hands on a tea towel. “Why, have you been stung?” I shake my head. “No, I just found a couple in that far bed. I wanted to make sure they weren’t too poisonous is all.” “Hmmm. No-one’s done much with that bed for about a year; it’s pretty undisturbed… I don’t know to be honest… as far as I know, there’s nothing in Bulgaria that will kill you but… move to a different bed, just in case. It’s probably fine, but I don’t want you getting hurt.”
I google it later. Apparently the sting of that particular scorpion is no worse than a mosquito bite.
A couple of days later, Elly, Dancho and I are heading to a nearby village where there’s a factory that processes sunflowers. There’s a huge pile of rotting seed husks to the side of a big shed. Elly wants to raid it and use it as a nutritious mulch on her crops. Dancho goes over to one of the workers to ask permission. We are directed to the house of the owner, a woman in her fifties. We find her chatting to a friend in the road. She looks highly amused when she discovers what we’re after. It’s a waste product. It’s rubbish. She gives permission and Dancho backs the van up to the pile. The three of us pick our way over to where the pile is oldest and wettest, carrying about 20 sacks with us, along with shovels and a pitchfork. I’m thankful Elly found me some wellies to wear. We get to work. “Wow, there are a lot of crickets here!” I say, holding a sack open while Elly shovels the fertile mulch into it. The mulch is dark, full of worms and all sorts. You can tell how good it is, just by looking at it. It’s almost peat-like. The factory could probably sell it as an ingredient to one of the major fertilizer and compost companies. Don’t tell them that, though…
Several small, black crickets bound away from us as Elly scoops up some more. “Yes,” she says. “There are loads, aren’t there? Have you seen those monster ones that live in the ground? They look like dinosaurs or something. They’re massive.” I shake my head. I’ve never heard of a cricket living in the ground.
We fill all the sacks and head back to the van. Elly looks longingly at the piles and piles left. “Dancho, can we just shovel some straight into the van? We can take it out with the wheelbarrow when we get back.” He considers it and nods, reaching for the shovel. I see something make a hasty dive into the rich depths. “What’s that?” I say. “Where?” Elly asks. “There – where that bit’s moving.” It had been big. Fat. Whatever it was, it was massive. “It’ll be one of those dinosaur things… hang on…” She finds a stick and prods around with it, moving mulch as she goes.
Suddenly, there it is. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks part beetle, part bee, part lobster, part cricket. It looks prehistoric. It’s about three inches long and an inch fat. “Jesus.” That’s all I can find to say as it buries itself again.
The next day, I’m using the mulch to cover the bases of tomato and courgette plants. Four times, I nearly jump out of my skin as one of the prehistoric cricket things emerges from the mulch. I collect them in a pot and take them up the lane, putting them in the tall grass by the side of the road, away from the fields and gardens. Apparently they’ll eat through roots, which isn’t so good for your crops.
Another google later, I discover they are mole crickets and harmless. They’re still mental, though. Google them and look at a picture. They look made up.
There is a flea problem in the house. When I arrived, all the cats were full of them, although I never got bitten once. The cats seemed happy enough. Sheerer, the white cat that came with Elly from the UK, had many of them – you could see them moving about in her fur. Just before I went to Veliko Turnovo, Elly got the Front Line out and gave each of the eight cats a dose. She said that the cats would have to live outside for a while. That seemed counter-productive to me, but not being a cat owner, I wasn’t about to argue. What did I know? When I arrived in Veliko Tarnovo, I noticed a series of bites on my right ankle and a couple up my calf. Itchy.
The fleas have lost their cats. The fleas are still in the rugs. As the days progress, it becomes very clear that I am their new favourite food. I have bites over both feet and up both ankles. I sit at the kitchen table one afternoon and spot one wandering over my trousers at the thigh. That night, one seems to have come with me from the main house into my room. It seems to have taken up residence in my pyjamas, but can I find the fucker?
There’s not much sleep to be had. Each itch, each tingle, I reach for the torch to try and find it. Each time I fail. I wake up in the morning with bites on my stomach, waist and arms.
I resort to pulling my socks up over my trouser legs when I go into the main house. I shake out my clothes and search my pyjamas and bedding each night. I find two on the duvet and kill them. I go to sleep with socks pulled up over my pyjama bottoms and my top firmly tucked in to minimise the chances of a flea finding its way to my skin. I can’t sleep. Each twitch feels like flea. At least twice, it is. I find a flea behind my ear. It gets squashed between my fingernails. I wake up with more bites.
Elly gives me fresh bedding and I move to the other bed in the room. I wash my clothes and go to sleep in clean pyjamas. The next night is better.
I’m sitting on the terrace, reading a book. I had spent the morning in the garden with Elly, planting out chillies and courgettes. Ants were everywhere when we turned the earth ready for the new seedlings. From time to time, Elly would flinch. “Get out of my shoe, you bloody ant. Stop biting.”
As I sit and read, I shift on the ground, my arse getting numb on the concrete. Suddenly there is a sharp pain where there shouldn’t be. It gets sharper and more painful. No-one is about. I reach my hand down the front of my trousers and into my knickers. I pull out an ant.
An actual ant in my actual pants. Biting where no ant has a right to bite a woman.
Jesus.
My tolerance for biting, stinging, jumping, burrowing things is running low. There is a small part of me that is not sorry to be leaving the next day.
When I’m waiting for the train to Varna on my last morning in Voditsa, I feel a tingle at the back of my knee. Rolling my eyes, telling myself I’m imagining it, I turn up my jeans. A flea falls out. Before I can kill it, it’s hopped onto my other foot and is lost in the brown cotton of my sock. Shit. I’m a walking flea bag. The whole journey, I sit chatting to a Bulgarian guy and another Brit, paranoid they’ll see things jumping on me, worried things will jump from me onto them.
The first thing I do on arrival at the hostel is have a very thorough shower and put all the clothes that will fit into the washing machine on a long wash.
Itch, itch, itch.
It may have ended on a creepy-crawly note, but I have had a wonderful time in Voditsa, seeing a rural life that has remained largely unchanged for centuries.
Thank you to Elly and Dancho for being such generous and kind hosts. The food was great, the discussions mind-bending and the Scrabble matches epic.
Click here for Voditsa photos.
Click here for Veliko Tarnovo photos.