EN
Nederlands
Français
Bulgarians are warm and helpful once you speak to them, and they almost never smile at strangers in public. That single habit is what confuses most first-time visitors. A blank face behind a counter in Sofia is not coldness, it is the ordinary public expression, and the warmth turns up the moment the conversation starts.
When I visited Bulgaria, I did it with my friend Amanda and with Anita, an ex-colleague of my dad. Anita is Bulgarian and loves her country enough that she wanted me to experience it properly, and not just the country. She wanted me to meet the Bulgarian people.
Bulgaria is quite a bit bigger than Belgium, and the 8 days I had were nowhere near enough to see it all, but I did see a lot. We drove from the capital Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo, where Bulgarian independence was declared on 22 September 1908, and then on to Bozhentsi, Nessebar and Plovdiv. That route is one slice of a country our Bulgaria travel guide covers properly.
It was the first time I properly visited an ex-communist country, and I am glad I got to do it with a local. Anita is a former history teacher and she had read up beforehand so she could tell us as much as possible. I wish I could pass all of it on, but it was impossible to hold without taking notes the whole time. I wish I had recorded her.
Bulgaria left a big impression on me anyway. Walking through the streets, it feels like a European country and at the same time very different from the Western European countries I usually travel in. I will tell you more about the road trip itself another time. Until then, here is the one thing that intrigued me and still does.
The people of Bulgaria
The people of Bulgaria are reserved in public and open in private, and 3 habits account for most of the gap a visitor notices. The people you pass on the street do not smile at strangers, they dance in public without a trace of self-consciousness, and they answer “how are you” honestly rather than politely.
Some background helps before you meet any of it. Bulgaria counted 6,519,789 residents at the 2021 census, according to the National Statistical Institute, down from 8.49 million at the 1992 census, because the birth rate is low and emigration has run for three decades. Almost everyone you talk to has a sibling or a child working in Spain, Germany, Greece or the UK, and that is the hum behind a lot of conversations.
Why are Bulgarians so unhappy? Or aren’t they…
Bulgarians are not as unhappy as their faces suggest, though the survey numbers do put them last in the European Union. Bulgaria scored 6.2 out of 10 for overall life satisfaction in Eurostat’s 2024 figures, against an EU average of 7.2 and a high of 7.8 in Finland. So there is something real underneath the impression. What you see on the street, though, is not that number, it is a different rule about faces.
“The people are so nice!” is what you often read when someone had a good experience in a country. I found it very hard to decide whether the Bulgarian people were nice or not. Not because they were rude, they were not at all, but because people in Bulgaria do not often smile in public. As I do not speak Bulgarian, I was stuck reading body language and facial expressions until Anita could translate.
We sat down for lunch one day and a lady came to take our order. Anita discussed with her what we would have, and the lady did not smile once. When she went back inside I said, “wow, she did not seem friendly at all.” To my surprise, Anita told me she had been very friendly. She simply had not smiled, and that is normal in Bulgaria, whatever is on the plate in front of you. Our guide to traditional Bulgarian food covers what she brought out.
I should have known better. On our first day Anita had explained that it is not common for a Bulgarian to smile at someone they do not know in public. In Belgium it is considered polite to lift the corners of your mouth when you pass someone on the street and catch their eye, or when you talk to a possible customer. Not so in Bulgaria. People who walk around with a smile on their face are thought of as a bit simple, which is probably why I kept getting strange looks.
It does depend on the situation. In hotels we were often received with a smile. When we found people who spoke English they were always very helpful, though I cannot remember whether they were smiling.
Language is worth a note here. Russian was a compulsory school subject in Bulgarian schools from 1944 to 1989, and English replaced it after the end of communism, so English is now the most widely used foreign language among working-age Bulgarians and Russian the second. In practice you will find English easily with anyone in their twenties or thirties, in Sofia and in the coastal resorts, and much less often with a farmer in his seventies.
