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Monday 8 November 2010

19. Things we’ll miss about home



Of course the main thing we’ll miss is our family and friends. I hope we’ll have lots of visitors. In fact I’m sure we’ll have lots of visitors – if only to satisfy people’s morbid curiosity at first! But hopefully people will continue to come back after their first visit. Once the outbuilding is finished we will certainly have plenty of room for guests.

I will miss the sea an awful lot. I have grown up living close to the sea and never yet been able to leave Portsmouth (apart from 3 years living in Waterlooville which was a bit of a folly and we don’t talk about that). Our house in Bulgaria is about 5 hours from the Bulgarian cost and about the same from the Greek coast. That will be weird. Instead of being at sea level we’ll be about 500 metres above sea level. That’s so high I might get nosebleeds. I may even weigh less all the way up there.  

We’ll definitely miss our mother tongue. We are struggling so much with the Bulgarian language, I think I’m going to write a whole post about it next. Even a simple trip to the shop will take a lot of brainpower at first.

I will very much miss Costa lattes (okay they have Costa in Sofia but that’s a two-hour round trip for a latte). We’ll also miss cheddar cheese, Albert Road pubs, cider, The Florence Arms, BBC Good Food magazine, cider, sherry, Lidl (although there is a rumour of Lidl in Sofia) and chip-shop-chips. I’m slightly concerned that so much of what we’ll miss is edible stuff. Oh well, at least our visitors will know what to bring with them! I doubt I will miss Slimming World.

As I write this there is an old episode of Grand Designs Abroad on the telly - a couple are restoring a huge old stone building in rural France. They’re struggling with the language and because they’re on such a tight budget they’re doing a lot of work themselves, even plumbing. But they’re completely unfazed, so driven and they are totally loving life abroad. After feeling a bit glum thinking about everything we’ll miss and how hard it will be to leave, I’m feeling inspired again! Just make sure you smuggle me some cheddar past customs.