merlin
Member
- Location
- Saint Petersburg Russia
Impressions of Bulgaria
The first word that came to me on landing in Sofia airport was "peace" not what I expected at all, Sofia the capital unlike any other capital city I have been to was deserted and silent, the only action we found was at a restaurant we went to on Saturday night. Every day we have spent here seems like a quiet Sunday, except where we are now Sozopol, which is a Russian enclave and not like the rest of Bulgaria. The Bulgarians are generally quiet and sadly still smoke a lot, unlike most of the rest of Europe.......... they are not so openly friendly as people in other countries we have visited, but very helpful when the need arises.
It's a very poor country with a lot of horses still used in farming areas, and of course corruption is endemic, and on a grand scale, though not immediately obvious to a tourist, all we see is a peaceful romantic image of city and rural life
Talking about corruption, we are staying in an apartment we booked through Airbnb, which we know can be risky, but we have used them before with no problem.
On arrival here the apartment we were given was nothing like the one we had booked, though in many ways it was better. The apparent host was a Russian babushka, stressed out of her mind, full of apologies, giving me a couple of bottles of beer and asking me to give a good review or none at all............... to cut a long story short, we were then introduced to the security guard here who we would give the keys to when we left. It became obvious the whole resort is run by the local mafia, using this babushka and others as a front via Airbnb. It's all very sad and I do feel sympathetic to this woman's plight, she has obviously serious health problems, and relies on the payout she gets from the dealings she does on their behalf.
Talking to the locals the whole country is run along these lines, and having prematurely joined the EU without bringing corruption under control as the EU proscribes, they have little incentive to do anything about it.
LINK
Yet more than a decade after Bulgaria joined the EU, questions remain over its record in tackling corruption, while the presence of far-right minority parties in government has caused alarm. According to Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index, Bulgaria is the most corrupt country in the EU.
I took this photo in the first town we visited ......
