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| Enjoying the locals' artwork in Etropole... |
But, on the other hand, I happily spunk money
left, right and centre on: second-hand and vintage clothes, plants, eating out,
alcohol, avocados, Ikea rugs, good coffee, toilet roll, pointless trips to
Sofia…
In other words, I drive a 22-year-old car and
wear a coat that cost 6 leva (£3), but I’ll drop 40 leva (£20) on a bottle of
Tanqueray No.10 without flinching. I’m not sure if that makes me a fucking
legend or an idiot.
Anyway, last Friday was an expensive day – and
not of the fun, gin-and-Ikea-rug variety. More of the bill-paying variety.
First we paid our annual house and car tax. Back
in England, our council tax on a small basement flat used to be £90 a month – and
that’s going back more than 10 years, so it probably seems like a right old bargain
to anyone reading this in England today.
The equivalent tax in Bulgaria is – brace
yourself – 14 leva a year for our
house. That’s about £7. A year. (It’s more expensive for those who live in
towns or dirty great mansions, obviously.) To be fair, we don’t get much in the
way of municipal services where we live, but who can complain when you pay 14
leva a year? It’s so cheap, I almost skip into the municipal offices to pay it
every March.
The car tax is not such a bargain, though. Bulgarian
car tax is a mystery to me. Do you pay more on an older, less efficient car,
like you would in the UK, or is the tax more expensive the better the car? I’ve
no idea. For our 2001 Ford Puma it was 105 leva. And for our 1997 Toyota Rav4
it was 120 leva. That’s obviously cheaper than it would be in the UK, but I
don’t know how it compares to other (ahem, better) cars in Bulgaria.
We also paid for our annual Bulgarian company
tax return, did the dreaded supermarket shop, and paid all our monthly bills.
So much money. So little fun. We didn’t even have a single Ikea rug to show for it.
