Hi from a cold Sofia, Bulgaria

[JimJay]

I guess that the title says it all

I live on the side of a mountain on the outskirts of Sofia, with great views and plenty of ice and snow in the winter.

I'm very much an amateur woodworker - no change from my schooldays - but I'm slowly improving my skills and trying to learn at least one new thing every day, even if I forget half of them by the end of the week...

 

[RobinBHM]

Hi Jim Jay a very warm welcome to you.

Whats life like in Bulgaria? - I’d guess from your post you are British?

 

[Droogs]

Hi and a warm welcome. You'll find lots of peeps happy to help you as you wend your way on your woodworking journey. You might find the below interesting

http://www.fdtme.ukim.edu.mk/en/wood_journal/archive/vol_2_no1/vol_2_no1_fulltext_8.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Regina-Raycheva
https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.1515/aup-2015-0007
From some of my more esoteric furniture inspiration sources

I nearly moved to Bulgaria. The town that got me thinking about it is just SW of Sofia and has my name written all over it Drugan

 

[Sandyn]

Hello from a warm sofa in Scotland and welcome to the forum. What an interesting part of the world to live in, such a mix of cultures and influences over the centuries. I just had a drive around Sofia on Street view, What a beautiful city!

 

[JimJay]

Hi Jim Jay a very warm welcome to you.

Whats life like in Bulgaria? - I’d guess from your post you are British?

Thanks, Robin.

I'd better not get started on just how more enjoyable I find life here or I'll take up all the forum's bandwidth and exhaust everyone's patience. Suffice it to say that it's a great place to live, very picturesque and "old school", and life in pretty much every aspect is considerably cheaper than in Blighty. Being a small country, and the poorest in the EU, quite a few things in terms of tools and woodworking kit are difficult or impossible to find, and Brexit has cut off the supply lines to the UK in the shape of Amazon, Axminster etc. Luckily, getting stuff from Germany is easy and there are shipping companies who charge peanuts for packages from there to here, so all is not lost.

If you've never visited BG, I'd certainly recommend a visit here - there's lots to see and do, and the people are very friendly.

 

[JimJay]

Hi and a warm welcome. You'll find lots of peeps happy to help you as you wend your way on your woodworking journey. You might find the below interesting

http://www.fdtme.ukim.edu.mk/en/wood_journal/archive/vol_2_no1/vol_2_no1_fulltext_8.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Regina-Raycheva
https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.1515/aup-2015-0007
From some of my more esoteric furniture inspiration sources

I nearly moved to Bulgaria. The town that got me thinking about it is just SW of Sofia and has my name written all over it Drugan

Thanks, Droogs.

Furniture making is beyond my skills, I'm afraid - especially now that I have bad arthritis in my hands and have had to give up most of my hobbies which require a lot of dexterity. I do like the old Balkan and Ottoman-influenced style of furniture but the Real McCoy is very expensive nowadays and most of the true craftsmen have left for pastures new where they can make big bucks.

I have come across some of Regina Reychova's writing before, particularly on Bulgarian Revival and Ancient Greek furniture, although my interest hasn't blinded me to my own limitations when it comes to even thinking about reproducing any of it myself

I'm slightly familiar with Drugan, having visited it when doing some house-hunting in that general area about 15 years ago, and we often drive not too far from it on the way to visit my wife's parents. We live on the northern slopes of Vitosha, overlooking Sofia.

 

[JimJay]

Hello from a warm sofa in Scotland and welcome to the forum. What an interesting part of the world to live in, such a mix of cultures and influences over the centuries. I just had a drive around Sofia on Street view, What a beautiful city!

Hi, Sandyn. Yes indeed, this region has had a lot of "interesting" history over the centuries, and it's definitely still ongoing! Sofia is indeed a nice city, small enough to get familiar with - it was rather more beautiful many decades ago but Communism (and, sadly, the USAF/RAF) did do a lot of damage here. We live on the slopes of Mount Vitosha, looking over the city towards the other range of mountains to the north of Sofia, so the views are pretty spectacular and of course change with the seasons.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Welcome to the madhouse, what areas of woodwork take your interest? Mine is pretty much all woodturning.

 

[MARK.B.]

Hello and Welcome

 

[JimJay]

Welcome to the madhouse, what areas of woodwork take your interest? Mine is pretty much all woodturning.

I love the results of woodturning but I lack the time - and patience - to really get into it, not to mention that The Boss gets rather fidgety when expensive-looking packages appear from the courier. Getting decent wood is also a bit of a problem here - most wood, even for construction, isn't properly seasoned, or even dried, and the vast majority is anyway used for heating....

 

[JimJay]

Hello and Welcome

Thank you, sir - are you a "Brycreem Boy", by any chance?

 

[dzj]

Although a neighboring country, I visited Bulgaria only once. A skiing holiday in Borovets.
Back then Mr. Zhivkov was still the Big Cheese. A day trip to Sofia. Grey, dreary, a lot of Soviet style architecture.
I imagine they've livened it up a bit since the early 80s. The people were nice and our languages are similar, so no problem
communicating.
Their authorities were very considerate, I remember. They had a fella follow us around all the time so we didn't get into any trouble.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

JET BG - Power Tools, Hand Tools, Woodworking, Metalworking & more! have Axminster and Jet tools in stock, but I have never used them because the prices are astonishing. But perhaps they are close and you could at least do some window shopping.

