A chance meeting on an Italian beach led Andriana Tsankova (45) to uproot her life and move to Ireland – for the first time.
In 2007 Tsankova and her husband, Miroslav, had moved to Italy from their native Bulgaria, to try and find work but they didn’t have much success.
“I was cleaning houses, different places, very simple, very down the bottom. My husband was working over there in a petrol station. But if I be honest, we didn’t feel that happy. We didn’t like the life over there,” Tsankova said.
One day to try and cheer herself up Tsankova went to a local beach.
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“I stayed at the beach for a few hours alone. I wasn’t feeling happy at all. I said to myself, what am I doing? My husband is working and I’m on the beach by myself.”
While waiting for the bus home Tsankova overheard a woman named Albena speaking Bulgarian. Tsankova struck up conversation with her and explained her predicament. At the end of the conversation the women swapped numbers.
Three days later Tsankova received a phone from Albena who said that she had found her a job, but that the job was in Ireland. A member of Albena’s family had just opened a fish and chip takeaway in Kilkenny and the family needed a trustworthy person to mind their children and help out in the takeaway.
“I said, I can’t leave my husband. I was 27 and I thought, how can I do that? She said, sorry that was my offer, and we finished the conversation.”
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A few moments later Tsankova received another call. “She said Andriana, we have found a job for your husband. I thought, how can these people offer two jobs to people they have never seen? Everything was so strange. Albena said, he can work at the takeaway.”
Three days later Tsankova and her husband were on a flight to Ireland paid for by their new Italian employers. Miroslav was working his first shift in the takeaway three hours after the couple landed.
“I was loving living in Ireland. I loved that every time there was a bank holiday people would come to takeaway to celebrate and have chips after their drinks.”
The couple felt at home in Kilkenny as it reminded them of the area they grew up in. They grew up 7km (4.3 miles) from Veliko Tarnovo which was the capital of the then Bulgarian empire from 1185 to 1393.
“Kilkenny is the old capital of Ireland as well. The history and the little church and the castle and everything is probably the reason that I have always felt good here.”
After three years, the couple moved back to Bulgaria as their son Viktor was living there with his grandparents. On their return, Tskanova worked as a teacher for children with special needs. “That got me four really happy years. I worked on some great projects like the Erasmus exchange, and I was travelling all over Europe with the kids and other teachers.”
In 2014, Tsankova discovered that she had a talent for identifying the ingredients in perfume. She had become obsessed with learning to identify the notes in a perfume by smell. She decided to quit her job.
“A month later I was in Kilkenny with only €2,000 in my pocket. I didn’t have brilliant English at the time. We had no money, no accommodation, absolutely nothing.” But Tsankova had yearned to return to Ireland.
“We had great jobs with good salaries, but I wanted to come back to Kilkenny. Not Waterford, not Dublin, not Galway, just Kilkenny. The people are very friendly and amazing. The streets are cute and spatial.”
Back in Kilkenny, Tsankova went to a local estate agent and rented a small shop.
“I still remember how he was looking at me from head to toe. He didn’t believe me, but he got me the keys and that’s how I started my business.”
She had high hopes for her business, Valley of Roses, when it first opened.
“It was a month before Christmas and I thought, I have such a lovely product. I have a little cute shop. I thought, I will be so busy. I will be selling all day long. I will be so tired. Actually it was the opposite, for the first three years I had very few customers.”
Some of Tsankova’s first customers came to her shop out of pity, as they saw her standing alone in her shop for days on end. Tsankova worked nights in the takeaway just to make ends meet.
In 2017, Tsankova was tired, ready to close the shop and give up on her dream, when one customer changed everything for her.
“A very famous influencer came into the store. She tagged me on her social media and then the next day, everything was different.”
The next morning when Tsankova arrived to open her shop, two people were waiting outside for the shop to open. Over the next few days and weeks people flocked to Tsankova’s store and the orders came flooding in. At this point, she did not have a website or a card reader so she had to quickly scale her business to meet demand. Today Tsankova’s shop has a cult following and has moved premises to a spacious store next to Kilkenny Castle.
Tsankova sees her future in Ireland. “I feel free. I feel secure. I feel people appreciate my work. I can go back to Bulgaria for a summer or to see my parents but not in a long-term scenario.”
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
