Life in Bulgaria

Good morning/evening
 
As some of you may be aware if you read my posts, I have adopted Bulgaria as my homeland and have lived here for many years. There are a lot of reasons why this was a great choice compared to staying in the UK.

Some of the good points

• We got to see our son grow up
• The cost of living was a lot lower than the UK
• Quality of life improved
• Community spirit
• Less materialistic
• Beautiful scenery (see my post https://www.publish0x.com take-a-break-touching-clouds-xdkmomo )

Not to say that everything is perfect, far from it but we are happy here. As for the above points, if we were still in the UK our son would have effectively been brought up by the child minder I used to pay a fortune for. (She saw his first steps before I did!) Renting our house out in the UK gave us an income, and we were both able to watch our child grow up, he was 18 months old when we moved here, everyone thought we were insane, moving to a new country with a young child. When we bought the house in Bulgaria we never planned on living here, it was to be a holiday home that we could use as and when. 
 
Some of the bad points

• The weather 
• Amenities
• The rubbish
• The language. The cyrillic alphabet was hard to learn!

 
As for the weather, as much as some people would love some sunshine, a Bulgarian summer can be blisteringly hot, up to 40 degrees in the shade. Winter I don't mind as much as you can crank up the fire or put more layers on, when you have very little clothes on and the air conditioner on....well there is not much more you can do!
 
 

The water pipes are old and in need of repair so often water goes off, or comes out of the tap brown. We often have power outages although they have become less frequent. The irony is that Bulgaria exported over 3 billion USD worth of electricity from solar farms in 2023. The other bad thing from all the sun and heat are the wildfires, there have been 3 just within 30km of us, this summer alone. Very scary when the water is off.
 

 
 
 
Now as for rubbish I don't just mean people dumping their rubbish in a pile, (yes that happens) Bulgaria takes rubbish from other countries. Cars from Italy, another village has old drinks fridges as far as the eye can see, some country will reach its cfc emissions because they exported all the old drinks fridges! Cardboard from Europe come over in huge bales ready to be processed, but while waiting it just sits there in a village.
I have had neighbours with very little but they would bring a Bulgarian meal to my house or give my son their last slice of bread. Children could play safely at the swings without having to be constantly watched and it is safe, I could go out at night on my own if I wanted to and not have to worry.
 
Lessons learned
 
What I have learned from living here is you don't have to have a lot to be happy. 
 
You soon realise that the designer clothes and nice cars are not necessary when you see people with very little share what they have, moving here was a very humbling experience that I am grateful for.
We had an 80 year old neighbour that just came over and helped us wheelbarrow in a delivery of stone one day and when I tried to pay him some money for his help, he would not take anything so I had to think outside the box here. My dad worked for a company at the time that had donated to us all their old computers as long as we paid for the transportation (these were passed on to the school and the kindergarten) I knew they disposed of all their work clothes if a new employee had started but did not stay with the company (really good quality workwear, coats fleeces and waterproofs) so I asked if it would be possible we could have some of these to donate. Again we had a truck load of excellent coats etc and my neighbour happily took a coat and some waterproofs. The rest was donated to the villagers and to this day I still see people wearing those coats.
 
The expensive toys are not needed when you see children happily playing outside with whatever is at hand at the time, be it a small sandpit or just games of hide and seek. One day my son wanted to walk to kindergarten by himself, so I sort of hung back so he couldn't see me and all the baba's in the lane (Grandma's that would sit outside on benches in the mornings) said to me 'it is OK we will keep an eye on him' as I stalked him down the lane. 
 
All in all my life in Bulgaria has had its ups and downs but I am happy here, I hope I have given you a glimpse of life in rural Bulgaria. What about you? Do you live in the country of your birth or somewhere different? Is there another country you would like to live in?
 
As always, thanks for reading and please feel free to comment.

Image by Peter from Pixabay