Read up on Bulgarian customs before your trip if you would rather not be caught out by any of this. Our list of interesting facts about Bulgaria covers the head-shaking, the name days and the rest of what surprises visitors.
People from Bulgaria can dance!
People from Bulgaria dance the horo, a chain dance in which a line or circle of people hold hands or each other’s belts and move through a repeating step pattern. The horo is the centrepiece of weddings, festivals and village celebrations, it is led from one end, and anyone can join the back of the line. Which is exactly how it caught me.
You know when everyone was smiling? When they were dancing and singing. We were lucky enough to be in Plovdiv during a cultural festival. First we found people doing the horo in a park, a circle dance built almost entirely on leg movement. I love dancing but I was too shy to jump in until Anita, thank you Anita, made me.
I loved it. There were 30 or so of us who did not know each other, holding hands and going round. Everyone was smiling, and it reminded me straight away how much I love moving to music. Now that I travel frequently I do not take dance classes as often as I used to, so when I get the chance to join a traditional dance abroad, it lands hard.
A bit further along from the horo were groups of children giving dance demonstrations. They were clearly all members of a dance school and although the dancing was not polished, nobody cared. Everyone was watching the kids have fun and wiggling along with them. Again, everyone was smiling.
The biggest smiles I saw that day were on the semi-professional horo dancers we came across on the way back to the apartment. We had no idea there would be a performance and it turned out to be the highlight of the trip. For over an hour we stood and watched them perform horo dances from different Bulgarian regions, dressed in the traditional outfits of each region, guided by singers and musicians.
The dances were not easy, with a lot of tempo changes and a whole lot of jumping. That is the music rather than the choreography showing off, because Bulgarian dance music runs on uneven metres, such as the 7/8 of the rachenitsa, the 9/8 of the daichovo horo and the 11/16 of the kopanitsa. The joy on the dancers’ faces nearly brought me to tears.
These were people passionate about what they were doing, enjoying it, and proud to share it with anyone who wanted to watch. I felt lucky that I had joined the dance in the park an hour or two earlier and briefly taken part in that tradition. I hope to go back one day and learn the steps properly.
Greetings
Greetings in Bulgaria run on a small complaint rather than a cheerful “good”, at least according to Anita. Greeting customs are the one thing she told me that I could not check for myself, because I do not speak the language, so take this as her account rather than mine.
In Belgium, and in most cultures I know, you are supposed to say “good” when someone you do not know well asks how it is going, then move on. Anita told me that in Bulgaria a small complaint is a sign of intimacy, a way of letting a person into your life. Deep sorrows and real trouble are still kept for close friends and family, but when a colleague or an acquaintance asks how you are, you do better saying you are okay but you have a bit of a headache.
Two more things help in that first exchange. Bulgarians shake their heads for yes and nod for no, which is genuinely disorienting in a shop, and the words “zdraveyte” (hello) and “blagodarya” (thank you) go a long way even when the rest of the conversation happens in gestures.
I would love to run the greeting experiment properly, but until I speak Bulgarian I will have to crowdsource it. So tell me: do you know any Bulgarians who still live there? Do they smile a lot? Or are you Bulgarian, and can you tell me whether the greeting thing is true? I would love to know.
How to travel to Bulgaria
You travel to Bulgaria by flying into Sofia, which takes most of the country’s international routes, and then covering the ground by hire car. Varna and Burgas on the Black Sea take summer charter flights, so they are worth checking for a July or August trip, but Sofia is the year-round arrival point and the one we used, flying direct from Brussels Airport.
Compare the routes before you fix a date, because the direct flights to Sofia thin out sharply outside summer. Check Trip.com for a clear overview of flight options to Bulgaria, and set a price alert if your dates are flexible.
While we were in Bulgaria we used Anita’s car for the road trip. If you have no local to travel with and want to see a decent slice of the country, a hire car is the answer, because the mountain monasteries, the Rhodope villages and the smaller Black Sea towns are painful to reach any other way. DiscoverCars compares the local and international suppliers side by side, which saves doing that by hand. Bulgarian drivers are assertive and rural roads are rough, so plan shorter driving days than the map suggests.
