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There are good reasons for buying in Bulgaria and we hope this site and the links we provide will confirm this for you. The WeatherBulgaria has four clear-cut seasons. Its summer is hot but rarely sweltering, in winter there is abundant snow and the spring and autumn are beautiful transitional periods. There are regional variations: north of the Balkans, is on the whole more continental; the South West and South East are marine or Mediterranean and have mild winters. There are never droughts, but rain falls usually in more intense bursts than it does in the British Isles. Varying with location, there are around a minimum of 250 sunny days a year. Daylight hours is not such a luxury as it is in London or Edinburgh in winter - Bulgaria lies between the 42nd and 44th parallels. If you would like to know more about current or historical weather, click here.The Diverse LandscapeEven though you are never really far from a mountain in Bulgaria, for its relatively small landmass, it benefits from a unique variety of geographical and landscape features. There is a sea coast - the Black Sea, to the East - with long and broad sandy or dune beaches; a slow, monumental river - the Danube, to the north, which connects by cruiseships to the riverports of Austria, Germany and Hungary; there are forrests rich in vegetation and species. Not least, the mountains are extremely diverse, too: the Rila (taller than Olympus by 50 feet) with a jagged, Alpine character and crystalline mountain lakes; the Pirin nearby, with well-traversed walking paths and beautiful plant life and villages, the Rhodopes in the south, with glacially smoothed peak-tops and a pastoral atmosphere shared with the Balkan range which cuts across central Bulgaria; Sredna Gora and Strandzha with centuries-old afforestation. As Bulgaria is very concerned with agriculture, there are expansive flatlands sown with wheat and sunflower in the northeast and ubiquitously, extensive orchards and vineyards. For more on nature and lanscape, click here Inexpensive, but with a futureMost things are, if not dirt-cheap, then perfectly affordable in Bulgaria. Supermarket prices are perhaps between a third and a half of their British equivalents and compare very favourably with Greece and Turkey. Going out and entertaining are approximately 1/5 of their Western European equivalents. Taxis and public transport are (although roughly equally priced) 10 times less than their big city world equivalents. For figures on Bulgarian price levels and to compare a typical basket of everyday goods and services, click here. The CultureThis is a place where you can spend a night at the opera (several large cities have them) for the cost of a carton of milk and you are likely to hear one of the many Bulgarian classical singing voices who now work at the Met, La Scala or Covent Garden, but who regularly re-visit. Bulgarian was regularly one of the top ten most-translated into languages and there is a certain Middle Europe sophistication around as well as a lot of people with impressive general knowledge and openness to the outside world. The natural and human-made environment in which Bulgarians live, bar the monstrosities of Stalin's era cajole into being a vigorous background - Thracian, Roman, Byzantine, Slavic, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Jewish traditions, sacred art and churches. There are the minute chapels of Ottoman times and the grand, gilt designs of fin-de-siecle Russia transplanted after liberation, modernist and Sezession spots, Bulgarian Revival houses and entire mothballed museum towns, medieval and communist era retreats which used to serve variously Hesychastic monks or lording apparatchiks. Overall, the effect is of a pleasant melange and causes interesting guesswork if you are inclined so. The modern music scene is an interesting replay of various Western outtakes from the 70s, 80s and 90s finding themselves still hugely popular in the East and so you will be chuffed if you've missed the Sex Pistols or R.E.M. recently. And, rest assured, you are going to be able to watch a movie in its original (and that means mostly English) soundtrack everywhere. More on culture... Its LocationWith parts of Bulgaria only about 100 miles away from Istanbul in Turkey and Salonica in Greece, and with an interesting, launchpad location, Bulgaria is great to explore the rest of Europe, Russia and the Middle East from. The Orient Express (in full glory) and newer, if slow, trains, cruisers and coaches connect to the entirety of Central and Western Europe in addition to a solid international air network (3 flights daily to Vienna, 11 weekly to London and with the launch of low-cost airline connection between a Black Sea city and the UK expected in summer 2004. More on Bulgaria as a launchpad... Wine & FoodBulgarian wine grapes are grown as ubiquitously as in France and there are a range of wineries which make sophisticated reds and ever-better whites and rosés (including a recent Australian winery). The country's beer industry was started up by Czech immigrants in the 1880s and if you like Czech beer, you are bound to love the Bulgarian product, too, especially since it is even cheaper than in Prague. If your stomach has found Eastern European cooking not exactly on par with the best cuisines in the world, the Bulgarians will surprise you quite pleasantly with cooking. Restaurant cooking and eating out is with you all the way if you so wish and it shows how a really broad mixture of ingredients can be put to use. Food is mainly locally-grown, reliant on garden vegetables and meat, and it perhaps is not always imaginative. But for what it is, it is the best in its genre: salads are earthy, prime cuts of meat are carefully grilled, the bread, cheese and yoghurt (all staples) are superb. It is perfectly affordable to eat your way through Bulgaria in restaurants, but if you feel like going beyond the stylised menus, you are bound before long to taste home-cooked Bulgarian food, which can be genuinely different, as Bulgarians like to pride on showing hospitality feasting strangers. More on wine and food...Opportunities for Doing Things and LeisureSofia and large Bulgarian provincial towns are now on European music and performance tour circuits even if they are not megapolises of culture. Increasingly, things that you can count for granted at home are popular in Bulgaria too. But this is not the point: it is an open, pluralistic society, perhaps as much or more so than countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy and it is a place where all kinds of enthusiasts, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe have thrived. It helps that the leisure infrastructure can offer a lot. Bulgaria has long pursued domestic and inbound tourism and the resulting hotels, restaurants and facilities are widespread. See further our lifestyles page...
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Why Bulgaria
