Bulgarian women

[ECOCKS]

Crimea expects fall in number of tourists in 2009, says resort and tourism ministry.
He said that serious competition from Bulgaria, Turkey and Spain would cut the number of tourists in Crimea.
http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/37779

Service level in Bulgaria is considerably higher than in Crimea (although certainly not up to the level of Turkey or Egypt).  I remember my wife's comment when I asked why we weren't going to Crimea for vacation, "Prices are the same or higher plus food, service and the beaches are worse."

[GoodBrew]

Rick Steeve's Surprising Bulgaria

http://www.bluebulgaria.com/videos/bulgaria/index3.html

[Wienerin]

Rick Steeve's Surprising Bulgaria

http://www.bluebulgaria.com/videos/bulgaria/index3.html

Thank you, I enjoyed re-visiting many o0f the places I loved. Of course, when these are somebody else's photos - view, that is, - you'll never get to feel the place as you did oneself, with all the sights, colors, smells, texture... And Nesebar is a particularly difficult place to photograph, you just have to be there.

Sofia is much lovelier and interesting than could be seen from the photos. Plovdiv also - it's a magic city. Stara Zagora lost much without it's backdrop of magnificent mountains.

Also, I have been to Bulgaria not as a tourist, and seen it not as a tourist, too. Pity I didn't make any pictures, but ... well, whatever. These albums are beautiful and for me nostalgic too. Thank you again  

[mendeleyev]

Friends of our family started pestering us about vacationing in Bulgaria so we went 3 summers ago. Last summer we purchased an apartment along the Black Sea (3rd floor: 1 room with kitchen and toilet, and a garage street level) for under $20,000 USD. My only regret is that we didn't buy a bigger one for a few $ more. The same friends purchased the apartment next to us and as it's really a vacation spot and as part of the renovations we're putting in a door in between so that whoever goes over can use both and not be cramped for space.

Renovations are very difficult. Bribes per the proper permits and we've been cheated several times by paying for work that was not finished. I thought it was enough to pay 1/3 at start, 1/3 midway in the project, and 1/3 at completion. Turns out to keep from being stiffed we needed to buy the materials ourselves and pay for labour at the end of the day on a daily basis. However this summer we'll finish it up and enjoy laying there at night hearing the waves crash up on the beach just one block away.

The economy has tanked and things are very cheap right now. They're EU but new at it and the daily newspapers are filled with stories of corruption. The government "lost" track of hundreds of millions from the EU and IMF last year and the folks in Brussels are demanding an accounting. President Georgi Parvanov announced yesterday that new elections will be held on 07 June of this Spring.

The Russian-Ukrainian gas shut off this winter crippled Bulgaria. The BBC and Russia Today TV showed programmes of Bulgarians tearing down village fences for wood to burn. Some older Soviet style apartments still have old wood and coal stoves in them. This morning the Bulgarian national news service, Novinite, published that as of today, 03 April, gas supples have finally risen to 80% of what has been contracted for so the effect was longer lasting than most of us realized.

But as has been stated earlier, it's a beautiful place with beautiful people. There are more blondes than you might expect and it's truly a nice mix of Slavic and Mediterranean. The language is Bulgarian but very similar to Russian as it's uses the same alphabet (like Ukrainian and Belarussian, Bulgarian uses some Cyrillic letters which Russia has eliminated) but enough of the words are written the same that reading a menu or direction signs is easy.

The resorts are isolated in that you could travel there and not have to deal with the problems of life as lived on a daily basis. A RW should have no problem traveling there and neither should WM. We enjoy taking the train from Moscow.

[ECOCKS]

 

I remember my wife and son laughing (in Bulgaria) when I said something about the signs being in both English and Russian. when I asked they said it was like reading the writings of Russian first-graders in terms of their grammar and usage.

[docetae]

cool link.  thanks!  I love this kind of stuff.

I hated nessebar. It was full of tourist and has nothing unique compared to what you can see elsewhere. btw, I you stay in a sea resort, you can negociate at the harbor one boat ride to Sunny beach, it will cost you less than the boat for tourist and will be a lot more fun.

Below some views from Sunny beach and Nessebar.

[mendeleyev]

I remember my wife and son laughing (in Bulgaria) when I said something about the signs being in both English and Russian. when I asked they said it was like reading the writings of Russian first-graders in terms of their grammar and usage.

The English signs are an EU thing for International language. What looked like elementary Russia was Bulgarian Cyrillic but a Russian speaker could understand it's basics. As Bulgarian has not abbreviated it's language as has Russian over the years, it actually a more complicated Cyrillic system. That's not a criticism of Russian--the Russians have made Russian Cyrillic more simple with the elimination of letters which are still in use in Bulgarian, Belarussian and Ukrainian.