5th January 1971

C/O ICL

The British embassy

Sofia

05/01/71

Dear Mum and Dad,

We arrived here about 12 o’clock midnight on Saturday because our plane was delayed at London airport for about five hours due to fog.

So far we have done nothing very exciting. Tony has been working very hard. I did not start my work so well as I went to work yesterday but had an upset stomach so had to stay home today to recover. It must be something I ate on Sunday. This afternoon I am feeling better so I expect I will go to work tomorrow.

The Volkswagen does not seem to have leaked any more transmission oil while we were away so it only appears to leak when it is being driven. I expect we will go to Greece fairly soon to get it mended. I bought some spare gaskets and oil seals and 12 pints of oil in London so we should be OK for a bit. We had a big surprise when we arrived in Sofia as the temperature was 7 degrees above freezing. While the rest of Europe is shivering there is no snow here and mild spring weather. There have been terrible gales before we returned.

I hope mum’s ‘efficient German’ arrived safely. I have started to try and learn Bulgarian but it is very difficult mainly because of the Cyrillic alphabet. Once I have mastered that it will be easier. There appear to be fewer cases to learn than in the Czech language.

Thank you again for the lovely Christmas. We both enjoyed it. I hope you have recovered from the hard work- Nanny too of course.

We did not manage to buy a typewriter before we left. I will have to try again on my next trip home. I think it would be really useful especially as it would mean you could read my letters more easily. Tony is trying to type some letters on the office machine and it takes him ages. He has to look for each letter on the keyboard and was using only his right index finger. It’s quite painful to listen to him. Still I hope he gets quicker with practice. I don’t think he trusts me as he thinks I will make too many mistakes.

The water has just been cut off- one of the joys of living in a communist country. I hope it comes back on in time for tea. I had better close now and will write again when I have more news. Love to Paula and family. Love to you both and Nanny

Gilly and Tony

The VW gear box was to be ongoing saga which lasted for several months. The main difficulty we encountered with the Bulgarian authorities was the fact that we were in Bulgaria on tourist visas (unlike Czechoslovakia where we had a residence visa). As such we had the car registration stamped on our visa and technically could not leave the country without it. The VW was on Tony’s visa and the Daf 44 on mine. The only easy way to leave the country without the car was to travel by plane when the car could be left in a bonded customs compound at the airport until you returned. The oil leak was so bad that we could not consider driving anywhere like Greece or Austria with it and just hoped we could get the problem solved in Bulgaria with the right spare parts.

Our first impressions of Sofia were that it had the flavour of the East, very unlike the European Middle Ages feel of Prague. The centre of the city was paved with yellow bricks and there were many grand buildings like with the old Alexander Nevsky  cathederal with its domed roof. During the night, even in freezing temperatures, the Bulgarians hosed down the roads in the centre with water tankers making them very slippery when you went to work in the morning and causing many accidents. After a late night party somewhere we were surprised to see it was Gypsy & Turkish women who were carrying out this unenviable task in the freezing temperatures. Both Gypsy and the Turkish minorities were treated very badly in Bulgaria at that time and only given the most difficult unpopular manual jobs to do.

Tony was the technical manager in charge of all the ICL computer installations in Bulgaria and the one in Bucharest, Romania. Gill was the contracted programmer for one of the main customers ICC (Institute of constructional cybernetics.) who had bought a System 4 computer and who had their offices in the central square. The previous onsite support programmer, Chris C, was still in Bulgaria and able to do a hand over the to Gill (unusual for ICL). He was completing some programming that had been contractually agreed when the computer was purchased.

One of the first tasks we had to undertake was to sort out the ICL office. There had been no secretary for some time and there was no filing system or any system for that matter. We can remember working on a Sunday to set up files and folders and wade through the accumulated post, notices, manuals etc that lay around in random piles and create order out of chaos.

Our flat was much better than the one in Prague and in an equally beautiful setting. It was in a post- communist block of flats, with two double bedrooms, a kitchen, shower room and a balcony overlooking the park in central Sofia. We had squirrels and deer outside our flat on occasions and it was lovely to be able to go for a walk in the evenings without needing to drive anywhere.

Our fixer in Bulgaria was Vasil I. originally from Czechoslovakia who found us the flat and the office. We remember having to bribe the estate agents with two bottles of whisky to smooth the transaction. With the flat we paid extra for a cleaner, Dancha who spoke hardly any English. An ideal job for a spy you might think but Dancha appeared to be a simple, warm hearted lady from a small village outside Sofia who I cannot believe would spy on us, although others most certainly did.