Expatriate Statement - Untrue!

It was commented by an expatriate today that Bulgarians have loads of time off work for celebrations and festivities, whatever the cause, but don’t have any money to fully take advantage of the party times. This comment was taken and put in perspective when mentioning that it was the opposite in the UK where people have lots of disposable income, but no time off from work to spend it on partying.

Generalisation just makes my blood boil and this is a fine example of that. How can anyone make a statement like that and label everyone as being the same here in Bulgaria or likewise in the UK? Why say something like that, is it a reaction they are after or is it just being too lazy to draw more into the observation, which actually isn’t an accurate observation anyway?

I took the essence of the comment and made the point that many Bulgarians don’t need money to celebrate or party, they just need company and there’s plenty of that around with their normal socialable habits. Good cheap homemade food and drink with company and a television provides a formula for celebrations that cost no more than a normal evening meal anyway. In fact it is cheaper to have a get together and party as the savings on heating just one home rather than several makes good economic sense.

It is always a cold winter here and most people are tucked away in one heated single room whether entertaining others or not, why do they need riches to be happy in joyful communities?

So for someone to say that Bulgarians can’t afford to party is a categorical lie.

Snow at Last - Cause for More Celebration in Bulgaria

It has been quite a worry over the last month or so that we have had no snow. It is quite unusual for Bulgaria not to have a white Christmas or at the very least to have had snowfall prior to the festive season. This year it has been different.

There is much talk and concern at village level of the low well water levels that were almost run dry last year. Without snowfall this winter, they fear that this year this will go from bad to worse. Villagers rely on the water from their wells for their produce and home use. Many homes don’t even have water main supplies and will have to resort to shipping water supplies from natural springs in most village centres, this of course is fine for domestic supplies, but for smallholding that depend on water for crops, impossible.

So the New Year came and the talk was of drought this coming summer, then yesterday, the snow finally came, and lots of it. There is forecast even more on its way throughout the week, this is cause for even more celebrations and that’s how it is right now. Even though many villages are now snowed in, there will be more celebrations beyond Christmas, New Year and countless name day celebrations.