I'm living the Bulgarian retirement dream

My wife Irena and I have always moved around a great deal due to my job as a teacher - including short stays in countries as far flung as Kenya, the UAE, Qatar, and China.

We moved back to the UK in 2003, and were horrified to discover how expensive house prices were and what life had become. We had several debates about where to live – France was initially a contender, but French people have woken up to the fact that lots of Brits will pay crazy prices for rundown properties in France, so it was too pricey.

We saw a piece about Bulgaria on A Place in the Sun, the TV series about Brits moving overseas. Weeks later, we hired a van and set off to our first house there. We liked the idea that it was cheap to buy a property, not too crowded and the weather was good. That was in August 2005 - and we’ve never looked back.

We are not Bulgarian citizens. We have our lichna carta (residency cards) which allow us to live in the country for as long as we like and to come and go as we please. Irena is Russian (so we don’t discuss politics!), I am a British citizen.

My wife and I are retired, I’m 65, Irena is 64. I was a primary school teacher in the UK for 20 years, then spent a further 20 years teaching abroad. Irena was a professional singer, and then later a singing teacher. We currently live in a house near a little town called Elena, which is about three hours’ drive from the local airport. It’s near some really beautiful countryside where the locals produce yoghurt, cheese and vegetables.

We also have an apartment in Veliko Tarnovo, which is 31 miles away. Veliko Tarnovo is the Bulgarian equivalent of Winchester. It used to be the capital and is home to the castle of Tsarevets, the winding Yantra River, picturesque old buildings along twisting cobbled streets and beautiful, historic churches. It’s a funky little place.

The old town has eccentric and idiosyncratic architecture, and the countryside all around Veliko Tarnovo is gorgeous, perfect for camping and picnics. There are charming little restaurants and bars, hidden away down alleys. Our apartment looks down on to a street which dates from the 13th century. We can look across the river and see the castle up on the hill. They have open-air opera performances there in the summer, so we can sit out on our balcony and listen for free.

We usually spend the winter in the city and move to our country house in Elena in the summer. The reason that most Brits come to Bulgaria, putting it very bluntly, is money. Our country house is huge and cost us €81,000 (£67,500). It was in fairly good nick, just needing a little paint and TLC.

It came with three quarters of an acre of garden. Most people in the UK have a garden about the size of a postage stamp. Ours is so big we don’t know what to do with all of it. We’ve converted part of it into a badminton court, and of course we garden - tulips, vegetables. In the summer, it’s glorious.

We love to have the new friends we’ve made - and our family from overseas - over to the country house. It’s lovely to have the space to be able to invite them to come and stay.

We bought our apartment in Veliko Tarnovo 15 years ago for €40,000 (£33,000). If we sell that apartment now, we might get €60,000 or €70,000 for it. Apartment prices have gone up because the younger generation needs to live in the city for work - but it’s still cheap when compared to the UK.

Bulgarians are not interested in houses outside of the cities as there are no jobs in the countryside, so they often go for a song. The properties are often absolute wrecks, falling to pieces but with amazing views and great space.

We didn’t know anyone in Bulgaria when we first moved here, but we knew the houses were cheap and the lifestyle seemed a vast improvement on the UK. Bulgaria is about the same size as the UK, but the population is only seven million (compared to the UK’s 70 million) so it’s not crowded.

Rolling countryside, roads with hardly any traffic, mountains, lakes, rivers, forests, skiing, the Black Sea, the Med, history, culture: Bulgaria has it all. Maybe Bulgarian wine is not quite as good as the very best French wine, but it is cheap and very drinkable.

The summers in Bulgaria are long and hot - it’s just around the corner from Greece - and it can be 23C right into October.

Then we get a short, sharp winter. Some quite serious snow. If you get a cold winter in Bulgaria, I’m talking snow up to your knees. They have fantastic skiing here, with some very good and cheap ski resorts.

The houses are solidly built, especially when compared to some of the newbuilds in the UK. It costs under £300 to keep our three-bedroomed country house warm during the winter, which is significantly cheaper than the UK. And our council tax costs just £20 a year.

While I can get by in Bulgarian – say hello, order things in restaurants – I can’t really have a sustained conversation. I worry about a situation where I’m in danger and I can’t get help. But these are minor concerns.

The local Bulgarians are very friendly, though in the countryside they often don’t speak English. In Veliko Tarnovo, the city where we have an apartment, by contrast, many of the younger people speak English very well.

Thankfully, it’s easy for expats to make friends. There are particular hotspots in Bulgaria where you get clusters of British expats. In and around Veliko Tarnovo, for example, there are plenty of expat groups.

I discovered a group called VT Walkers on Facebook, a bunch of expats described as ‘drinkers with a walking problem’. Every Wednesday we go for a nice walk and then have a pub lunch together.

Generally speaking, expats in Bulgaria are very friendly. They want to help you and they’ve had the same problems themselves.

There’s definitely a perverse pleasure shared among the groups when we see things going wrong in the UK, such as doctors going on strike. Here we don’t watch the Bulgarian news, because we don’t understand it, and I don’t really know much about Bulgarian politics. We live in a kind of cocoon - and this ignorance is bliss.

Healthcare is better, too. Even if we turn up to our GP without an appointment, we hardly have to wait. Just about every hospital in the UK charges about £5 an hour for the car park. I have never paid a penny to park in Bulgaria.

The food here is lovely - a mixture of Mediterranean, Turkish and Greek cuisine, lots of fresh salads. They have a delicious salty white cheese called brinza which they put on just about everything. They’re also very keen on what they call Skara, [Bulgarian barbecues], which are fantastic. In Veliko Tarnovo there are plenty of excellent restaurants with lovely local food and wine.

The country is very safe and if you can prove that you’ve got a pension and are at retirement age, it’s easy to move to Bulgaria and obtain a lichna carta. To get this, you first need a D visa, which involves proving you are of retirement age and have a pension or enough money to cover the cost of living. There are plenty of websites to guide you through the process (https://immigration2bulgaria.com/bulgarian-visas/)

But if you’re younger, Brexit has made everything much more difficult because you can’t qualify for residency automatically, as you used to be able to. It’s possible if you’re married to a Bulgarian, or have a business that can employ Bulgarian citizens, but it’s not easy.

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There are heaps of properties for sale. Prices in large cities have gone up over the last two or three years, but prices for country houses have hardly moved at all. The house may be a bit run down, but it’ll be yours, and even with the cost of restoration it’s still markedly cheaper than the UK.

Of course there are downsides to living in Bulgaria. Some of the Bulgarian paperwork, official processes and bureaucracy here can be really painful. The postal service here is slow - we received our Christmas cards from the UK in February!

I do miss certain things about the UK. A really nice English bookshop, for example. There aren’t any in Bulgaria. And while they have mechanas - restaurants that serve local Bulgarian food and drink - they’re not really as nice as English pubs.

I don’t see my friends back in the UK as often as I would like. I can talk to them on Skype and Facebook but I get the sense that nobody is really enjoying themselves back home. I feel very fortunate to live here.

The expats here almost never return to live in the UK. And why would they? Because they miss the fun of driving on the M25, the biggest car park in Europe? Because the National Health Service is such a model of prompt and efficient patient care? Because all of the affordable apartments and the modestly priced houses in the UK are such good value and have large gardens and lovely views?

My wife and I love our lives in Bulgaria. Here, life is simple, easy, and affordable. I would never consider moving back to the UK. If you are considering making the move, just do it. You won’t regret it.