There’s been two loosely related things on my mind lately and this is how they have
come together. The first is a theory I have always held which I've now managed to
completely negate. My theory was this, British ex-pats or immigrants as the locals call
them, were generally I thought, people who had never gone anywhere, and then on a
holiday to perhaps Spain or Australia for example they found some aspects of the
country they really liked, and then emigrated. My reasoning for this theory was that as
someone who is lucky enough to have travelled significantly, I have seen that every
country has its pluses and minuses. All have aspects I really like, be it scenery, culture,
people, infrastructure, architecture, beautiful roads or pretty girls etc, indecently on
the last one my top 3 are:-
3. Vietnam
2 . Brazil
1. Georgia
Anyway despite the appealing attractions, equally every place has its shortcomings
too, be it I’m just not allowed to live there due to strict immigration laws, maybe it’s
the intense an brutal winters, corrupt officialdom, whatever. So for 30 years I have
mostly been happy to come back to my home, England. A place where I understand
the language, humour, the way life works, the past and how it relates to the present.
But something happened in 2013 on my way to Iraq, I passed through Bulgaria, it was
nothing I could put my finger on but for the following two years I found myself
considering living there, I knew of others from the UK who had done just that. So this
summer I went back for a Horizons Unlimited mini-meet, just to see if it was as good
as my memories, and not, like school, just fond recollections that excluded all the
awful aspects.
However by the time I’d stepped out of the airport that magic thing I can’t explain
happened. The next day I looked at a house the day after I opened a bank account
then flew home to complete the sale of my house in the UK, transferred some money
into my new Bulgarian account, jumped on my bike and rode the 1600 miles in 48
hours. Ironic really, when I’m always preaching the advantages of a slow riding style,
but this was not me off to explore Eastern Europe like I was doing when I first came to
Bulgaria, or even some adventure-bike-ride-check-off-countries marathon. I was
destination driven to sign paperwork I couldn’t read and a week later I owned a house,
or at least I think I do, I've been living here four months now and no one has tried to
evict me. And this is the thing. There are several other ‘ex pats’ in the village all of
whom are well travelled and of course I socialize with them. I am trying to learn the
language but with a Cyrillic alphabet I really am starting from scratch, I look at the
letters of the word, I recall the sound they make and sound them out like a 3 year old,
and if I get them right I have just correctly pronounced a word I don’t know the
meaning of. So this is particularly challenging for me.
I want to go in the local shop but I lack confidence as I can’t communicate, I want to
speak to my fellow villagers because one thing I know for sure is, that if locals don't
know anything about you they will make it up, and this long haired tattooed foreigner
doesn’t need any more rumours about him. So here I am, a well travelled immigrant,
trying but failing to learn a language, and my limited mixing with Bulgarians could
hardly be described as integrating. I'm not isolating myself completely, but the daily
frustrations of shopping and general misunderstandings, relying on translators and
others ability to speak my language, means that come the evening I just want to relax
in the comfort of a language I understand. I'm determined to learn, I will because I
love living here but for now I'm just an immigrant coming over here, drinking their
wine and not really immersing myself into the community. But when we sit around the
table drinking said wine we call ourselves ex-pats and somehow everything is
acceptable.