Our own route works well as a first trip: Sofia, then Veliko Tarnovo, then the coast at Nessebar, then Plovdiv, with the village of Bozhentsi as a stop in between. Swap the coast for the Rila and Rhodope mountains if you would rather have monasteries and hiking than a beach, and our guide to places to visit in Bulgaria sets out the alternatives.
Base yourself centrally in each town rather than out by a motorway, since the old centres are where the evening life is and where the horo turns up. Compare places to stay across Bulgaria once your route is fixed.
If you want to see the dancing rather than hope to stumble on it as we did, a folklore evening or a guided walk in Sofia or Plovdiv is the reliable way to do it.
PIN FOR LATER
About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her 8-day road trip through Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo, Bozhentsi, Nessebar and Plovdiv with a Bulgarian friend. The team covers Bulgaria for independent travellers, including the flights, hire cars, hotels and guided tours worth booking, and updates this page when prices, dates and rules change.
Interesting!! I had heard about this smiling thing from Russia, but not so much in Eastern or Balkan Europe. It makes sense though, given the historic cultural ties between Russia and that region.
Yeah indeed. I’d also only heard it about Russia before I went.
Tim , I don`t think it`s the Russia influence.The reason for this “custom” is rather oriental than related to Russia. We `ve lived for 500 years under the rule of the Ottomans , and even though we `ve kept our religion , language and national identity, the cultural influence of the Orient can be seen, smelled and tasted all over the Balkans . Our Balkan cultural mix of music, dances, legends, food,customs and beliefs is very little or not related to Russia , but instead very much related to the Orient. Few Balkan people will ever admit this though :)
Interesting… thank you for this insight!
I’ve been living in Bulgaria for 7 months and I can’t figure these people out. Before this, I lived in Turkey for 3 years and found the people incredibly hospitable, polite and warm, and very receptive to smiles and cordiality. So I totally disagree that being more “oriental” would result in Bulgarians being less friendly or lacking etiquette. I want to think better of them, but I find that Bulgarians have no etiquette, are rude and generally unfriendly. I found something similar when I visited Ukraine and Kazakhstan. So maybe it’s an ex-communist thing. It’s so bizarre to me that my politeness would be so misunderstood and even seen as something “simple-minded” and something not trustworthy. I feel like I’m in the twi-light zone where everything that is up is down and right is left. I guess that makes sense considering Bulgarians nod their heads for “no” and shake it for “yes”. Everything is in reverse here. Ug! ;-)
At least they are not fake and don’t express fake politeness. What people did you communicate with by the way?
Mostly people in the service industry: at hotels, restaurants, cultural sites etc
Bulgaria certainly is different to the West in interpersonal social etiquette.
However they are not overly rude or insensitive, just very reserved and let’s be honest, rather unsophisticated in western behaviour. Not a bad thing, but very noticeable to tourists.
What is really surprising is the custom of serving hot food cold! I couldn’t get over that, I was truly shocked.
It is so strange, I was looking for some cultural reasoning why a particular group of tourists that I had to spent some time with(just do not want to name them) seemed so rude to me…. I got some info,found out I was not alone, and then decided to see how people find us Bulgarians….. so here I am reading.
The smiling thing, I have to say is true, in many places, and unfortunately even in some tourist destinations. But it is not a cultural thing, it is also not because people want to be rude(some may understand they are , some not). In the last several decades people are becoming increasingly more unhappy with their lives, increasingly more frustrated with everything…..(let’s not discuss the causality, just not the place for that)
Some thoughts:
1) Most of us do not like fake smiles, for some reason or another…..
Imagine a normal visit in a clothes shop, or any other. Normally in the western world you will be greeted with a smile and a ‘hello’. And the smile is expected no-matter how the person behind the counter feels in reality. In BG such a smile could be considered as hypocritical and fake. Lots of people do not like to do that, lots of people do not like to see such a smile. However a greeting is expected and general friendly behavior is expected by both people.
