My Life in Analog

By now you have probably realized that life in Bulgaria is quite different. In many ways living here is like stepping back in time, before everything was automated, online, and instant. Inevitably living in analog calls for a slower pace of life and a healthy dose of patience. People walk slower, wait in lines more often, and savor every drop of espresso. Don't get me wrong, Sofia offers all the luxuries of a modern metropolis -- multi-tiered shopping malls, food delivery on demand, Starbucks pumpkin spiced lattes, and some of the fastest internet in the world. But amongst the modern amenities you'll also find systems and processes that are so outdated that it's comically romantic, that is until you have to deal with the bureaucracy yourself, and then the charm quickly wears off only to be replaced with feelings of rage, disbelief, and at times, utter hopelessness. Italians have what they call la dolce vita, but in Bulgaria it might as well be called the bittersweet life, la agrodolce vita, because although you may be able to find the good life here, it won't come without a heaping spoonful of bitterness.

If you're not an EU citizen, in order to try your hand at the dolce life in Bulgaria as more than a 90-day tourist, you need a travel visa. Side note: Thanks to COVID-19 travel restrictions, since July 2020 citizens of the U.S. have been prohibited from entering Bulgaria unless they meet one of the exceptions to entry restrictions, which includes family members of EU citizens. If you're thinking of visiting Bulgaria you may want to read up on the latest travel information here. Regardless of these travel restrictions, my husband had to apply for a long-term visa so he could stay in Bulgaria more than three months. He was granted a six-month "D" Visa, which we applied for stateside during the pandemic. If you have ever had to deal with immigration or visa paperwork, I needn't go any further. For those of you who haven't had the privilege of dealing with a foreign consulate or migrate office, think the DMV multiplied by 100, everything from the long lines and questionable crowds to the myriad of paperwork and abrasive customer service. All things considered, even with the bureaucratic backlog as a result of the pandemic we were able to get the visa approved in under three months. Little did we know the real work would begin once we arrived in Bulgaria.

Some of the old trams in Sofia and a vintage ticket validating machine inside.

Riding public transportation is an experience in and of itself. Of course there are modern trams, electric buses, and brand new metro stations in Bulgaria's capital. Though, you'll also find trams that look like they've been running since 1901, when the tram first started operating in Sofia. Some people still buy a paper ticket and validate it on a vintage-looking ticket punching machine, and others buy their one-way ticket from the fare collector, who occasionally (more often on the newer trams) comes on board to check tickets. Often times there are no (reliable) ways to look up intercity bus schedules online. You either have to call the main bus terminal and hope you don't catch someone on their cigarette break or just go to the bus terminal yourself to check the schedule and buy your ticket. When you board the bus there is usually a woman sitting in the front with a notebook and pen manually checking you in, writing down your ticket and seat number. Be sure to sit in the correct seat even if you are one of only two people on the bus, lest you want to be accosted by a baba (older grandmother type) for sitting in her seat; my husband learned this the hard way on one of our previous trips to Bulgaria, and the memory haunts him to this day.

When it comes to money, well, cash is king. There are plenty of establishments that use POS terminals. In fact, we upgraded to a fancy contactless card when we opened our Bulgarian bank account. However, most retail shops, markets, convenient stores and salons only accept cash, and they are not all prepared or willing to make change for you. People are very particular about their change and covet small coins. It is not embarrassing to pull out your change purse and use 20, 10 or even 2 cents to pay your bill; on the contrary, it's desirable. Most places expect you to not only pay in cash, but also to give them exact change. I bought an umbrella for 7 lev at a thrift store and gave the woman a 10 lev bill. "Do you have anything smaller?" she asked desperately. I stared blankly at her for a few seconds in disbelief before politely responding that I did not have smaller change. I exited the shop with a lovely floral umbrella and a fist full of coins.

Bus tickets from Plovdiv to Sofia manually filled out and legalized with a stamp.

