If you want to meet your life’s woman, I advise you to go to Sofia. Bulgarian women are all in one: nice, sweet and intelligent. It’s not necessary to be subscribed to a dating agency. For instance, I met my future wife thanks to the Program Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, founded by the European Commission. We started to talk together professionally and after long talking on facebook and skype we learn and know us more and more, until we became good friends. The more we talked together, the better friends we became and the stronger our links were, until she decided to go and visit me in France, after visiting Paris. I waited for them in Metz, at the train station, at 9 o’clock in the evening. As we met, she smiled and her eyes were shinning like two suns. We visited together during some days Metz and Luxembourg: churches, the famous and prestigious European Institutions. We spent a long time together and I appreciated her more and more. She was coming by planes from Sofia to Beauvais.
I decided to visit her in Sofia next month. I called bus company Eurolines.
I booked a place for the bus to Sofia, in Metz at half past one in the afternoon. The price is very interesting: only 175 € to go and come back! I prepared my bag 2 days before and was so happy for the idea to see my Bulgarian Queen. That day I arrived and I took my car from my home to the Metz bus station. I let there my car and go to the quay and wait for the bus that arrived late. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon the bus drove to Sofia. We stopped in Strasbourg, Freiburg, and Munich to take other people and in Salzburg to let documents. Of course, the drivers made also break for people to go to toilets and to eat. The bus drove across France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia before Bulgaria. In all countries of the European Union there was no control in the country-lines. Between Slovenia and Croatia, then Croatia and Serbia and finally Serbia and Bulgaria, the controls were very long and stressing. I saw and discovered also another lifestyle and so many homeless dogs.
In Bulgaria, the first Bulgarian citizen was a homeless cat that wanted all people to take care of it.
After the bus drove directly to Sofia, I called my Queen once I arrived at the bus station. Immediately, she arrived with her beloved mother and we took a taxi to her office, where we were going to sleep. I spent my first night in Sofia. I was located in a sympathetic street, near a bar with very nice music. It was located near the center of Sofia (20 minutes) on foot. I lived in the street “22 septemvri”, as it means 22nd of September - the Bulgarian Independence Day (Independence from the Ottoman Empire 30 years and a half after Bulgaria’s Liberation). The street is near the Sitnyakovo Boulevard and the Serdika Mall Center (which, despite the same name, is different and away from the Serdika metro station).
Sofia, according to the Eastern Orthodox Church, commemorates Martyr Sophia (a pious Christian woman in the Roman Empire whose daughters and herself were punished by the emperor for their belief in Christianity). The name of Sofia, however, comes from the Greek word for “wisdom”, and as it is a woman’s name, the symbol of the city is a statue with an owl near the Serdika metro station, which is not near the Serdika mall centre. The name which you will often read about is Serdika, after the Thracian tribe “serdi” who settled the place in the 7th century BC.
After one week in Sofia, we were fallen in love one another and aimed to get married. We prepared to launch different steps before wedding. First step aims to go to the hospital for medical tests (syphilis and HIV particularly). In parallel, we were going to the French Consulate to launch the procedure to authorize a French citizen to get married with a Bulgarian woman. This step consists of depositing the birth certificate and an invoice for the address for the French person, whereas the Bulgarian citizen must give his/her birth act (translated in English) and a file that proves that she/he is not married. The French Consulate sent a letter to my residence city located in France. This last one must publish a document during 10 days. Within 10 days all people opposed to my project can come and tell it. Otherwise after 10 days, they send the answer to the French Consulate to establish the document, which allows a French citizen to get married. The concerned document must be translated in Bulgarian by a legalization translation office. With this document we can go to an office to launch the wedding procedure with a definite date. After we got married, we had to go to a Sofia municipality office and take a copy of the wedding register that must be translated in French and transmitted to the French Consulate. One week later, we received a wedding certificate in 2 exemplars and a book called “livret de famille”, which contains our names and future children.
After all the administrative procedures or somewhere between them, we managed to visit Pirotska Street, very near the Serdika metro station. There people find clothes for brides and grooms, and other happy events. There are the inevitable McDonald’s fast-food restaurants in the corners near the small fancy Pirotska Street. In Pirotska Street, people find affordable luxury, but provided it is luxury it is not very cheap, especially all the wedding accessories, but less expensive than TZUM - a big luxury shopping centre not far from Pirotska Street. Together with big and small Orthodox churches, one can find a catholic church near. The synagogue is right after a trade mall for food and domestic accessories called Tzentralni Hali.
One can find a lot of fancy things at the centre of Sofia, but a foreigner can rediscover the thermal source within a near reach of Pirotska Street, just at the tramway lines stop. You need a lot of days to visit all the museums, Orthodox churches, one of which is in the suburbs but still in Sofia - the Boyana Church, but most of all, you need to plan your transportation - not to forget to verify your ticket by perforation or digital identification. You also need a place which to call “sweet home” for a while or like me – hoping to return and visit it often, fallen in love with a Bulgarian woman.