Bulgaria

What do you do if you have a week of holidays but not booked any trip and you really feel like doing something? Thanks to low-cost airlines, the answer is easy nowadays: check to where they have the cheapest flights and book! This is kind of what we did for the autumn holidays, except that we chose Bulgaria for one more reason, which is that neither us had been there before.

Originally, we wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny because the weather in Belgium had be so awful during the summer. But then we got a really nice September and October so we could be more flexible. I'm so happy we made it to Bulgaria, one more EU Member State to cross of my list - now only Portugal, Cyprus, and Slovenia are unvisited!

Since we booked quite late we didn't work out much of an itinerary but rather decided "on the go". We also got some great advice from some Bulgarian friends so we ended up a small road trip from Sofia, to Plovdiv, Veliko Târnovo, and back to Sofia. Our priorities were mainly: good food, relaxation, some nature, some culture. I think we got pretty much all of this and especially the food was no disappointment!

One thing I enjoyed especially and that I was quite surprised about were the amazing independent coffee shops that we found and where we spent quite some time. Some examples are Fabrika  Daga ("Rainbow Factory") and Barista Coffee and More in Sofia, and places like Monkey Bar in the the Kapana district in Plovdiv. Once we went to get coffee at Costa's and it was a huge disappointment - luke warm coffee, smelly seating area, dirty toilets. And it was about twice the price of a cup of coffee in the other, much nicer places! So if you are a coffee lover I definitely recommend going to Bulgaria.

We didn't even make it as far as the Black Sea coast but I spent a couple of days on the Romanian side of the border a few years ago and remember it was quite pleasant (except the Soviet era style resorts that were extremely crowded and didn't have any "natural" beaches). Maybe if we go back in the summer this will be an option, too.

And one quick knitting update: I made quite a bit of progress on my Palmetto cardigan and I'm enjoying it a lot. Hopefully I'll be able to post the finished project soon.

Big changes

Soooo, it's official now: we're having a baby! I'm not using this as an excuse for not blogging regularly since forever but I can't deny that this has taken up a lot of space in my head over the past months, of course. First of all, the shock. This actually worked?! Then, the planning and the admin. Figuring out all these steps, especially in Brussels where you have a million choices for everything (Dutch- or French-speaking crèche? Dutch- or French-speaking hospital? Last name of the child?....) this is quite a challenge and we still haven't solved all these issues.

But of course it's first of all a happy time and we're looking forward to all the craziness and the changes that a baby will imply! And I'm personally of course also looking forward to having someone wearing all my hand-knitted baby clothes (luckily they cannot object too much to my fashion choices in the first couple of years at least).

Then we have some more changes coming up which are less pleasant - our flat is up for sale which means that we will probably be kicked out once the sale has been finalised. We already had quite a few people visiting the flat and they all seemed interested. Damn it, we shouldn't have put so much effort in decorating the place! It's only been two years that we live there and frankly I was hoping to stay for at least one more year, which is the minimum duration of our contract.

We haven't quite decided what we will do but we are looking pro-actively for a solution. I can imagine things that are more fun than moving house either when nine months pregnant or with a tiny baby but unfortunately it seems like we won't have much of a choice on this one...

Apart from that I'm really trying my best to keep this blog running. Bear with me, a lot of other things going on at the moment as you can imagine, but I'm committed!