The bad part is that in the recent years even that friendly behavior is missing on both parts(not always but often, so much so, that when I see a friendly shop assistant, I tend to get back there and shop from there). Not a good thing to admit, but a reality, and it makes me sad, not because how foreigners perceive us, but because I find it depressing and rude myself. Having the chance to visit other countries as well and a chance to compare, I have to say that we as Bulgarians do not really know how to “take tourist’s money”(I mean by services, not pick-pocketing). I hate it when I am greeted by an angry shop assistant, and often I leave shops for that….i could only imagine how the tourists feel. So not part of the culture, and sometimes not because of anything but annoyance and frustrations….who knows.
2) We do perceive a too friendly behavior from a stranger a bit suspicious. Often such people try to get advantage of you somehow, and you could end up losing money or having to buy something you do not really want.
3) When we are having fun, we are having fun and it shows from a distance. And if you are close by, you are most of the times welcome to have fun with us too.
4) Regarding complaining at greetings……do not do that….do not complain. Nobody likes people who complain from the start of a conversation. Yes, often people do do that, but has nothing to do with letting someone close to you. Some people complain, some don’t. Some people accept the “ how are you?” as a literal question and answer accordingly…..and because we are a bit pessimistic by nature, we can always find a reason to complain. However the best option is to answer “OK, you?”
5) There is a huge difference between people in different towns and cities in BG. Often in small villages people would great you, and welcome you to stay and eat and drink, and talk….bad thing not a lot of them speak English. Sometimes you may get some strange looks….’who is that, what does he/she want?’ …..you could expect that everywhere in the small villages though
I found Bulgarian to be terribly rude to tourists and the men mysogenistic and terribly rude. I’ve been to 50 countries and this country ranks in the two last spots- rubbish people and rubbish mentality.
If you treat people poorly we don’t recommend your country
I had a very scary experience with a taxi driver, a small hotel owner, and rude people every minute there. Uncivilized people with no social skills and the entire country needs anti depression medication
I completely disagree with Anita. She seems to be very confused about her own identity. If she is indeed an educator, woe to the new generation and their own perception of themselves. Bulgarians are warm and friendly Sothern Europeans capable of a wide spectrum of feelings and facial expressions, just like any other ethnos or nation. They often show stoicism and do not smile that much in public, simply because any particular individual may not have a reason to smile at any particular time. An individual may smile if they have a reason to do so. A waitress who is unhappy with her job and life in general will not smile. They still have a lot to learn about hospitality, and smiling through your tears and problems in front of the guests has not been taught to them yet by their managers or owners in the service industry. To make ridiculous extrapolations to Russia and “the Orient” is completely assinine. How can you even generalize a term such as “the Orient” if you do not even know what it means? What is your perception of the “Orient”? This term only means “East.” Do you mean all areas to the east of you on the vast Eurasian expanse all the way to the Far East? And you generalize this whole vast area which you have never seen, read about, heard the various languages spoken, belonging to various language groups and sub-groups, tasted their food, seen people’s interactions? But you lump “the Orient” into one big cloud of dust and say this is why Bulgarians don’t smile?
If our educators in Bulgaria feel “Oriental,” and if this is how they explain their identity to other people of the world, woe to us again. Similarities with other nations on the Eurasian land mass based on genetics, food, customs, music and mores can be explained intelligently, but not by lumping it together as “Oriental influence.”
I am a Bulgarian; I advertise Bulgaria with its own identity to my English-speaking friends and family and they already know Bulgaria has its own identity; so do my Spanish-speaking friends, my Greek-speaking friends, my Russian-Speaking friends, my Turkish-speaking friends, my Portuguese -speaking friends.
And all peope of the world smile if they have a reason to do so.
Just been in Sofia for 4 days and generally – I am not including everyone- people is not friendly. They seem to be bordered by you if you try to ask them something they give you a look and you feel very unwelcome here.
