I don’t think I saw an avocado in a local shop
until … maybe 2014? 2015, even? I mean, you’d see them on menus in Sofia, of
course, but for sale in Etropole? No way.
Then, one local veg shop started occasionally
offering some outrageously expensive, puny avocados – which I’d gladly hoover
up, regardless of their price and diminutive size. Kaufland would also stock
them every now and then, slightly cheaper, too.
Things really changed about a year ago. BOOM!
Suddenly it was Avocado Central around here. More than one shop in Etropole had
avocados in stock pretty much all the time. Kaufland had avocados permanently
on offer. We slipped back into our Waitrose-loving, Guardianista snowflake ways,
eating smashed avo on toast every week. Living the Millennial dream, like the
horrible clichés we are.
So when there weren’t any avocados in stock at
the supermarket last week, I was … confused, bereft. They can’t take my avocados away from me, I fumed. This is an outrage. I demand avocados!
Anyway, I’m sure it was just a temporary blip,
but it goes to show how different things are these days. And how we’ve once
again got used to having easy access to life’s little luxuries. Rob ordered a burrito
in a restaurant in Botevgrad the other week. A burrito! I remember when, outside of Sofia, we’d
struggle to find much more than shopska salad and cheesy chips on the menu. (Partly,
to be fair, due to our middling language skills, but also because most local
restaurants really did only offer the same few dishes.)
And in other food-slash-national-development
news, a KFC has just opened up about 10 miles from our house. I’m not sure how
I feel about this. On the one hand, it’s a distressing sign of the increasing Westernisation
of the mad, unique country that we love. But on the other hand, well, KFC’s Fillet
Tower Burger. I mean, it’s a chicken burger with cheese and a hash brown on top.
What’s not to love about that?
