Bulgaria - British Expat Forum

Hello Everyone,
Looking to soon visit your pleasant land with view to purcase property, don't fancy ESTATE AGENTS (sorry there must be some decent ones outthere somewhere!!!!) driving me around and telling me about this property that has only just come back on the market due to the new buyer droping dead and that if I don't sign the deal today that I will regeret it for the rest of my life, How it is simply the most sought after property in the region ,how it is expected to quadrouple in value in just over ten days, how they are opening a new airport up the road and flights from the U.K will be £1.99 and coupled with the new Golf Couse and Winter Olympics it is expected waiting lists will be formed for tourists waiting to visit this area or similar speel , I would like to rent a car to have a look for myself. I own a TomTom One Sat nav and would like to know if anyone has the east European maps installed for navigating a round Bulgaria and wether they are any good because they are flipping useless in London, spelling mistakes One way streets ( not that I think there will be many of them in rural Bulgaria), not recieving a signal and that awful woman telling you {Turn around when possible} when you have just discovered that he route planned had a deadend, river , Building or similar obstruction in the way.
I have just reminded myself why I have had enough of G.B and need to get away to foreign lands,
Cheap way of life, NO ESTATE AGENTS, and no traffic jams. Thanks everyone for listening to my rant and any help is really appreciated, I don't think of everyone as strangers on the internet more as friends I have yet to meet!
Speak to you all soon

yep ..in cuckoo land
but dont depair ,its not that bad finding your way round Bg once your out of the cities....if i can follow their map ..anyone can ! just bring with you some commonsense and sense of direction

Hi, we have just returned from our first trip to Bulgaria, we bought two houses while we where there, the best solution is to hire a car with GPS, thats what we did, it was a garmin C510 and it worked great.

If you email or PM me, Ill find the hire company name for you if you like.

Estate agents: I know what you mean, and that was one of our worries, but to be honest, I cant imagine how you are going to go and look yourself, we never saw one property with a for sale sign, in fact, the bulgarians struggle to find out what property is for sale, while viewing one house, a nabour came across, her son had been trying to find out if the property was for sale for some time.

We opted to use recommended estate agent, and they where very good.

We are new to this forum, so this is my first post, hope I havent stepped on any toes, I can see the point of not allowing advertising in posts, but it does make it dificult to get or give advice if you are not allowed to mention company names or details.

Hope this as been some help, and please feel free to contact me for any further help.

Sat nav doesnt work in BG sorry but its not too hard to get about.


Tracy

Hi Tracey, I dont know when you tried sat nav, but I can assure you it does, we where using it last week, and it works great, we would have been lost without it

Hi its ok one of my friends in BG who live there says it doesnt work. Perhaps its the makes and models i dont know. That would be great as it saves me keep asking how do i get here and how do i get there. What make is it?

Hi Tracy, it was a garmin C510, I was so impressed Im going to get one, we will be driving through europe to Bulgaria in a couple of months with all our furniture, so it will be worth buying one. it was a dream to use, only time it lost it was in a particular part of Stara Zegora as you enter, keeps saying, re-calculating, but a couple of mins after it was fine.
ebay is the cheapest Ive seen them.

hi to everyone this is my first post.we have driven over to bg once before and managed to get lost a few times. we are driving over again and thinking of buying the c510 as recommended. could you please tell me wether you used a bg map or a european map for it?
please help!!
regards kay & pete

Hi there Kay and Pete,
We drove over this year in April and we used a Garmin NUVI it will give you a free update to main roads of Bulgaria and street level maps of the Main Cities ie Sofia, Burgas
Sat navs with street level maps of all of BG are available over here in the technology shops for £200 ish.
What route did you use when you drove over, we came on the Ferry from Rosyth to Zeebrugge-Stuttgart-Austria-Italy-Venice Ferry from Venice to igumanitsa in Greece-up through greek mountains that was fun lol, Stayed in Thessalonika for the night and then straight into BG through Sofia then down to Yambol.
Interesting drive and no problems.
All in all it took us 5 days but that included a stay in Stuttgart,Venice Greece and 2 nights on Ferry there was only actually 36 hours driving but not knowing the country we only drove in the daylight.
Jeanette

Thanks scotcouple for the imformation. Already bought garmin nuvi 300 wth european map, when returning to bg we will lookout for the bg map. we took a very similar route to you, think thats the best way to be honest. may take a shorter ferry route from italy next time.
Cheers kay & pete

Hi,kay& Pete. I have done this trip now 10 times; tried them all. Imho Romania is the best once you have done it and you know where to turn off before getting into Bucharest. Yes there are a lot of lorries, but it is still quicker than the others.

Hi all, we were in Bulgaria last summer looking at properties to get some idea as to what is available & will be returning soon subject to selling a property in Lanzarote. We bought a SatNav from a Co in Beijing on Ebay for about 70 sterling including fast delivery, as they assured it has all of Europe, east & west and we have a full route scheduled on it all the way from Cadiz in Spain to Varna.
Has anybody any suggestions, we will drive thro to Trieste then Ljubljiana, then Zagreb then Belgrade and on to Varna. Has anybody done this route, had any problems with vignettes, insurance - we have a green card lined up but not all countries are covered.
await interesting replies. Ambrose

Hi Ambrose, Just be aware that Serbia charges a ridiculous fee for british road users entering the country. I got stung last year as I did not find any information despite rigorous research on which route to traval to Bulgaria.
In a nutshell, the serbian authorities are scamming British tourists. the foreign office has complained to them and it is well known it is thoroughly unjustified.

If you decide to travel through Serbia by road you must have a "Green card" this is an insurance document that most European countries use. If you do not have one the serbian border agency will charge you £80 (approx) for a document valid for 30 days. British insurance companies will offer green cards, However these list the countries they are valid in....Serbia will not be valid!!!! (And the serbs know it).

As my stay last year was 7 weeks I decided to return to the UK via Romania... Not good. If you travel via Romania I seriously advise a Sat Nav on street level as the Romanians don't seem to have heard of road signs? In city navigation is particularly difficult!

I have to admit that travelling through Serbia was much much easier than Romania. Bulgaria itself is quite easy to navigate, I have a house near Pamporova so my route was Sofia - Plovdiv - Asnovograd - Smoljan. No problems at all in Bulgaria but the roads are very poor quality so be careful.

Best of luck.

Hi Lewo, Apologies for not replying sooner, we travelled from the Canary Islands in June through to Balchich, we took our time,the ferry to Cadiz took 36 hours, we then drove through to Barcelona and took a overnight ferry to Genoa in Italy, this saved a 550 mile journey through the French Riveria. We then drove across Italy to Trieste and the Slovenia border, no problems after that, into Croatia and Serbia and then into Bulgaria. The SatNAV was brilliant all the way & in the towns, Zagreb, Sofia etc. The borders were no problem with
Customs or Immigration.
We have now bought a house near Dobrich about 55 kms inland from Varna.
The Bulgarian drivers here are crazy, are they on a suicide trip, my wife was driving yesterday in Dobrich with three cars behind her and indicated well in advance to turn left into a petrol station, as she was just taking the turn the 3rd car accelerates out from behind and slams into the drivers door and the side of the car. He got out of his car, said 'no police, looked at both cars and then made off whilst I was phoning the Police, we gave them the Reg. No and they said the No. did not exist. it was a false plate.
Such are the joys of Bulgaria. !!!!