I have been in another country that was in the communist regime and I had even worst experience. You Bulgarians need to know that smiling is good for your health and hugs are even better. And if you want to open your door to tourism you need to get yourself a bit more up to day with social skills. Saying this I do respect your country and every one is free to be the way they want but don’t say people smile if they have a reason to that is not true. Smile is also a greeting fiven to other people to feel them welcome nothing to do with what is happening inside you that is call social skills
What’s that other country, Ma? Czehia?
Interesting facts! Didn’t know smiling is a precious jewel which some people don’t want to part with. :)
We are planning to go to east Europe this summer & Bulgaria is very much on the list.
How much time do you recommend to visit Plovdiv, Sofia and one more city (hoping a recommendation from you) ? :)
We don’t like one city- one day type travels.
Haha I love how you put that:)
I’d recommend three days for Sofia, two or three for Plovdiv for Plovdiv and then another two or three for another city or maybe to choose a base and explore the area a bit. Nine days seems good:) Just my thought!
I hope you have fun!
Thank you very much.
Will let you know once we visit the country.
Super! I hope you have a wonderful time.
Do not waste your time visiting Bulgaria if your expecting European/American hospitality. These people are backward minded, snobby, happy to live complaining and have ZERO respect for anyone who’s not from the area unless your spending. They have no interest to communicate with English speaking countries and are quite frankly happy to live like that which is sad! They are well aware of how they behave to tourist. Very disappointing country and they will never get my respect. Strange enough i found Serbian people are much nicer…
Bulgarians are warm and friendly people,especially to foreigners,but they don’t show it outside.It takes time to really get to know them.Most of them don’t speak English and try to avoid uncomfortable situations with people who don’t speak Bulgarian and can’t understand them.I’ve been in many countries where people smile at you and are friendly but they are actually hypocritical with with a sense of superiority over other nations.What is more,most of them think that you are OBLIGED to speak their language,Bulgarians are the opposite.It would be a good idea to read something for the Bulgarian history,culture or even learn some phrases that would be useful :) so Bulgarians are not as bad as they seem to be(oh,and don’t confuse BULGARIANS with gypsies :) )
Thanks for your thoughts!
I am amazed by your comments! What people did you communicate with? You shouldn’t denigrate a whole country this way. Ridiculous
The first visit to Bulgaria, and I am shocked!! Couple people that I had interacted (at least i thought i was….) were so rude. It’s not about the “smiling issue”. The place i had stayed was very touristic (Bansko) and the personnel of the hotel weren’t aware of this:) They were extremely rude! I have never felt this unsecure and this unsafe in my life of 42 years. I will never spend my dollars to experience a horrifying so called vacation! Hated it!
Hey Nick,
So sorry you had a bad experience in Bulgaria. We didn’t experience anything like that but then again, we were traveling with my Bulgarian friend so she did all the talking for us. Could you give an example of how they were rude? Perhaps it was just a language issue?
They could been rude to you If you try to it only your American way of thinking and culture or try to make all is for free for you there just because you are Americans or something.
Some Bulgarians can be not very polite but most likely they are from old generation and don’t speak English at all. I see very cold and racist oriented people in North EU too even if they smile to you but bulshits behind your back as well.
I’m not American and I visited with a Bulgarian friend, so all our communication was in Bulgarian, as you could read in the article.
The post merely expresses a difference in cultural perceptions of friendliness, it doesn’t judge.
I am visiting Bulgaria right now and I had to find more on the internet about the people in this country, this is how I ended up this page. To me, Bulgarians are so similar to Checks and Hungarians in the fact that their attitude seems unfriendly and they look so unhappy. Never a polite smile. Perhaps it is my impression, one has to be internationally minded.
