Post: #1

Just got back from Sofia, with my Bulgarian girlfriend. This is not a data sheet as such as I was there for a wedding and not there to game women, but I want to give my impressions of the place, to anyone who may be considering a visit.

Cost - Bulgaria has always been cheap as it is one of the poorest members of the EU,but at the current exchange rate, prices are crazy cheap.

An an example: meal for 3 pizza place, 10 mins walk from the centre, we paid the following.
3 medium pizza (quality good), 3 bottles of water, 1/2 lite of wine, 1 coke and 2 bottles of 500mil Stellar = £20 ($31), this included a 10% tip.

Accommodation, we stayed just off vitosha street in a quality 1 bed apt, 600 sq feet with balcony, wifi all mod cons, cost £200 for 5 nights. Vitosha has the 'cafe culture' bars / restaurants and is really nice to walk down.

When we did use taxis I paid about £7 for about 20 mins, not expensive.

At the wedding we went to I noticed that just like the anglosphere everyone is glued to their smart phones. As in all wedding boys chase girls and I saw a good looking Bulgarian guy get slapped down after trying it on with a woman on the dance floor.

There was some mixing but it all seemed to be social circle within their groups. If terms of the women of the 15 women on the dance floor, there was only 1 fattie.

In terms of couples Bulgaria seems to be a place where couples are generally evenly matched in terms of looks. A male 6 with a female 6 and so on. On occasion though you would see some men who were say a 6 with a female 8.

In Sofia itself I felt the place was not yet overrun with the British stag party crowd, which is a good thing.

I saw an American guy in a restaurant in bad shape, maybe early 30s, balding, no dress style, probably a 5.5 in terms of looks, with a definite Bulgarian 8 in my book. She was 5ft 9, slim, super good looking. All credit to the guy as he has used his foreign status to pull her, in the states he would be lucky to get a date.

Looked like he met her on the Internet as he did not look the type to chat up women openly in bars - good luck to him.

Can't comment on the nightlife / women scene as I was not there for that, but my thoughts are that Sofia could be a welcome change for people as its a place that has not yet been overrun with Anglo men.

Most of the young people seem to have a reasonable level of English, although I found saying a few Bulgarian phases always gets a positive response.

Overall a refreshing trip.

Post: #2

MM,

Thanks for sharing and great to hear from you.

Hope all is well.

Post: #3

(08-10-2015 02:35 PM)Midlands Man Wrote:  ...

I saw an American guy in a restaurant in bad shape, maybe early 30s, balding, no dress style, probably a 5.5 in terms of looks, with a definite Bulgarian 8 in my book. She was 5ft 9, slim, super good looking. All credit to the guy as he has used his foreign status to pull her, in the states he would be lucky to get a date.

Looked like he met her on the Internet as he did not look the type to chat up women openly in bars - good luck to him...

In my experience living here for two and half years there's no default foreigner status - if anything I felt it worked against me in particularly the first year, with many of the women I met through online dating showing some mild (or in some cases rather blatant) skepticism regarding my job, my reasons for choosing Bulgaria and my social circle.

Granted things might be different if I had been 28 and still chasing girls every weekend in clubs and bars, instead of 38 and mostly doing online dating, but certainly with most of the primarily late 20s to mid 30s women I date - the age where most of them seem very obviously interested in finally finding that provider guy to settle with (I'm not exactly the type) - I get the impression that all things being equal they'd rather, not surprisingly, land a local guy with money and status (and while the average income in Bulgaria is very low, there's still a very visible and not insignificant upper class in Sofia) than a foreigner with money and in most cases likely a lot less local status and a smaller social circle.
And like with women in the West most of the Bulgarian women also don't seem to want to admit their declining SMV to themselves, so they keep dreaming of Mr. Big Shot Alpha through their 30s and probably beyond.

Post: #4

As a Bulgarian, it's just my personal opinion that Bulgaria sucks when it comes to women. And, yes I am also from Sofia, born and spent like 99% of my life there. I am now for a week in Plovdiv where things look slightly more promising compared to Sofia.
Of course, I am comparing Bulgaria to other EE places like Ukraine/Russia - which is why I am downgrading it that much. Compared to American women, Bulgarian ones are probably like angels.

Here are a couple of observations that MIGHT help some people who have Bulgaria on their list:

* You'd score big time if you're white German, French, Italian, etc.
* Like I said: don't expect higher quality than Russia, especially if you're into light eyes/natural blonds/skinny women.
Hell I'd say countries like Israel or Italy have much higher quality and yes, I'm speaking from personal experience.
* The female logic works weird here: All the girls want to marry guys from the West, yet they all have banged Russian or Turkish men in the past...logic? 0_0


Now, I don't want to sound too jaded, so I am going to mention and the pluses:

* English level is OK, most girls speak English or German.
* Foreigners are "exotic" and you may use the "exotic factor" to your advantage.
* A guy 32 can easily marry a girl aged 18, no one is going to call him a pedo or anything.
* Competition is low. Sure you get the Bulgarian mafia guys and local footballers, but that applies to 20+ countries in Europe, it's not something unique to Bulgaria.
* Once you learn Bulgarian you may switch easily to Macedonian or Russian.
* Bulgaria has popular sea cost visited by horny russian and scandinavian women.

That's about it for now.

Post: #5

Nice, intriguing details, gents! Way to go on the dish out there, yonder Romania.

THIS is a well-needed thread to start putting data down on real life in the Europe that's just a place on a map, to most English speakers.

Getting back to the Bulgaria-Romania connection, I find it interesting that most travel guides in English of Central Europe (aka, Europe East of Austria), neglect these nations.

I mean, folks - they link Central Europe to Greece and rising (if only in their minds) Turkey.

That's a lot of territory, nations, and peoples.

What might explain that neglect?

I think two things: slow train travel between them, very slow. Thus, for people coming from the West, casual travel further East is more time-consuming ans thus "not worth it."

A second reason - since these are nations one REALLY has to want to visit - is that American immigration base from Romania and Bulgaria, and hence descendants, is smaller than from other countries.

For example, Austrian and Hungarian immigration to the USA was not a lot less than 2 million from each (1.9 and 1.7 million, respectively).

I haven't looked at the numbers for Romania and Bulgaria, but I'd bet they are a fraction of that.

OK - I just did it. 367,000 Romanian-Americans; and 55,000 to 90,000 for Bulgarian-Americans.

THANKS to all posters for opening up 'terra incognita.'