It's a fact that fewer and fewer people send letters via snail mail nowadays, and that's true in the U.S. as well as around the world. Since 2001, the USPS has seen a 43 percent decrease in volume with billions of dollars in lost revenue. Alas, I must be one of the few hopeless souls of my generation who thinks there's something timeless and romantic about receiving a letter in the mail. When my father first immigrated to the U.S. in the early 90s, he and my mother exchanged dozens of love letters over the course of the year they were apart, memories my mother keeps in a box by her bedside to this day. If you ever visit the central Bulgarian postoffice you'll understand the true meaning of snail mail. You'll both appreciate the labor of love in sending a letter across continents and you will also cringe to find out that mail is still processed the same way it was when my parents were sending letters, if not before then. My mother recently sent me a book from an author in the UK, who found new purpose at a cat refuge in Greece (stay tuned for a post on street animals in Bulgaria).

When my mom received her book in Pennsylvania I figured mine should have arrived, as well. I looked up the local post office branch by my zip code and off I went to collect my package. I stood outside in a line with a handful of other men and women, all my senior by about fifty years. I was finally directed to the correct building for receiving packages when the woman behind the desk asked me for the tracking number of my package, which I didn't have, though I was confused how she would have looked up my package anyway as I saw no computer or scanning device in sight. The woman proceeded to ask me how she should look up my package, and I sheepishly suggested she start with my name. "I sorted all of the mail this morning and I don't remember seeing a Gloria Kostadinova today," she stated matter of factly. I stared wide-eyed in disbelief as the woman walked over to the cubbies against the wall and started sifting through packages and boxes by hand to no avail. She sent me to the adjacent mailroom where you pickup packages by request - до поискване. This so called mailroom looked more like an abandoned classroom from the 70s with two rows of wooden desks cluttered with papers and packages, and a schedule, hand-written on giant easel pads hanging on the wall. I tell the woman I was sent over from next door and giver her my name and address. "That address sounds familiar. I think I remember something coming through here," she said as she rummaged through some packages on her desk. It's not that I don't trust the memory of the middle-aged mailroom lady hand-sorting packages and writing down my phone number on the back of a loose leaf piece of paper, god no. There you have it - snail mail at its finest. Thankfully my package was thin enough to slide into our mailbox slot, so I received my book safe and sound. As much as it pains me to say it, it looks like we may have to send e-Christmas cards this year after all.

The post office in Ivan Vazov neighborhood.

And so we return to the migrate office. Within the first two weeks of arriving in Bulgaria my husband and I decide to get the ball rolling on extending his visa, even though we have until February 2021 when his visa expires. As you remember, he is currently on a six-month "D" visa, which we want to extend into long-term residency so he can stay in Bulgaria for up to one year. This long-term residency status can then be renewed annually for up to five years, at which point he can then apply for citizenship, but let's not get ahead of ourselves, it's only been three months. The Bulgarian migrate office is a miserable place, not unlike most immigration offices. But the Bulgarian bureaucracy puts the bul in bullshit to put it bluntly. Three months, dozens of photocopies, hundreds of dollars in translations, notarizations, legalizations, declarations, you name it - and we had still been unable to apply for the long-term residency status. Just to clarify, this is not to get approved, this is to just submit our completed application with all necessary documents, which includes the following in case you ever need to go through this process yourself:

• The applicants passport and visa

• The spouse's Bulgarian ID

• The marriage certificate

• Proof of health insurance

• Proof of housing

• Proof of financial means

• U.S. federal background check

• Completed application form

• 15 lev application fee (which we were told was 10 lev, but assumed the 5 lev mafia tax)

No problem, considering we had to prepare all but the last two documents for the "D" visa application back in the U.S. Wrong. Oh, how terribly mistaken we were. The migrate office is located on a busy boulevard in the heart of the city in none other than a seven story Communist block. Foreigners from around the world and their respective translators or family members line the busy sidewalk and wait to have their fate decided inside the concrete walls. While everyone is thankfully wearing a mask, there are no markers on the sidewalk to delineate a safe distance between people in line, not that it would help; every so often people would inch up on top of each other, straining to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The gate keepers of the concrete fortress, two older security officers, who "manage" the line are like two characters straight out of a cartoon. One of them tall, lean with a bulbous nose and a cigarette perpetually stuck between his lips and the other short, stocky wearing glasses and always chatting up one of the young women in line.

