Íæż½ã½ã

Hello wrightkarl,

Welcome to Íæż½ã½ã 😀

Do not hesitate to share more about what you and your girlfriend are looking for in your future destination, and feel free to ask anything.

There are plenty of experienced members who will be happy to share tips and personal insights.

All the best,

Cheryl

Íæż½ã½ã team

Hi Karl, and welcome to the forum, and hopefully the start of a Bulgarian adventure!

If you haven't visited Bulgaria yet, the first step might be a trip there. It's very different to the UK, and tends to be like Marmite -- people either love it, or they don't like it at all! Think about where you might want to live, city or country village, mountains or coast, and look at property prices, which have risen quite a lot in the last few years. Rightmove or Bulgarian Properties are good places to start to get an idea of realistic property prices. Many village houses will need more money spending as most require quite a bit of renovation.

Possibly the most important thing to consider if you intend to live full-time in Bulgaria is how you will get a long-stay visa. Post-Brexit, UK passport holders, like most non-EU citizens, can stay in the Schengen zone (Bulgaria and most of the EU) for a maximum of 90 days per 180 days. That's plenty enough to have a holiday home for summer stays or if you want to divide your time between the UK and Bulgaria. But to live there, you'll need to get a D visa as a first step to applying for residency. This isn't necessarily easy, though isn't impossible either! There's a good explanation of the process and the types of D visas here (an immigration lawyer's site, not specifically a recommendation, but she makes it clearer than the Bulgarian Embassy site does):

Good luck with your journey!

Where to start is a good question. 🤣

here are some possible answers:

1. read reviews;
2. ask for recommendations;
3. visit the country of interest - e.g. a longer excursion;
4. gather your own impressions.

That should do, for the initial period.

Hi all

Thanks for the responses, so best to address some of those to help me allow you good folks to help us.

I'm a dual national, British/Irish so I've got an EU Passport, my girlfriend is a Romanian national so is already an EU passport holder. So I need to investigate further but our status should simplify things.

We'd be looking to live there as a permanent residents.

I've traveled a lot round Europe and eastern Europe so I'm under no illusions of just how rural it can be. Not that we'd be looking for village life. Ideally I'd like to be on the outer edge of a larger town or city with walking distance to a shop for food essentials and a bar for being social with the locals.

To that end, one of the reasons for joining this site was to ask questions about those things. Which groups or Forums to join, suggestions on location that have an expat community of some form etc.. I'm 55 years old, so I have to be honest about language skills (I will learn but it'll be limited), so a location where similar folks are already resident would bring tremendous benefits.

I'll want to buy a house with a little space around it (Andreea wants to garden again) , I'm not a flat/apartment person.

That's a bit to start with which hopefully sparks some new conversations in different directions on different useful topics !

I'm thinking we'll holiday in Bulgaria in September, so an opportunity to use well there too.

Karl

Hi Karl!

You both having EU passports simplifies things massively. There will still be a bit of paperwork if you decide you want to make Bulgaria your home, but it's far simpler and can be done in Bulgaria at the local immigration office. They'll need proof of address in Bulgaria, health cover (an EHIC or GHIC card is adequate) and you'll need to self-certify or show a bank balance as evidence of enough money to maintain yourselves.

If you want to be where there are other Brit expats, around Veliko Tarnovo (especially the Popovo area) seems to be an area many Brits have settled in. It's a city in the central area, interesting history, good range of shops, everything needed for day to day life. There's no local airport, and despite the talk, there probably won't be anytime soon, so it's a three hour bus ride from Sofia or Varna. The town can get touristy in the summer, but the villages are generally peaceful. Alternatively along the coast for the sea or near Plovdiv for the mountains are also great choices if that's what you want, but those areas are likely to require a higher property budget.

The language is a challenge for sure! I'm learning, but slooooowly! I can read more than I can speak or understand. Like the UK, there are also regional accents to make it more interesting. Our house is in quite a remote village with it's own strong local accent. Initially it seemed no one spoke any English apart from the kids, who learn at school and from the internet, though our welcoming neighbour and I get on fine using Google Translate. Over repeated visits (we can't move full time yet because of the D visa issue) as I've learned some Bulgarian and got brave enough to practice, I've found that a few more of the older Bulgarian do speak a little English and they've also gotten brave enough to try it out with me!

On a day to day basis you can probably get by with minimal Bulgarian to start with as you learn it, but for anything official, you may need a paid helper to translate for you.

Making a trip in September to have a look sounds an excellent plan! I hope you both enjoy it!

hi mate welcome to the group im also looking to make the change. UK is well and truly on it was to ruin. im heading out to BG on thursday evening.

A lot of Bulgarians have headed in the opposite direction - they reckon that the UK is a good place to live and that Bulgaria is beyond help. Unfortunately they also vote for the clowns that form new parties and help make the situation here worse than it needs to be; luckily, they soon get booted out of government and the same old faces reappear - they aren't to everyone's taste but at least they manage to keep the country and economy ticking over.

I use the term "clowns" quite deliberately - there's currently a political blame game going on after the revelation that a previous administration came up with a cunning plan to reduce deaths and injuries on Bulgaria's road that would have delighted Private Baldrick. The "plan" involved a surefire strategy to save lives: the purchase of 30,000 religious icon stickers and magnets, along with 15,000 beach balls, 50,000 balloons, 30,000 blue pens, and 1,000 badges. Exactly HOW this bizarre collection of disparate items was going to have the desired effect has yet to be revealed, not least because the Dramatis Personae involved are engaged in blaming each other for the purchase and denying that the signatures on the procurement documents are theirs.....🙄

@JimJ lmao….you reminded me of a Bulgarian railway article that I read somewhere which basically was about the train drivers complaining they didn’t have anywhere to go pee… so the management decided by way of another cunning baldrikesk plan to install swivel driver seats so the drivers could pee out of the windows… I kid you not this was the solution lol…

@Ozzy183a

That was actually an urban myth "report" (though it indeed deserves to be true 😎) - but it's certainly the case that BDZ has a very long way to go if they want to be regarded as even vaguely modern. Of course, the ticket prices will rocket first and the whole modernisation project will probably backfire spectacularly...