Vitosha Boulevard

Locally known as Vitoshka, this is Sofia’s main tourist street. If you’re looking for drunk British stag parties, this is where they’ll be – in fact, you probably hear more foreign voices here than Bulgarian. Each side is lined with cafes, restaurants, and branded shops with a wide cobbled promenade in the centre that becomes a slippery death trap if it’s raining. At one end – facing the view of Vitosha Mountain – is the National Palace of Culture. Head the other way, toward the domes of Catedral de Sveta-Nedelya, and you’ll find the Court building and Serdika, the city’s main metro station.

Lozenets

A holiday town on the Black Sea coast. It’s popular with discerning Bulgarians – you won’t hear foreign voices there – and the majority of the cars parked on the streets come from Sofia. It’s a good balance for a beach holiday. The town hasn’t been overrun by hotels or souvenir shops (yet), but you can find the essentials and choose between several decent restaurants. The town beach has some bars and umbrellas if you like that sort of thing, or you can go to one of the unspoilt beaches just outside the town: Koral to the north or Arapia further south.

Districts

Some areas have purely functional names: Iztok, for example, simply means ‘East’ and Sredets is ‘middle’. Then you’ve got the more interestingly named Studenskigrad which has lots of university accommodation (and Chalga clubs) and Hladilnika which is the closest city district to Vitosha and is presumably quite cold as its name translates as ‘refrigerator’. If you didn’t know that Bulgaria used to be Communist, you could probably assume it from the Orwellian naming of many other of Sofia’s municipalities. Izgrev means ‘sunrise’, Svoboda means ‘freedom’, Druzhba means ‘comradeship’ and there are four numbered districts called Mladost which translates as ‘youth’.

Golyam praz (голям праз)

Like all countries, Bulgaria has its fair share of bizarre idioms with obscure origins. Among the most common are: Na baba ti hvurchiloto (на баба ти хвърчилото) ‘your grandmother’s kite’ which is used to say you don’t believe something (the equivalent of saying ‘you’re talking nonsense’) and Ya kamilata, ya kamilarya (я камилата, я камиларя) ‘either the camel, or the camel rider’ meaning one of several things is going to happen and it doesn’t matter which. Golyam praz is a nice one and is easy to remember – it means: ‘So what? No big deal’ and literally translates as ‘big leek.’

Rubbish Containers

There are no dustbins or bin days, you take your rubbish out to containers on the street which are emptied daily (usually at 2am). This system works well; there’s very little litter. I often wonder if the character of Uncle Bulgaria was based on insider knowledge of the country as these containers serve as small eco-systems for the community. Gypsies clop by on horse-drawn wagons to pick up anything sellable and plenty of others dip into them too: builders working nearby, drunks coming home from the bar - even people in business suits and youths wearing branded sportswear and airpods.

Default English

We’re extremely lucky that English is the most common second language between people who don’t share a first. Because of this, when you travel to another non-English speaking country with a Bulgarian, you might think: ‘This is it, my time to shine. After years of relying on others to translate menus, order things and ask questions, I will finally be able to pull my weight.’ This is not the case. A Bulgarian English speaker is much more understandable to a Greek or Spanish English speaker than you are – they share similar patterns of speech and have the same key vocabulary.

Bai Ganyo

Most countries have their equivalent of the Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman joke and I know that in Europe, it’s usually the Belgians who serve as the butt of them. Bulgaria is different. They tell jokes involving an American, a German and a Bulgarian - and it’s the Bulgarian who features as the punchline as a kind of Bai Ganyo figure. Bai Ganyo is probably the country’s most famous literary character and is often used as a reference for how Bulgarians imagine they’re perceived by the rest of the world: poor, uneducated, opportunistic, egotistical, and completely out of step with everywhere else.

Necrologs

Obituaries. Because people may not have access to the internet or newspapers, necrologs are printed A4 sheets that are pasted by loved ones around the neighbourhood where the departed lived – on lampposts, doors, foyers of apartment blocks and church noticeboards. The necrolog contains a name, details of the funeral, a message, and a photo. The photos are usually of the deceased as they were younger and, because their younger selves were living under Communism, their photos are usually stern, unsmiling, and formal. On first impression (and without knowing the language) you’d be forgiven for thinking that necrologs are wanted posters.

Mehana

In Cyrillic: механа. You’ll see this, usually carved on wooden signs, outside many restaurants but it doesn’t mean that Mexican food is especially popular. A mehana is an eating place that serves traditional Bulgarian food. It will probably have low ceilings, bare floors, wooden panels on the walls, tables with benches and lots of coarse woollen fabrics woven with red, white and black patterns. A mehana may also be a room in someone’s house – an area devoted to entertaining guests which is often outside or on a lower level, somewhere that’s away from the main living area of the home.

Not quite right

The bed linen set without pillowcases. The cool-looking retro flip calendar that’s missing a 29. Taps with hot and cold the wrong way round or light switches that turn on unexpected lights. Administrators handwriting your name as ЗЖЪРВИС on documents with ДЖЕРВИС printed at the top in big, bold letters. Hexagonal paving slabs on pavements outside construction sites that are smashed under the wheels of trucks then replaced by other hexagonal paving slabs that are about a third of the size - which are then smashed again the first time a truck goes over them. You get used to it.

Supermarkets

Thankfully, Sofians haven’t adopted a supermarket shopping culture (yet). They’re generally used for popping into for small things rather than loading up on a weekly ‘Big Shop’ and the freezer section – if there is one at all – will be very small. Ready meals aren’t a thing here. People will make or grow their own produce whenever possible and use small, independent and walkable shops for the rest. These kinds of family run local shops are continually assessed for their quality and proprietors will often tell you not to buy their own products if they feel they’re not up to scratch.

Hora

These are traditional dances that mainly involve the feet and legs in sequences of steps, pauses, skips and waggles – the arms are used to hold on to the people next to you, either in a circle or a snaking conga line. The type of horo will depend on the specific type of event or song – each region also has its own horo - and dancing will break out at any kind of celebration or whenever there’s drinking and a live band. There’s no stigma attached to hora and usually the most ‘manly’ men will be the ones leading the dance.