°µÍø½ûÇø

@joaosteph76915

Welcome to the °µÍø½ûÇø.com forum and good luck with your potential move to Bulgaria!

I think most villages have some kind of bus service, and most villages (apart from the very smallest) have some kind of local shop.

Personally, I don't like to be too far away from civilization! Our village house is 10km away from Kazanlak (about 50k population) which has supermarkets, hospitals, cafes/restaurants, produce market, and so on. That's a very easy 10-15 minutes drive in a car, which is very convenient. Our neighbouring village (Enina, population 2k) is only 2km away, but has 3 (small) supermarkets and a bakery, so this is an option too. While our village is very small, it still has 3 (small) shops, and one of them does a nice cup of coffee and a very good lunch (as long as you like Shopska Salad, Meatballs and Chips).

The village has a regular bus service to Kazanlak maybe 4 or 5 times per day. It takes 30 minutes and costs 2 leva. Because buses are slow and make lots of stops, I'd be pretty frustrated to be much further out than 10-15 km. A taxi back from Kazanlak is 10 leva.

I have a fancy ebike at the house too, it's a great addition to my village life. This would be especially useful if you don't drive. I had no idea they were so much fun! It means I can easily pop down to Enina or Kazanlak (this is easy anyway, as it's downhill)... and I can cruise home (uphill, it's brutal on my regular bike) too, even with a bit of shopping onboard. To compare, my mechanic is on the outskirts of Kazanlak, so I drop off my car, and cycle home. Uphill on my non-power mountain bike is 45 minutes, and I'm sweating like a pig, and need a couple of hours to recover (I did this June last year, so you can imagine it's pretty hot). On the ebike, the same route took 15 minutes, and I was fresh as a daisy (it does 60 kph on the flat-ish sections).

How do you find out if a village has a bus route and what the timetable is please?

@MuddyPuddles

Very low tech... you go to the village... walk around until you find the bus stop... and read the timetable. :-)

You might also be able to find a website for the main bus station ("avtogara") in your local town (Kazanlak in my case). Which will show all the routes, including to your village.

I just found mine again (Google "Kazanlak bus"), which might give you a headstart...

According to this, there are now 7 buses per day to our village, for the increased price of 2.30 leva.

Plus 3 a day to Plovdiv (9 leva) and 12 a day to Stara Zagora (district capital, very nice city, just 4 leva).

They're a bit cheap and cheerful, and a bit on the slow side. But they seem pretty safe, and you can't complain about the prices!