Last month, I grabbed the chance to stay in Lom with my friend Nicky and his family, who adopted me as their Canadian son for the weekend. I was looking for the house of my grandmother, who was sent to Canada to marry my Bulgarian grandfather in 1925. But I had no idea I would also end up in my grandfather's village that same weekend. Grandpa was a goatherd in Belotintsi, near Montana, and in 1912 fled to Canada during the Balkan wars. By strange coincidence, Nicky's father grew up in the village next to Belotintsi. Before long, we were in Nicky's car, whizzing along the backroads, driving through fields of corn. An hour later, we were in Belotintsi, a dusty village on the edge of a tall mountain. Nicky's father stopped to ask two old men if they knew "Ivan Jonoff." "Ivan was the godfather of my father!" one old man named Hristo cried with delight. "Your grandpa's father cried the night before his son left the village."

A few metres away stood grandpa's house, a small bungalow surrounded by a fence and a garden, where another family - peering nervously at my camera - were now living. All of grandpa's brothers and sisters are now dead, and many of their children have also died. Hristo took me next door to visit grandpa's only surviving niece, named Tsanka. The old lady has suffered three strokes and can barely walk. She was propped up in a chair in the shade of her house when in walked Victor - and rocked her world.

"Your grandfather was away from this village for fifty years," Tsanka said. "I remember when he came back in the 1960s to visit. We all called him `Toronto.'"

Although Tsanka had never met them, she knew the names and occupations of all her Canadian cousins, and asked if I was the son of George, who had been in the military. When I said yes, her husband disappeared and returned with a 70-year-old photo of my father when he was only two years old. She was upset to learn that my father and one of my uncles were now dead, and she asked if I would visit her two daughters - my second cousins - living in Vidin and Lom. They take turns coming to the village to take care of her.

"Now all my brothers and sisters are dead, and I'm the only one left!" she cried. "And now Ivan's grandson has finally come to our village and I'm so happy!" "Let's go now," Nicki said, "or I'm going to start crying too."

But by this point I was already crying. I leaned over to kiss her goodbye, but she wouldn't let me go. As I pulled away gently, she kissed my hand and begged me to come back for a visit.

"The Jonoff family still has four huts up in the mountain," Hristo told me on our way out. "This is where your grandpa tended his family's goats and sheep as a child. When you come back, we will take you to visit the huts."

It was dark when we got back to Lom. By coincidence, my second cousin Siika only lives a couple of hundred metres from Nicky's house. The next day, Siika was waiting for us outside her apartment building; her mother Tsanka had called her four times about my visit. When Siika showed me the family tree, it dawned on me that I have dozens of cousins throughout Bulgaria. She volunteered to organize a "cousin reunion" in Belotintsi in late July.

"My nieces and nephews in Canada are your third cousins," I said when I was introduced to Siika's children. " Someday I hope they'll come here to learn Bulgaria's language and traditions."

Back in Sofia, I arranged to meet another second cousin, Stefan, who lives nearby in Slivenitsa. Stefan was also born in 1958, but when we met at the Central Station, he seemed older: I was the single, carefree traveller and he was the family man. He and his wife, Reni, hired a university student to translate for the entire evening. We went back to their apartment and ate and drank for several hours. I showed their teenaged boys pictures of Canada.

"After living on my own for six weeks, now I feel like I'm at home," I said. Reni beamed, disappeared into the kitchen and insisted that I eat more, more, more. Meanwhile, Stefan, who works as a security guard and seemed a bit stiff at first, also began to relax, reminiscing about uncle Jimmy, who studied Bulgarian at Sofia University twenty years ago.

"Your uncle liked the night life," he chuckled. "He would stay out all night and sleep all day. He was so used to his Canadian freedom, he would just wander around Bulgaria whenever he felt like it."

"When we all go to the family reunion in Belotintsi," I said, "what should I bring aunt Tsanka? I'd like to give her a present she can use. Like a television? Or a refrigerator?" They seemed a bit surprised but promised to call Siika in Lom to see what her mother might need. By now the food and family memories had left me drained. On our way back to Sofia, Reni and I sat in the back of the car with the translator.

"Although I've only just met you, I already feel close to you," Reni said. "Will you find a good Bulgarian woman to marry and take back to Canada?" "When I think about what grandma went through, I don't think I'd want to put another Bulgarian woman through that," I said, skillfully avoiding the question. "But that was then," Reni said. "Bulgaria is different now." But how different? Next week I'll find out when I go to Belotintsi one last time.

Victor Janoff is a Canadian currently in Bulgaria working as a consultant for a Canadian NGO. Since his arrival he has been searching for his long-lost relatives. This column is part three in his four-part series on his search.