Work and life in Bulgaria. Part two

November 18, 2010, Moscow, 6 am On the street there is a chilly cold wind with a fine drizzling rain that makes you cuddle in anticipation of the car to Sheremetyevo. Check-in, inspection, passport control, a small wait, and now at 8.20 the plane breaks away from the lane and carries us into the distance, to Sofia. Two and a half hours of flight, an empty airport meets, a small queue at the passport control ... And now we are outside the airport. We are greeted by a bright Bulgarian sun, gently heating its rays, and the warm breeze smells pleasantly of freshness and change ...

Hello! I continue to talk about our life in Bulgaria. The first part of the story is here . In this part, I will try to highlight such topics as learning the Bulgarian language, what is the medicine here, and whether it is worth giving the child to a Russian school. I write these notes exclusively from my personal experience, and do not judge strictly, if suddenly you had something not quite right in Bulgaria.

Arrival

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From the airport we took a taxi at the reception of one of the taxi companies, and went to the already rented accommodation (without a rental agreement you will not be issued a visa D). A little advice from visitors: if you come alone and you do not have a lot of baggage, then you can use the metro, which follows directly from the airport and to the city center. Traveling by metro will cost you only 0.8 euros instead of an estimated 7 euros by taxi.

Taxi landed us near the house where we had rented an apartment. After unloading the luggage, we began to expect Nicholas, our agent, who was supposed to arrange the handing over of keys and the signature of the act of acceptance of the property in the apartment. Nikolay appeared in about 15 minutes with a small bouquet, which he handed to my spouse with a smile. After that, we began to expect the owner of the apartment, which appeared even after 20 minutes. The delay of the Bulgarians is a fairly common phenomenon, then do not be surprised at this. Stay relaxed, this is how they all live :-)

After inspecting the apartment and signing the act, I handed the hostess the rent for November, receiving in return two pairs of keys. Having hardly managed to show off Nicholas and the hostess, who were chatting about everything in a row, we finally exhaled and fell to sleep, the fatigue of the move took its toll on that day.

Waking up a few hours later, I went to explore the grocery store, the closest of which was the usual "Bill." Smiling sellers, who greeted me at the checkout, forced me to almost shy away from the habit. However, then you get used to it very quickly :-)

The next day we asked Nicholas to arrange an Internet connection for us. They chose “Blizoo” (I do not recommend it!), The benefit is that their office was in the next house. And here I made the first mistake, which later came back to me a year later. For:



The fact is that in Bulgaria treaties are honored and observed. And if you signed a contract for 1 year, then please kindly pay the whole year. And if about a month before the end of the contract you did not express the desire to terminate the contract, it will be automatically extended for another year (or even three). Whether you use the Internet / cellular communication at the same time, or not, nobody cares. If at the same time you decide to score on the payment, then do not be surprised if they can then sue you for 50 euros. So, the Internet with TV was connected to us after 2 weeks, it turned out to be lousy, and I changed the provider to m-phone. What didn’t stop blizoo, then throw me a piece of paper “pay the bill immediately”.

In Bulgaria there is an analogue of our big three. These are companies Vivacom , M-tel and Telenor , better known as Globul. Curious readers can look at the sites of these operators to see the tariff plans (look for the word “planned”, this is “tariff” in Bulgarian). For the most part, all services are post-paid, although there are prepaid sims. To enter into a contract, foreigners need either a passport or a personal card (if you have already received it).

Internet and TV from M-Tel are very high quality, fast, in general - I am satisfied. There are hundreds of channels on TV, including Russian ones (well, if you suddenly missed “Brothers in Law-17”, then NTV will help you catch up). Most of the channels go in Bulgarian, many in the original language, but with Bulgarian subtitles. And here I would like to tell a little about the Bulgarian language itself.

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian language for the Russian people may seem surprising. For an unprepared Russian person who has never encountered the Bulgarian language, there will be no problem with flying to read the text written in Bulgarian. Let's just say 80 percent you can understand with the summer. This is not surprising: Slavic, common roots, good old Cyrillic without the addition of Latin letters. And even if the Bulgarian word in the letter contains the “wrong” order of letters, your brain can easily convert the word to “correct”. You can check: read the phrase “Construction workers of the rest of the capital of the quarter without a current”. I am sure that not one reader will cause problems to read and understand this phrase.