On our first visit to the migrate office we got in line and patiently awaited our turn when we realized Pinky and the Brain were yelling out numbers, mostly in Bulgarian, occasionally in broken English. Were we supposed to get a ticket somewhere? Is that your place in line? Are there different lines? I snuck up to the front to ask the tall officer what the numbers means, and he informed me that the numbers signify the registers inside the office that deal with different migrate issues. After a brief back and forth I returned to our place in line and told my husband that we need to await for one of the officers to yell out numbers 14 or 15, the register that deals with long-term visas from the U.S., among other countries. That's all fine and well until you find yourself at the back of the line two blocks down and can't hear anything but the honking taxis. There's no booking appointments, no ticket numbers, not even different lines to distinguish the purpose of your visit, just good old fashioned 'get in line and wait for your turn,' or until you are told when your turn is.

Our second home, the migrate office in Sofia.

After our third visit to the migrate office we quickly found out that amongst the foreigners there were many Bulgarian citizens waiting to do other mundane tasks like renew or replace a lost ID card at desks 3 and 4, and that there were actually very few people waiting for desks 14 and 15. At last, some good news, but not for long. On our fourth or fifth or maybe sixth visit to the migrate office my husband takes his place in line per usual as I march up to the front. By now I'm a pro and have learned how to charm the gate keepers. I walk up to the officers, flash a bright smile and politely ask if desks 14 or 15 are open. One of the officers usually says that there are a couple of people ahead of us and that he'll call us over when the desk is available. On that particularly visit, the fourth or fifth or sixth, the tall officer informed me that desks 14 and 15 are closed and that we'd have to wait for desks 3 and 4 along with the dozens of other domestic and international cases waiting to receive their documents.

I lost track how many times we've been to the migrate office, only to be returned because of some incorrect, missing or new required document, all of which need to be notarized. I've since come to find out that being a notary is a cushy career in Bulgaria, and when you realize that virtually every document needs to be notarized, you'll quickly understand why notaries make four figure salaries. The clerks at the migrate office on the other hand, definitely do not get the same perks. Over the course of the last three months we've seen four different women at the migrate office, and not one of them has even pretended to be the slightest bit helpful. That's right, did I mention all of the clerks processing the paperwork are women, who then pass the applications on to the presumably male decision-makers on the fourth floor (read about being a woman in Bulgaria in my previous blog). The female clerks have it just as bad, so why would they try to make my life any easier? Or perhaps it's just the remnants of the socialist mentality where you don't need to put in the extra mile because you earn the same as your comrades anyway. The only solace in all of this bureaucratic nonsense is that no one is immune to it. Every Bulgarian who has grown up or lived here long enough has withstood the test of the backward systems, which is a true testament to the stubbornness, determination and resiliency of the Bulgarian people. In order to make it in Bulgaria, you really have to want it, because god knows you will have to experience a lot of bitter moments to get to that sweet life. There's a saying in Bulgarian, that perhaps best epitomizes life here. When someone asks How are you? People reply: Добре съм но ще се оправя, which translates to: I'm fine but I'll be fine.

Last Wednesday we made our final* visit to the migrate office to submit my husband's residency paperwork. If I've learned anything from this experience it's that if you expect the worst, things can only get better from there, and so they did. On Wednesday they accepted our application and told us to come back on Friday for a "document check," which we took to mean just another delay. To our astonishment, after the whole song and dance waiting outside in line, we come to find out that my husband's application was not only processed within 48-hours, but that he was approved for a one-year residency card, which we have to pick up at the migrate office in one month.* We were giddy with relief and we even managed to get some friendly banter out of our female clerk. "He'll find out for himself that this is the best place in the world," the woman said as she filed away my husband's paperwork. Perhaps she's right, maybe Bulgaria is the best place in the world, but there's only one way to find out.