My friend told me it’s just their “outer” way of being. You need to get to know them a bit :)
I met the nicest people in Bulgaria. We’ve been home a week and we miss it very much .We were traveling mostly with people who live there and we stayed 2 weeks in a village called Stanevo in Montana. It was so peaceful and had a great view of the plains all the way to the Danube. We’ll definitely visit again!
Hey Karen,
I’m happy you had such a good time there! I want to go back too. A week was way too short.
My husband and I have been travelling through Bulgaria for about two weeks. We are 11 months into one year of travel. We are from Canada, where we have a reputation of being super polite, so the people must think we are uber “simple”. We have had mixed experiences on this issue. We have met younger Bulgarians that are friendly and super keen to tell us about things to do and see in their country which has been great. Many people though (mostly older people) look at us as if we are something not nice stuck to the bottom of their shoe! I have almost been in tears several times trying to buy bus and train tickets. (We do not have the benefit of any Bulgarian travel companions, so anyone who has travelled throughout the country with Bulgarian people has no way of knowing how you would be treated on your own). The (mostly) women behind the desks have been the rudest I have ever encountered while traveling and I have been to many countries including Czech and Hungary. After being shooed away, ignored, and glared at by the women behind other windows, I finally summoned up the courage to go up to the INFORMATION window at the train station in Burgas to ask what platform our train was leaving from. After politely asking, the woman glared at me for a long while as she shrugged her shoulders and started to turn disgustedly away. I had had it! She doesn’t know my life. I have done nothing to her and she is sitting at a desk in an INFORMATION booth!! With tears in my eyes, I slammed my ticket up against the glass and firmly said, “Are you telling me you can’t look at this ticket and tell me what platform I need to wait at!?” Low and behold, her demeanor completely changed and she sheepishly held up three fingers and said, “three”. So she clearly knew what I was saying. It was like she saw her behaviour through my eyes and it kind of snapped her out of it a bit. I don’t know, maybe that’s how to handle it, meet rudeness with rudeness? Not usually my style, but it seemed to work in this case. Later on the train, the older woman conductor was incredibly kind to us. She got a younger woman to help with translating and made sure we got of at the right station for our connection, so it’s like anywhere there are happy people and bitter people. However, their service industry has a long way to go in my opinion if they are interested in more international tourists. My advice, as in any country, is to learn a few words in their language. It goes a long way and can warm people right up!
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Jen. I appreciate that.
Sorry you’ve been treated so rudely. I hope you still enjoyed your time in Bulgaria.
As a Bulgarian myself it’s been interesting reading your post and the comments below. We shouldn’t generalize about people but I must say people in Bulgaria and in the Balkans in general are not the same as the ones you are used to in Western Europe, so you are not supposed to expect to find the same situation there. It’s true that many of the people working at restaurants, public offices etc. still have to learn how to treat their clients well. I hadn’t realised that a lot of foreigners considered us unfriendly and sullen till I started reading travel accounts online. I myself, as my friends and relatives, cannot relate to being impolite and rude, on the contrary! I don’t think that the foreigners understand some of the cultural differences between the East and the West. What’s more, there are a lot of people struggling with poverty in my country, so it’s difficult to smile in this situation. Cheers!
Thanks so much for sharing your perspective, Maria!
I’m truly grateful I got to experience Bulgaria with a Bulgarian so she could explain the cultural differences with me and set my impressions straight.
just enjoy people
I’m Bulgarian and I can’t stress how annoying these people at the boots can be….they are not annoying only to you foreigners. You know what they say, the fish starts rotting from the head down…incompetent government officials hire incompetent people. Ignore them! There are plenty of people that will make up for that and even more,
good luck!
My mother is from Italy and survived WW 2 and her parents endured both world wars in Italy and the former Yugoslavia. She said that life was serious, deadly dangerous and rife with poltical and military bad guys. You didn’t smile there because there wasn’t nothing to smile about AND Smiling people during such treacherous times could spell trouble. So they did not trust smiling strangers nor did they have a lot to smile about. They starved, lost their homes, their land, witnessed the horrors of war upfront and personal. My mother, when she was only 8, saw entire group of teens, including her twin female twin cousins, slaughtered right before her innocent eyes. I know my comments are T.M.I., but those of us who haven’t seen what our European brothern have seen and endured. I say, give the Bulgarians a break!
