Is Sofia, Bulgaria Worth Visiting? Our Honest Opinion and City Guide to Sofia, Bulgaria

We recently stayed in Bulgaria for one month and today we want to share with you whether it's worth visiting the place. Hey guys, I'm Ross. And I'm Bec. And today Bec has come up with some secret questions that she's going to throw down at me and I'm going to give you an honest opinion of what we think Bulgaria's like. Now, we lived in Sofia so I guess we're talking Sofia today. If you like this stuff, make sure you hit subscribe and hit the bell. Hit the bell. All right, Bec. Throw it down to me. What do you have? It's your first time in Sofia. Sum it up in a few words. It's a historic place. Old meets new. There's a modern way of life too. Why did you choose Sofia? We wanted to go somewhere that was a bit different. Somewhere we've never been before. And to be honest, guys, we just picked it on the map. It looked like a good spot for where we were heading into Northern Europe. So, it was a good spot. The other thing is that it's not part of the Schengen zone, however you say that. It wasn't part of it. So, for us, we could stay there without it counting towards our restricted time limit in the rest of Europe. What are the people like? The people are quite relaxed and a little bit reserved. To be honest, when you first arrive, you misconstrue that for maybe being a bit rude or they're not interested in you. But it's so far from the truth. They're lovely people. Almost every Bulgarian we met were lovely. But you do just sometimes have to go out of your way to start that conversation with them. That's what we found. One quirky thing is, well, I thought they were saying no to me. They do this or this. But that means yes. So, quite often people will say yes to me. But I thought they meant no. Best thing about the place? Oh, there's so many. In Sofia, specifically in Sofia, it's easy to get around. You know, it's quite central, the sort of hot spot of all the things that you need to see, the Petosha Boulevard. So, it's very easy to walk in and out of the city and see everything. I love that. The other thing, just quickly, is old meets new. You have these historic old buildings, big communist looking buildings, very powerful. And you feel that when you're walking around. And at the same time, really modern things, like fiber internet. In our building, we had a hundred year old lift and fiber internet. Yeah, fascinating. Both were really quirky and cool to use. How did you deal with the Lev? How did we deal with the Lev? Well, the name is cool. How many Lev have you got? Lev, Lev. We've got some friends called Levs. So, like, really cool name. It's slightly weaker than the Australian dollar. Slightly. So, it was really easy in our heads to calculate it when you're on the go or you're in a restaurant, you're paying for things. You always knew it wasn't quite as much as the Australian dollar. So, it was easy for us. ATMs, no scams that were obvious to see. Just really easy. Worst thing about Sofia? The worst thing. Has to be. First thing into my mind is the construction. There's a lot of renovations or construction going on, new builds and stuff within the city. And normally when you're traveling, you notice these things, but they maybe do one side of the road first and then they do the other side. And so, you can still live and coexist with this construction. Yeah, it was kind of helter-skelter, like stuff on every bit of the street was being done. It was interesting to see. Very hard to live with. But hey, they get it done. It looks good. Good on them. And the other thing was, yeah, no Uber. They use Taxify, which is a way to book your taxis, but it's still standard taxi prices. Yeah, so no Uber going on. I don't know. I love a free market. Favorite thing to do? It would, other than eat, eating lots of yummy food, it would have to be walking with no purpose. I think in French that's flaneur. We might put that on the screen for you. It's totally a cool city to just walk around and see all these old buildings with a Russian vibe. There's definitely a historic sort of Russian vibe with some of the buildings. But, you know, walking down Vitosha Boulevard and looking up and seeing Vitosha Mountain, like that's special. That's something you always remember. Yeah, pretty incredible place to walk around. Favorite food and why? For those that know me, I just kind of like all food. So this is very hard to put just one thing on. An overall style would be barbecued food. There's a real love for barbecued restaurants, barbecue meats and the things that go with the barbecue meats, the salads and the other stuff. It's delicious to try. There's lots of local spots where there's not many tourists in and we had a lot of fun in those places. Amazing eats everywhere. Yeah, I also just love as a quick shout out the influence of the whole Balkan region coming in on Bulgaria. There's, you know, little snippets of other cuisines going on there too. So yeah, beautiful place to just try different stuff. I'm going to get hated on for whichever one I pick here. Well, I'm going to go with Barnica. For me, that's like a religion in Bulgaria. The locals are lining up for the stuff. I can't count how many times we would line up and there's 30 Bulgarians standing ahead of us waiting for Barnica. That's a delicious dish. Beck, what do you like? Beck likes? I like the Mekitsa. She likes the Mekitsa because you can get all the different toppings on there. What? It's a harder sort of, yeah, crispier donut consistency with the jam and cream. That's her favorite. I like Barnica too though. She likes both. Yeah, she's on the fence. Vitosha Boulevard or Vitosha Mountain? I think the Boulevard. I just like walking around and having all the people and having a view of the mountain. I think that's always better looking up at something. But yeah, up at the top of the mountain, looking down on the city is a pretty amazing experience too. What is Bulgarian culture really like? This is hard to answer because we're not experts. But from what we noticed, it's a really cool thing to see the older generation with all the traditional ways of Bulgarian life mixing in with the younger generation, which is really cool, you know, trendy, lots of new things happening in the younger people space. Also, the younger people speak really good English. And yeah, so that was something that we noticed. They're pretty relaxed, pretty easygoing people. Yeah, didn't realize any tensions or things happening politically or anything like that. So yeah, pretty cool place. How did you get around in Sofia? Look, we only caught two taxis in and out of Sofia. And that was it. The rest of the time, we walked. We walked a lot. We caught some trams. The trams are really easy to use. And yeah, you just need to know where you're going, obviously. The trains are pretty good too. We just, we didn't need to use them a whole lot. One thing is when you cross the big intersections is you have to go underground and walk up the other side. But I think a lot of European cities do that. Internet speeds? For fellow geeks, it's fast. It's really fast. 70, almost 70 megabits per second. Perfect for my English teaching online because there's a bit of streaming happening there. And look, I've actually had a fair few questions coming through about the English teaching stuff. So I will put some links down below. You can find all the information about it down there or flick me a message and I'm happy to flick you a reply. I feel like I need a coffee for this one. What do you think is Beck's favourite thing about the city? Oh, what is Beck's favourite thing about the city? Well, if you missed our Bulgarian snacks video, check that out because there's lots of bits in there that Beck likes. But outside of that, Beck's favourite thing about the city... Oh, she's moving to me doing this, guys. Now I know. You're cheating. Yeah, I should know. Bookshops. Yeah, bookshops are Beck's favourite thing. They have really cool bookshops. They haven't quite got rid of all the bookshops like other cities. And so you go in and you just see these really cool, you know, old school books, new books. She's lost many days in these places. Very good. So the big question, is it worth visiting Bulgaria? If you just watched the last five, ten minutes of this video, you don't need me to tell you. I think you get it. It's somewhere different. And like, why not go to somewhere like this? It's an amazing place, rich in history, culture. It's affordable. Yeah. Oh, our apartment was really cool. Like, yes. Visit. Visit. Do yourself a favour. Book some tickets right now. We loved it. I think they're all the hard hitting questions Beck has for me. If you like this video, please give it the thumbs up. And don't forget to watch our next video, which is a big feast in Sofia. We'll see you soon, guys. Bye. Bye. How did you deal with the currency? Money. The Lev. Sounds cool, right? The Lev. Do that again. Do that again. I nearly dropped my coffee.