But it is quite another thing when you hear Bulgarian speech for the first time. And you understand that you do not understand nifiga :-)

There are many reasons for this, and one of them is stress. Try to read the words "Rod and on" with the emphasis on the highlighted "and", and you will understand that this word has suddenly become completely incomprehensible and alien to you. Accents - this is one of the key features that distinguishes Bulgarian from Russian. To be honest, for 5 years I have not learned how to correctly pronounce the banal telephone “alo” in Bulgarian.

Coming to Bulgaria, forget about the soft Moscow “akane”, here you are honored with a solid “okitem” and “ekane.” A small example: the street where my family and I lived for a long time is named after the well-known scientist: “Nicolaus Copernicus Street”. Exactly, not “Nicolaus Copernicus Street”, but “Nicolaus Copernicus Street”. And it is pronounced not as “Nikalai Kapernik”, but strictly “Nikolai Kopernik”.

Another interesting difference: the pronunciation of the letter " b ". If you have ever come across a Bulgarian letter (for example, you’ve wandered to a Bulgarian website), then you are probably surprised by the abundance of solid signs scattered according to words. And now attention is not at all a firm sign, but a vowel letter, close in the first approximation in pronunciation to the Russian “ Y ”. She pronounced, of course, not just like Russian, but the analog is very close. Another unusual letter - " Y ". It is pronounced approximately as a “SHT”. And finally: the letter " E " in Bulgarian is almost always read as Russian "E".

For particularly curious readers, I give homework: practice your pronunciation of the word "KSHCHA" ("home" in Russian).

I also want to talk briefly about the so-called bogus words (I do not remember how this phenomenon is officially called, and it does not matter). For example, the Bulgarian word "perdet" means not at all what you thought, but simply "curtains." If you ask the seller in the store to show you where the melon is sold, the seller will show you the watermelons. For the word "Dinya" means "watermelon." A bath is not a place where hot brooms are fun to whip, but a simple bathroom. A flock is a room, a bun is a bride, a grizzly is care, a belly is life, fearlessly is a synonym for “beautiful, cool” ... There are a lot of similar words, and if, say, the word “flock” is not often spoken, The “right” to me on my very first trip made me scuff the extra kilometer down the street in search of McDonald's. For it was necessary to go not to the right, but straight ahead. Yes, by the way, if you ask the Bulgarians to find you a brazier somewhere, the Bulgarian can raise his eyebrows in surprise. For the Bulgarians call the Bulgarians a gypsy (approximate analogue of “Khach”, apologize for the terminology).



There are no special features in the study of the Bulgarian language as compared with the study of any other foreign language. The language is rather easily learned in the process of communication with Bulgarians, while watching television and reading texts (newspapers, for example). Of course, if you stay at home all the time and get out only to the store, then your vocabulary will be limited to numerals and trite "hello, thank you, how much it costs." Make friends, communicate more - and after a few months you will be able to scratch in Bulgarian at a quite decent everyday level. The Bulgarians themselves are very friendly and curious about the Russians, and you will have no problems finding friends. If you are a terrible introvert and do not want to make contact, then this will not be a problem. Many Bulgarians know the Russian language in varying degrees (the elderly are better, the young are worse), plus we include the language of gestures and synonyms - and it’s ready, the main thing is not to be afraid and not complex.

By the way, if you learn Bulgarian, then consider that at the same time you learned Macedonian (the Bulgarians themselves do not recognize the Macedonian language, they say, only a dialect of Bulgarian), and you can easily understand Serbian.

Business

My family and I came to Bulgaria practically blindly. Initially, I wanted to engage in the development of payment terminals in Bulgaria, but soon I refused this idea, especially after becoming acquainted with the local mentality in the first months of living here. The second idea was to develop a program that I wrote for my spouse to help automate an online store. The program was able to integrate the websites of suppliers with an online store: fill in information about products, automatically calculate prices and keep track of balances. In the future, this program has evolved into a cloud service, but now I would not like to talk in detail about it, this is another story. At first I worked one of the houses, then the first sales began, and now the thought came to us that it would be time to turn this small income into a full-fledged business, and I opened my own company.

