Monday 15th October 2018

Well, you would not believe how complicated buying a freezer can be, or maybe it was just a misalignment of planetary bodies, what with Electrolux rising in Zanussi and the imminent total eclipse of Beko.

I ordered, or thought I'd ordered, a nice undercounter freezer from Technika.BG, and expected delivery of said goods approximately three days later. The appointed day came and went, sans freezer, so I checked the online status of the order. Aha, way down at the bottom it said that payment had to be made in full by bank transfer before the goods would be sent (despite the usual cash on delivery arrangement with couriers). No problem, I immediately sent the money over and sat back to wait another three days. This time I thought I'd keep an eye on the status of my order, and noticed the following day that the status had changed from '47' (presumably that meant 'not yet paid') to 'от доставчик'. Now this can either mean 'from the manufacturer' or 'from the deliverer'. Well at least something was happening, so I waited till the third day again. Still no delivery, so this time I decided to take the ultimate challenge and phone Technika.

Luckily the woman on the other end spoke nice and slowly and patiently listened as I explained that the money had definitely left my bank account and what did this new status mean exactly. Unfortunately, being a Saturday, she said she couldn't check anything, and told me to phone back again on Monday. Grrrr.

Monday morning and I dutifully phone back again. Unbelievably it turns out that they no longer have this freezer in stock, and would I like to order something else with my credit, or they could return my money. Um, refund please. Over a week to discover this! Why couldn't they just have emailed me in the first place to say the freezer was unavailable.

Not being one to be thwarted when I'm on a shopping spree I did a little more googling and found another similar freezer on Zora.BG. This time it was definitely cash on delivery, and within 24 hours I was given a delivery date for the following day. Unfortunately I'd already planned to be out all that day, hiking with a friend, so phoned the courier, Econt, and arranged for delivery on a different day. Hurrah, it arrived when promised and is now nestled next to its larger cousin in the shed, already half filled with pots of homemade soup.

I mentioned last time about a section of wall collapsing between me and the neighbour, and my arranging for someone to come and fix it. Well its pretty much done now, but that too was a bit of a saga.

You'd think I'd have learned by now, having lived here for so many years, but I'm still in the mindset that when a workman comes to do a job he will A) have suitable tools, B) know what materials need to be ordered and C) know how to do the work. In Bulgaria this is not a given.

To give him his due he worked pretty hard, and made a nice concrete foundation for the rebuilt wall, and built up the layers nice and straight. But it felt a bit like having a teenager who has done three weeks work experience on a building site and now confidently wants to add an extension to mum and dad's house. Little things like needing to put metal reinforcing into the concrete (luckily I've seen enough to know this is necessary) and using small stones to fill the centre of the wall (he wanted to just fill it with endless tons of concrete).

These three pictures are of the wall partway through rebuilding. There's a concrete foundation, the first layers of rocks and then a cement layer being put in.

His estimate of the materials needed fell way short, and when it came to a third delivery of sand and cement I made him take the delivery charge out of his own money. And equipment? Luckily I had plenty of planks around to make the shuttering for the cap on the wall, and between the neighbour and myself we came up with hammers, nails, saws and the various other implements needed. The mesh fencing was put up with a nice three inch gap under one section, but I've since blocked that with a section cut from some spare mesh. All I need now is for him to come back and thread the thick wire all the way along the top, middle and bottom of the mesh to keep it taut.

So, for anyone planning on getting Bulgarian builders in, make sure you have all the necessary tools, calculate the materials needed yourself, and google a few youtube videos so you've an idea about what should happen.

Actually, this reminds me about Bulgarian deliveries too. You can order something weighing 100kg and there will be one lone delivery guy to get it off the lorry and into your home, so always have lots of strong assistants on standby!