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George, Kath lives a long way away from your place. Maybe look for houses in the village with nice new windows and ask who they used? (I find Google Translate on the phone is a big help for this!)

@georgewheelwright

Hi George as Jane says we are on one of the main flight paths here to Sofia and onward to the Middle East. Im not on board with Chemtrails but you will find cloud seeding does occur around us here in Vratsa province when there are approaching hail storms the big farms and Ministry of Agriculture will fire rockets to artificially raise the temperature of the clouds to protect the wheat and sunflowers.

To answer your question on windows, I just had my other house done in the village, 1x front door, 4x half glazed doors, 1x fully glazed door, 11x windows came to around £3k fitted, extra for boxing in and replastering internally. The old wooden frames are generally held in with 6 to 8" nails and a lot of damage will occur when they are removed depending on the structure of your house, hopefully your village house will have oak lintels. If you ask your village mayor there will generally be a reasonable Maestro in the village who can source and do this for you.

I was sad to read that they do weather manipulation in bulgaria too, although it seems to be all over now.

@georgewheelwright you still here mate? Plenty firms doing double glazing in Vratsa.

@Kath948381

Hi Kath do you have number for company that done the work, also did they make good around the windows ?

Thanks

Ghost

@gwynj

Hi gwyn do you have number for the builder who done your windows please?

Does he speak fluent English?

Can he undertake work in spasovo village.

Thanks

Ghost

@Stefania1972

Hi did you manage to find good roofer?

Thanks

@Yasmin White

Hi yasmin do you have number for the roofer ?

Was you happy with the work?

Do they speak fluent English or have good understanding of it?

Thanks

@Ghostfreeman7609

The windows and doors folks are usually locals, and there should be several options in your nearest big town. Google Maps is getting pretty good these days at showing you useful prospects even when you search in English (restaurant, windows, hospital, etc.). Some might speak English, but mostly you'll have to try to get by with your phone and Google Translate (or take a helper/translator with you).

@gwynj

Or even learn the local language?  😎

Mind you, some of the Brit immigrants I've met struggle with their own language... 🙄

I think many of us would have very long waits to get any work done if we need to be reasonable conversational in Bulgarian first! Even those of us who are doing our best to learn. I'm getting better at reading, but speaking and listening, still 99% hopeless. I try to claim that's due to regional variation, which it seems exists just as much in Bulgaria as it does in the UK, but unfortunately I can't completely blame that!

@janemulberry

'Fraid not , Jane - there are certainly some pretty marked regional accents here, and a bit of dialect, but the main differences in how people speak/the vocabulary they use are between educated and less educated Bulgarians. Of course, in some ethnic areas there is a patois of Bulgarian and, say, Turkish words - and indeed places where people speak only Turkish.  Also, many Roma people speak very poor Bulgarian and one would be ill-advised to try to learn the language from such neighbours.

Lastly, as in many other countries, the vocabulary of younger Bulgarians is becoming progressively smaller and quite a few struggle with reading the Bulgarian Classics without a dictionary to hand.  As another example, university students are marked down if they make grammar/spelling mistakes in their written work, whatever the subject; the days when that happened in the UK are long gone - and more's the pity!

Our place is right up in the north-east, on the Romanian border. I've been told (by a younger, multi-lingual, well-travelled Bulgarian, our neighbour's grandson) that the older villagers in the region do have their own dialect.

The educated/ less educated thing does seem to be an issue, too. With our neighbours, the village-raised but better educated wife can often understand me despite my appalling accent, while her skilled and wickedly funny but never-left-the-village husband needs her to translate what I said. But part of that could also be that she's had far more contact with people from other regions of Bulgaria, while he has not.

@janemulberry

Or maybe she's just smarter than he is - wouldn't be the first time, as 'Er Indoors is wont to remind me.... 😎

LOL, you are a lucky man, Jim!