A chance phone call in the summer of ‘05 and a week later we stood counting the hours while the luggage made the 50m journey from plane to carousel in Varna Airport. Not the best start, but surely a sign of things to come, in a land where time runs on a different clock. For the next few days we had our ups and downs and eventually we had a required business and between us, three houses. However, this is not a story of the viewing, re-viewing, reviewing or even completion, all of which, considered, were relatively painless.
I had travelled with an old friend, James, as we left our wives behind promising to e-mail developments. We spent several days skirting the Varna region, scouting for houses with our pre-arranged agent. Eventually we found a house each, within our budget, in a small village, let’s call it Selonevo. James also purchased a second house in a slightly larger town, as it had an indoor bathroom.
The house I chose was a typical village affair, a little land, some out buildings, plenty of trees and needing a lot of work. The house was also split into two parts, one of which was completely locked up with barred windows, and owned by the property owner who had long since given up village life for the bright lights of the city. The second part was, as far as we could work out, inhabited by an elderly friend of the family. A kind of live-in gardener/security, apparently not an unusual situation these days. The lady was obliging, even helpful, giving basic information on the house and area.
I liked it, the position was ideal and there was potential. James found a similar house about a 15-minutes’ walk away and we considered making our bids. Basically, our offers had been accepted by the time we e-mailed the details home and although the initial response wasn’t so positive, I was convinced that the pictures didn’t show its true glory. With the company set up and deposits paid, we journeyed back to England, planning a persuasive spiel and promising a viewing within weeks.
Soon enough, we paid up the balance, received our documents and set up another visit all with the minimum of fuss. We were five now: Jamie and I, the two wives and Jamie’s brother Thomas who had acquired a share.
On the Biomet Bus from Sofia to Varna, the conversation regarding the house was a finely balanced affair, positive yet realistic. I knew that the condition of the house left a lot to be desired and had to prepare Mrs W for this – rotten wood, broken windows, leaking roof and, of course, the village house toilet/hole. We were prepared to rough it for the week-long visit and spend the time planning improvement, repairs and meeting builders.
On arriving in Varna, we spent the night in a hotel and the next morning met again with the agent, who drove us to Selonevo. Possibly, nervous excitement is the best way to describe a journey interspersed with pleading phrases of a worried husband like “of course there’s a lot to do” , “don’t expect too much”, “think of the potential”, etc. As the car pulled up facing the green gates common to so many village properties, it was a clear day and confidence was peeking through, until we walked towards the house.
Instead of the envisaged sight, we were greeted by the aggressive yapping of a mongrel that clearly believed itself larger than it actually was. This wasn’t a good sign but it was better than the braying of the harnessed donkey in the yard. It didn’t take a genius to realise that our house, the house I had spent weeks talking up, was still inhabited. Striding through the yard, we met an elderly villager who, it transpired, was the husband of the woman who had previously shown us around. Accompanying him, to add to the bizarre situation, was their 40-ish son who was the double of Barney from The Simpsons, right down to the spillages on the shirt.
Their tale was that they hadn’t been told the house had been sold; I suspect they knew but assumed we wouldn’t be arriving in the near future. The old woman was apparently away; we still didn’t have keys for the second part of the house and didn’t particularly want to ingratiate ourselves to a new village by throwing out some of its long-term residents. Mrs W summed up the situation by going to lay in a field. Much deliberation and scratching of heads took place, with little progress.
The agent took James, his wife and brother off to see if they had a similar situation in their house in the village. During this time, Mrs W peeled herself from the field and the four of us remaining sat perplexed over thimbles of coffee. We weren’t prepared to throw them out exactly; we certainly weren’t prepared to pay for a hotel 50km away and our communication of this to our new “lodgers” was limited at best. Thus we past possibly the longest half an hour ever, until the others returned.
They had had better luck, finding an empty house and keys that worked. James was spending the week in his new town house and wasn’t planning anything for the Selonevo house for a year or two. It was suggested that our inhabitants move to James’ house at least for the time being, and they were driven up to view it. All was agreed, James and family were taken off to their town house (which they were to find was empty of people but still full of their stuff, but that’s another story).
The old man and his son began to move their possessions, although moving is an exaggeration as it suggests something active. The donkey and cart were loaded up to the minimum and they started a regular trip across the village and back at a snail’s pace. We spent the rest of the day heaping furniture into the yard to speed up the move.
Did Mrs W like the house? I’d been too busy to ask, she too busy to say.
We spent the night on an old pull-out sofa that hadn’t yet been transferred. Waking early, Mrs W decided she had to risk using the “facilities”: a shed, a rotten stool with a roughly sawn hole hovering above the second hole into the ground, and a door that needed to be carefully wedged. It is at this point that the forgotten character of this tale re-emerges. The old lady, completely oblivious to the previous day’s events, had alighted the early morning bus, made her way across the fields and decided to “powder her nose”. The meeting of the two women of the house was a shock for both. They say you can manage to communicate using gestures and few words. I am still unaware of the international gesture for “your husband and son have moved out and this is our house now”. “Cup of tea??”
We waited until the husband and son arrived; clearly they were in no rush. She wandered about, a little washing up, some sweeping, a brief inspection of the possessions in the yard. Who knows what she was thinking.
Eventually Barney and Dad arrived, now there were some international gestures I understood. They loaded her on the front of the cart, and I expect the journey was one of nervous excitement interspersed with pleading phrases of a worried husband “of course there’s a lot to do” , “don’t expect too much”, “think of the potential”, etc.
The next days were spent desperately trying to speed up their move, surreptitiously slipping extra items in their cart and such like so we could clean out the place. We told them when we were going, tried to explain we would lock up, that if things weren’t out by then they would be locked in, yet still only two gears, slow and very slow. Eventually we stumbled upon the key to the faster gears and here is the tip for others in this situation, FIRE. We were only burning some garden rubbish until we noticed their worried look; pointing at furniture increase their speed, burning some old rags had the donkey positively trotting to and fro.
By the time it was time to go, they had taken everything including the winter squash, hundreds of empty plastic bottles, jars both empty and full and piles of fire wood. We had met with builders, explained the plans, got quotes, got into the other part of the house and tentatively explored the village. Did Mrs W like the house? I think we’d been too busy to discuss it, but now it’s home. We have never seen this family since and James’ village house stands empty now.
