D-I-E, Bulgaria

1. DESCRIBE

Throughout our stay in Varna, we had quite many confusing moments when ordering something from restaurants, going to the stores, using public transportation etc. The service was often very rude. By rude I mean that the waiter, for example, would not necessarily reply anything on any language when we ordered. Many times they even rolled their eyes and just looked like we ruined their day by coming in. The taxis wanted to take the benefit of us being foreigners, and tried to get double prices for the rides.


2. INTERPERT

Coming from Finland, we are not even used to having too friendly service. It is quite normal for us that the service is lame, compared to Southern Europe or the U.S. for example. So it really was a surprising to find even less friendly service from Varna. Well, the taxi thing was expected because that happens all over the world in tourist resorts, but I mean everything else was a bit of a surprise.

I believe the rudeness had many times something to do with language barrier. We learned that Bulgarians are very aware of their language skills and shy to use a foreign language, if they don’t feel like they handle that 100%. One reason for the rudeness might also be that they have so many tourists there in the summer season that they get tired of foreigners. Another reason could also be that they would have expected us to greet them in Bulgarian, and thought that we were rude by going straight into talking in English.



3. EVALUATE

Talking to other foreigners in Varna, we found that we truly weren’t the only ones getting bad service. We learned pretty soon that it is not that much personal, so we just ignored the quality of the service and concentrated in the good things, like the good food and good prices. Putting a bit more effort into the interaction ourselves (meaning, greeting in Bulgarian, smiling more), helped sometimes as well. Positive attitude is always a good idea, no matter what – because even if you wouldn’t get better service right there with that extra kindness, it will make you feel better anyway. Of course there were days when it made us really frustrated and even mad to get treated poorly when needing service, but most of the time we didn't take it too seriously.

From the local’s perspective I actually understand getting tired of foreigners. Golden Sands, the tourist resort close to Varna, and Varna itself is a very popular destination among young adults who come to party hard. Working as a waiter, with very low salary, being too buzy and feeling underappreciated, it is surely tiring. The drunken tourists who trash and don’t respect the locals ruin the good service for many decently behaving foreigners too. That’s sad.

To balance the negative, I have to mention that we also had at least as many very good experiences, with very kind and polite service. And even more of that lame kind of ok-service that we also get in Finland. So we cannot say that all service is bad in Varna – but the level of the service surely varies a lot.

 We often visited this beach restaurant because of the decent service, good prices, family friendliness and the location.