In Bulgaria, doing business is not easy, but very simple. There are no restrictions on the opening of a company by foreigners, the opening of a new company takes about a week, the current account is opened in the bank 10 minutes in place, the accounting is transparent and simple. The minimum share capital is virtually absent (1 euro). In the absolute majority of cases, the tax regime is 10% of the profits (income minus expenses). This all concerns / - actually a complete analogue of the Russian LLC. There is also an AD (joint-stock company), an analogue of an JSC in the Russian Federation), here the authorized capital is already 25,000 euros. Many licensed activities such as credit / banking / payment also require a minimum share capital of not less than specifically established by law.

Paperwork is minimized, all documents in electronic form are available through the Targovski registry (an analogue of the register ), in the same place anyone can view all the data on your company. You have a “friendly contract” in your hands (the Russian “Company Charter” can be considered as an analogue), “the decision is in accordance with the register in the register” and the EIC is the unique number of your company. In fact, in the daily life of managing a company you only need to know your UIC. Except in the rarest cases when concluding transactions, no one here in his right mind would ask you for copies of copies of all kinds of TINs and other paper junk. There is an EIC, there is a registry - this is more than enough in practice. Oh yes, with a certain turnover, the company will need to register for the payment of the VAT (analogous to VAT), it is 20% today, the return of the VAT is once a year.

Practically all small firms (and they constitute the absolute majority of firms in Bulgaria) give all their accounting to outsource to the same small accounting companies. The cost of doing business is different and usually starts from the size of the minimum wage per month. This figure is adjusted every year by the government of the country, and for the 2017th year it is 460 levs (approximately 230 euros).

Hiring employees is not much different from hiring in Russia with one exception: an employee can be dismissed without any special explanation, it is enough to notify for a certain period indicated in the employment contract, usually it is 1 month. Similarly, an employee will have to work one month before leaving. In other words, there are no differences between the employer and the employee: the two parties conclude an equal contract between you: you work - I pay, it's just business and nothing personal. I personally think this approach is right and fair.

Taxes for the employee as in Russia are paid by the employer; leave, salary, working hours, duties of the employer and the employee - everything is written in the employment contract. Bulgaria is also related to Russia by another fact in the sphere of working relations, inherited from the USSR - the presence of a work record for an employee, a complete analogue of the Russian work book. Well, I did not notice any other differences in the work plan between Bulgaria and Russia, to be honest. The atmosphere in the team, technology, jobs, office - all this in the future depends on the specific company and specific people. There are teambuilding on a large scale (corporate parties), there are overtime, there are friendships, there are conflicts. In general, everything is the same as in Russia :-)

The medicine

None of us is iron, and sometimes there are times when we have to seek qualified medical assistance. As a foreigner, access to free state medicine will be closed to you here (at least until you receive permanent residence, although here I am not sure, it is better to check this information). This does not apply to ambulance calls: if necessary, the ambulance will arrive, and will not even ask you to show any document or passport. We called an ambulance a couple of times: once, when the wife’s brother became ill during the walk, another time for the daughter, when her temperature jumped to 39 with dashing. The first time the ambulance arrived 10 minutes later, another time we waited a few hours soon (as we were later told, the pediatrician is obliged to go to the children, but there are very few of them in Sofia and everyone was busy on other calls). The ambulance doctors were extremely polite, did not have to pay for anything (I did not even see a hint).

For planned trips to doctors (mainly for the daughter), we used paid clinics. In my first opinion, the cost of treatment in paid clinics in Bulgaria is cheaper than Moscow one and a half to two times. The qualifications of doctors are different, there are also good pros, there is a lot of lobbies from “Interns” who skip lectures at the university. The clinics are also different here: there are super-clever ones, for example, “Tokuda”, where everything is done in the manner of American clinics; there are simpler clinics. State hospitals, where we went to get tested for admission to kindergarten, are visually from the inside represent frightening squalid offices where you can shoot scenes for horror films. Yes, by the way, the spouse corrected me here in the process of reading: a trip to the state clinic, even for Bulgarians, is paid, in the direction - the cost will be small (about a couple of euros), without a referral - higher.

