Quote: (11-19-2018 09:46 AM)scipiu Wrote:
Bulgaria has several mountain ranges, a riviera and decent cities. The girls are fit and good looking. Irrc they actually need new people since the population size shrank by 2 million since the 1990s. Bulgaria is one of the poorest countries in Europe though, and there are a lot of gypsies.
You don't have to interact with gypsies unless you choose to - here in Sofia they are just background noise in most of the city aside from certain ghetto neighbourhoods where many of them live (I'm barely even sure which neighbourhoods actually, even after living here for five years).
And like everywhere else they are also extremely easy to distinguish from the regular Bulgarians.
I like Sofia, it's run down - although in the center they've made lots of improvements in just the years I've been here with redone walking street, restored parks etc., and there are a ton of nice restaurants and cafés - but nice and green in the summer.
The two major seaside cities are also nice in the summer, as is the second largest city Plovdiv, which has a beautiful old town, a nice center and some beautiful, large hills.
Smaller provincial towns and cities range from pretty nice places to visit in the summer - I've been to a number for spa trips or hiking bases - to some of the ugliest stereotypes from the communism era.
There's no shortage on beautiful and varied nature here, from mountain ranges to plains and lakes to seaside resorts (from the overcrowded and touristy hosts to young drunk Scandinavians, Germans and Brits, to smaller villages turned seasonal resorts).
This is the poorest country in the EU, although sometimes you wouldn't think so from all the malls in Sofia (they've built three or four new ones just while I've lived here) and the not insignificant number of Porsches, large Audis, BMWs and Mercedes and the occasional Ferrari or Lamborghini you see on the streets (nearly all acquired through smaller or greater involvement in crime, according to every normal local I have talked to about it - I used to think they were exaggerating and some just plain envious but I'm not so sure anymore. Lots of organized crime and corruption here. Perfectly safe city for daily life though).
Tourism to the capital has been going up the last couple of years in the summers, although I still don't think it's a particularly popular expat country.
English level is generally below average to fluent for locals under around 40 - and some older speak English as well - although it can still be a little unpredictable. In the medical clinic I go to some of the young (around 30) doctors speak worse English than the girls at the front desk and the administration. And sometimes you will run into young people who either can't or don't feel they can speak English (and I'm primarily talking about shop assistants here, not girls on the street who might be trying to find a simple way to say "not interested").