I'm a bit south of you, in the Peloponnese. Ludicrously cold currently - could do with some global warming.

 

[NewbieRaf]

Hey @JimJay welcome to the forum. My wife is from Bulgaria and has family in Vidin so we visit quite often, in fact the plan so far is to fly come over in April - war pending, hope all is well there

I agree that you guys can get stuff easily from mainland Europe but ok also impressed with the local flee markets you can get some real jewels for next to nothing. Where is BG do you get your wood/tools/stuff from I’d be interested to know

 

[JimJay]

Although a neighboring country, I visited Bulgaria only once. A skiing holiday in Borovets.
Back then Mr. Zhivkov was still the Big Cheese. A day trip to Sofia. Grey, dreary, a lot of Soviet style architecture.
I imagine they've livened it up a bit since the early 80s. The people were nice and our languages are similar, so no problem
communicating.
Their authorities were very considerate, I remember. They had a fella follow us around all the time so we didn't get into any trouble.

Yeah, in some parts of the city there's no shortage of Commie Brutalist architecture, in the shape of the "panel" blocks that you mention. Many of them are now renovated and going for what, in Bulgaria at least, is regarded as silly money There's so much new building at the moment - mostly apartments - that it's difficult to park in many places and parking-spots are much more valuable per sqmtr than residential property; luckily, up here on the mountain everyone has their own garages/parking but there's still no escape from the building boom.

"Bai Tosho" wasn't really a "big cheese" - more a big minnow in a small pond, he just got to stay alive as long as he did what The Kremlin Boys told him to - as you probably know, his daughter was regarded by Moscow as being too "alternative/hippy", and quite a few Bulgarians still regard her convenient death as more than a little suspicious... The only trouble you'll get into now involves wearing the wrong scarf on the day of a local footie derby or deciding to argue the toss if you're cut up in traffic by someone in a fancy blacked-out car.

 

[JimJay]

JET BG - Power Tools, Hand Tools, Woodworking, Metalworking & more! have Axminster and Jet tools in stock, but I have never used them because the prices are astonishing. But perhaps they are close and you could at least do some window shopping.

I'm a bit south of you, in the Peloponnese. Ludicrously cold currently - could do with some global warming.

Yeah, the prices at Jet are scary - and, unsurprisingly, they don't keep a lot in stock. Even rubbish tools left over from the Commie days go for silly money on the BG equivalents of Fleabay, although I can't imagine anyone actually wanting them or being willing to pay that much.

We pop across to Greece from time to time, mainly to do some food shopping but the prices get more outrageous every time - mind you, I do remember Greece in the early 60s so that may well colour my memories!

 

[JimJay]

Hey @JimJay welcome to the forum. My wife is from Bulgaria and has family in Vidin so we visit quite often, in fact the plan so far is to fly come over in April - war pending, hope all is well there

I agree that you guys can get stuff easily from mainland Europe but ok also impressed with the local flee markets you can get some real jewels for next to nothing. Where is BG do you get your wood/tools/stuff from I’d be interested to know

A lot of the stuff in the flea markets are copies but the odd gem does seem to surface from time to time Wood-wise I tend to use the big German DIY-sheds, primarily Bauhaus who often have special deals on at sub-German prices. The others - Mr Brico and Praktiker etc - are pretty ropey and carry a poor range at inflated prices. There are some specialist wood suppliers on the Sofia Ring Road, who import wood from Germany, and there's a wood-yard with big stocks of ply and fibreboard at decent prices at the end of our road. The wood-yard will cut to size - surprisingly accurately given that it's just a couple of guys with a dodgy old rusty table saw with no fence, blade guard etc! There are also a few FB groups with people selling second-hand tools etc but it's very much a caveat emptor situation.

I have to hold my hand up and admit that my main suppliers are Amazon and other tool suppliers in Germany, plus Herr Lidl in both BG and Germany - shipping from Germany to here is cheap and pretty quick if you use a specialist shipper.

My wife is also Bulgarian, by the way

 

[NewbieRaf]

Nice yeah I was in practica in oct and wasn’t impressed if you compare to Bau Haus but for up north BG you’ll take what you can get. What amazes me about the flee market is how the sellers think they can charge the same price as new or even more expensive. I usually have my father in law dober-den it up with them but it never works.

in Vershets I know the owner of a wood fabmaking tables and chairs, the quality wasn’t great but apparently they sell.

ive Never been into the Bau Haus in Sofia - maybe this time round I will

 

[JimJay]

Nice yeah I was in practica in oct and wasn’t impressed if you compare to Bau Haus but for up north BG you’ll take what you can get. What amazes me about the flee market is how the sellers think they can charge the same price as new or even more expensive. I usually have my father in law dober-den it up with them but it never works.

in Vershets I know the owner of a wood fabmaking tables and chairs, the quality wasn’t great but apparently they sell.

ive Never been into the Bau Haus in Sofia - maybe this time round I will

I think you might be confusing Bauhaus with BauMax (the ex-HouseMax ) - as far as I'm aware, there's only one Baumax in BG - but it's definitely worth a visit, in fact I've just come back from there....

 

[Adam W.]

If I was you, I'd find a friendly forester and ask him to source some of the best wood around. They have always been very helpful and seem to like a challenge.