In Bulgaria, there is the concept of "family doctor". This is something like our therapist from the attached clinic. It is this doctor who will give you prescriptions for medications, carry out initial examinations and refer you to other doctors. Yes, by the way, keep in mind that very many medicines that are in Russia, in principle, are absent in Bulgaria. Particularly precipitated by pharmacists when you try to explain to them what green is :-)

When you make a residence permit, you will be required to make medical insurance with a coverage of up to 30,000 euros. If you make this insurance for excuses (as we did), then the cost of such insurance will be no higher than 30-50 euros. But I advise you to make a normal insurance in a proven company. The fact is that with this insurance you will be able to beat off many expenses in paid clinics, which will help save a lot on visits to doctors. We learned about this life hacking rather late from our friends. Even the Bulgarians themselves very often prefer to go to paid clinics using the same insurance.

To summarize briefly, no one in the street will leave you to die, and routine visits to doctors should not hit the wallet a lot. But it's better not to get sick anyway)

Education

At the beginning, when I was working from home, a spouse with a child was learning local playgrounds, of which there were enough of them around our house. In addition to the sites for us, it was a pleasant discovery of places such as children's “busy”. The essence of them is simple: a large children's room, full of toys and small attractions. Under the supervision of caregivers, the child plays, draws, sculpts, in general, he has fun under the full program. Parents at this point can sit down to relax in a nearby cafe or drive about their business. The cost is more than affordable (from 3 euros per hour). Today in Moscow these are also appearing, but for 2010 they were not there yet.

Then we decided it was time to socialize the child. At that time, our daughter turned 2.5 years old, and we decided to give her to a private kindergarten “Pitr Pan” (I do not recommend). For foreigners there is an opportunity to give the child to the state garden, but at that particular moment (it was in the spring) we would have to wait for the fall for this. Our daughter could hardly speak Russian at that time, so my wife and I had certain concerns about adaptation. But as it turned out in practice - the fears were in vain. Within a few days, my daughter went to the kindergarten with pleasure, and even then she began to pronounce the first Bulgarian words. After about half a year, we transferred her to another kindergarten, because we didn’t particularly like the attitude of the caregivers to the children (we noticed more than once that the teachers had scored to look after the children and were staring stupidly at the television). A new kindergarten called Trust , we were extremely pleased with this garden, I recommend and advise.

The cost of stay in the garden - 300 euros per month. This price includes food, and additional cups, and work materials. Groups are divided by age, in each group no more than 10 children. In the kindergarten, they professionally teach English, teach mathematics and Bulgarian, and much more. The child always went to this kindergarten with enthusiasm until the end of his stay there, acquired his first friends, and ideally learned the Bulgarian language. Thanks to this kindergarten, my spouse also acquired acquaintances among Bulgarian mothers, and we are still friends with one family. At the end of the kindergarten, we were given a state certificate, which is the basis for the child to enter the school.

In Bulgaria there are both public and private schools. For foreigners, schooling for children in a public school was previously paid, but today this fee was canceled. I can not tell you in detail about studying at a public school, because at the end of kindergarten we went to a paid school called Educational Technology , where almost half of the group from kindergarten went with us to first grade. The cost of schooling is 350 euros per month (if paid monthly) or 3,550 euros if paid immediately for a year. Children learn from morning until lunchtime (then we had an after-school meal with games and walks), professionally equipped classes, in-depth study of the English language. Education continues until the 8th grade, after which there is already the so-called vocational training, either in a regular or in a specialized school. Total in Bulgarian schools 12 classes, grading system - 6-point. Starting study on September 15th, and continues until June. There are no such holidays as in Russia, in schools, the only exception is the Christmas holidays, which last from December 25th to January 4-5. By the way, there are no New Year holidays either for adults; on January 2nd, everyone goes to work.

In Sofia, there is also a real Russian school. This is a school at the embassy where children of consuls and other diplomatic staff usually study, however it is open to all other volunteers. Education is also paid (it was $ 180 a few years ago when we were interested in this topic), the number of places is limited, all training meets Russian standards, and even the Bulgarian language is not studied there. Do you need such training for your children? If you consider living in Bulgaria only as temporary before returning to Russia - then, probably, yes, it is better to send to this school. Otherwise, it makes no sense.

PS I was asked here to show the cat, catch:



PPS To be continued :-)