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kfk

Random facts from living 3 months there on why this could be a high potential country:

* 10% income tax (second lowest in EU), 5% dividend tax

* Very low costs of living (rent is 300-400 eur for a flat in Sofia)

* Relatively easy to start companies

* It's quite safe, at least safer than Naples from where I am from

* Very good quality of food

* Close to the seaside (about 3 hours from Greek coast also)

* Nice summers and autumns

* A lot of mountains and land around Sofia, nice nature around

* !Important: probably lots of EU funds for startup. You can probably get funds for your startup w/o investors if you win a EU project

Personally the only issues I have seen are:

* Yeah, lots of people have left, many are in the process of leaving

* "Made in Bulgaria" is not considered a very good brand in EU like "Made in Italy" or "Made in Germany"

Edit. Added EU funds bullet.

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I visited Bulgaria for a week, so I have a limited perspective. The things that stuck out to me:

1. the food is amazing and inexpensive. Fresh high quality produce and meat, reasonably skilled chefs, and an incredible blend of French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, and Russian food. Seriously, the produce is amazing and so cheap.

2. the newer apartment buildings are well constructed and extremely cheap

3. Sofia is depressing. It looks like a dying city. Everything is falling apart, there's graffiti everywhere, not many people under 30 except those who can't leave for various reasons. There's a lot of pro-soviet nostalgia and suspicion of modernization and foreigners.

4. people hang out in public smoking, drinking, playing table tennis, and exercising. I bought a bottle of wine and drank in a park in city center until late and I felt perfectly safe. That doesn't appeal to everyone so it can be a plus and minus.

5. people drive like madmen with loud music and poorly modified cars with no mufflers. Lots of macho culture and posturing.

edit for something I forgot:

I was walking downtown sofia at about 8pm on friday night and saw a train of 3 new AMG mercedes following what looked like a modified Lambo. I also saw a Porsche GT2 RS, a mclaren, and several bentleys very clearly illegally parked for days outside a luxury hotel. I don't know where that money is coming from but I assumed it's corruption or drug trafficking given what the rest of the city is like.

Some other eastern europe countries are betting similarly. Albania , Northern Macedonia, possibly Serbia and Montenegro will soon join the EU and apply basically the same recipe. They are already attractive destinations for digital nomads and others who want enjoy the benefits of country arbitrage.

But like others said, I m not sure where this leads ... Cheap countries are cheap for a reason.

I hope the new Greek government manages to compete with this, so the next post will advertise Greece in this way. Most of your list applies here as well, except we have amazing food and beaches.

If only the taxes, social security and other expenses didn't demand more than half of your income. And that is ignoring the recent idiocy of paying upfront 100% of your taxes for the next year (hopefully the new government will get rid of that).

Yeah, that's terrible. Luckily the new government has started to decrease them (dividends went to 5% from 15% IIRC), but it's still pretty crazy.

Seconding this.

I was recently for 2 weeks in Santorini, which is considered pretty expensive compared to the rest of Greece, and everything was actually very affordable (esp. if you learn to keep your distance from the more tourist-infested areas).

The whole time during my stay I kept thinking how nice it would be to work from there. Clear blue sky, beaches and fresh grilled fish. Wow.

I can't recommend Crete enough. Spent out 2nd part of honeymoon there last month, its big, variable, great food, overall cheap, great history, the weather is milder compared to many other Greek islands and even in September the sea had 26 degrees.

High mountains, deep gorges (Samaria was the highlight), probably the best olive oil in whole Europe (but this is valid for whole Greece).

OK back to work, that dreamy look on my face is pretty revealing

I have been to santorini this summer. It's an area which is not comparable to the rest of greece. A raxi to dea sunset during the afternoon can easily be 30 eur and we are talking about a distance of 7 km.

Maybe off-season it's affordable. But combined with Mykonos it's an area where the term highway robbery comes ro mind.

Isn't the weather extremely bikeable? or are the roads super dangerous for that?

The roads are indeed super dangerous in my opinion (I rented a scooter once and truly feared for my life when huge buses lost their patience and overtook me during switchbacks, after that experience only cars!) and additionally you really need to be in amazing shape to bike there - steep climbs everywhere, under a hot sun.

Yeah, spending four months working from the beach is basically why I haven't left already. There are some amazing places in a one-hour radius.

Bulgaria also has amazing food and beaches in my opinion.

Hmm, possibly, I haven't visited extensively but the food in Bansko leaves something to be desired, I hear.

I haven't been to Bansko, but the food in Veliko Tarnovo and Ravda is great. The food in Sunny Beach was poor but I chalk that up to it being a resort area. I was lucky enough to enjoy a number of home-cooked meals as well, I really enjoyed every traditional dish I was served.

Ah, maybe it was because Bansko is a resort area as well. I don't know about home-cooked food, I wouldn't be surprised if that was excellent. I was mostly referring to restaurants.

As regular visitor, I thought Thessaloniki was already getting some startup pockets around.

Also maybe some bigger islands could be advertised on this way, although having to go through Athens for business trips might be a negative selling point (longer trips).

It depends on when you visited, it's really been drained in the past few years :/ I organize the Python meetup in Thessaloniki and basically everyone emigrated. There's no point in even running it any more, every attendee now tells me "I heard there are jobs in computers and I came to check it out".

How do apartment prices / rents compare though?

You can find a decent 2 bedroom apartment in Thessaloniki for like 300 euros/month. There are cheaper (i've seen something like 120 euro studios for students in Athens near the university which aren't total dumps) and more expensive options too (for around 400 or so you can even find a house near the coast).

In general houses are very cheap in Greece. It is taxes and social security that raise the cost of living a lot. Last time i checked pretty much half of your income (actually a bit more) is lost.

> * It's quite safe, at least safer than Naples from where I am from

Fun fact, we've only ever had 2 serial killers that we know of!

> * 10% income tax (second lowest in EU), 5% dividend tax

But you you have very high social insurance, pension and other welfare fees, just like in any ex-bloc country. They will amount to 30%+ of employment cost.

>But you you have very high social insurance,

iirc, bulgarian social tax was something like 14.5% - retirement, 5% medical. But the best part is: there is max amount for social and it's a joke - less than 1540 euro. Above that it's just not taxed.

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