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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.
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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.