Interesting report, thanks for sharing.
Just to give a perspective, I’m not from NA or EU. Customer service is also HORRID in my country. Maybe the things that I see here will help tracing a pattern to understand why people in certain countries behave like that (understand, not justify it… I’m not trying to justify being a shitty human being LOL )
To keep this short, I have notice these things in common with these countries that have poor customer service or social skills in general:
– huge amounts of government bureaucracy and vast majority of “jobs” being regulated by government
– past history of successive tyrannical governments, which might be the cause for the appearance of point No 1 above…
– being that majority of jobs are through government, it means that you are only able to find decent stable employment through the means of “connections”, nepotism and exploitation
– after all that, through a period of 30-40-50 years, what follows is generation after generation of people that have this idea in their minds “There’s no use in fighting back because they gonna win anyway”… So maybe that component gets ingrained into their DNA and passed on into the following generations.
– lost of hope, living without dreams, a sad life in general, in these countries you see the vast majority with grumpy faces… you don’t want to know how it is to live like that, you wouldn’t be able to even comprehend it.
What I’m trying to say is: the world is huge and there’s plenty of countries to ever know, but in the end there’s only a handful of places in this world where people actually GIVE A SHIT, you know? These are the places where people immigrate to. The motivations behind immigration are not purely financial, in most cases it’s the Human aspect that counts, social aspect.
Another pattern I have been noticing: countries that are cheaper to live in. Okay, it’s cheaper there, but nothing ever goes on, there are no cultural activities, music concerts, festivals, nothing ever goes on. Living without healthy amounts of leisure will drive people mad over long periods, and then what you have is compounding of all these problems mentioned above.
This sounds idyllic to me. I’m American and my personality is completely incompatible with the American ideal of etiquette. I really hate when “how are you?” is a shallow greeting and smiles are expected, it’s just a demand to fake emotions to make others feel comfortable. And I’m not an angry person all the time, but why does a stranger demand that I pretend to be happy? I’ve gone from neutral to irritated just because you want me to pretend that you’ve caught me on the happiest day of the week. So since I’m a “rude” American, I guess I’d fit in perfectly in Bulgaria. I don’t understand why foreigners travel expecting to be catered to, anyway. There’s too much of a “customer is always right” attitude in this and it creates a lot of narcissism. Suddenly foreigners think that Bulgarian culture has to be reformed to fit their comfort zone? Pathetic behavior from an adult. And some of the people in the comments believe that Bulgarians have no etiquette. They have etiquette, it is simply rooted in a different mentality and philosophy than the etiquette of your country. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” I’d love to visit Bulgaria someday, and when I’m there I’ll be happy to make the effort to fit in and respect local etiquette. The music of the Bulgarian Women’s Choir really pulled me in, and the landscape and architecture there are so beautiful. I think Bulgarians are perfect exactly the way they are, and their internal issues and matters of their culture should be left for them to manage and free from foreign judgement.
I am Bulgarian who is in her 40s and have lived half of my life in US and half in Bulgaria. Unfortunately if you can’t communicate in Bulgarian you will never truly get to know bulgarians. Judging only by the body language would give you the wrong impression. Bulgarian are very hospital and caring people. They have a great companion and love. Yes, the external, overpoliteness is not their thing. You have to judge them by their actions and warm words and not my their smile, kisses and hugs. Most bulgarians act formal around people they don’t know. When I first came to US I was shocked by informality between strangers. Bulgarian language even has a formal version of “you” to address people we don’t know. or people we are not close to yet. Once people are close to you they will be friendly. Being suspicious of people is common among Bulgarians. Once they know they can trust you they will do anything for you. They are people of moral and character and are very wise. and spiritual. This is my experience anyway.