To live in this wonderful, poor country

This week I told my partner to remove Deutsche Welle Bulgaria from his news feed and stop reading their crap. Not that I follow what they post, because they haven't been in my news feed for a long time.
I stopped following them because of one of their misleading articles years ago. And now he showed me another one, on the same topic and in the same vein, that had really impressed him, and how could it not?
The topic is how difficult life is and how badly German pensioners live in Germany and how they choose to live in this wonderful country of Bulgaria and how wonderful they feel here with all the wonderful living conditions and everything.

The article that made me stop following them years ago, misleading from the very title (imagine: Why a German woman chose to live in Bulgaria over the opportunity to live on some island somewhere...) was about only one person, a pensioner. The current article was about many pensioners who settled in some abandoned Bulgarian village, again emphasizing how difficult and bad life is in Germany, and how wonderful life is in Bulgaria.

Honestly, I don't know who orders and pays for such articles to be written and presented in the Bulgarian, even cultural, space, because not everyone reads the DW on a daily basis here. And by a branch of a German media outlet at that! But I'm really tired of such manipulative lies.
It is the same as the recent lies of the government about how we have covered all the criteria for entering the eurozone, how we have no inflation, how our economy is developing and the incomes of the population are increasing, when it is exactly the opposite.
It is also the same as this false campaign by two producers who, of course, do everything only for money and organize events in major Western European cities, gather young Bulgarian emigrants and encourage them to return to Bulgaria with lies about how wonderful the situation is here, how exactly they will get big salaries in cities where people get much less money and how they will live like kings...

One would think that the state would pay for such nonsense and that would be understandable. But that is not the case in a country where the life of every single person is of no importance, let alone their well-being. This is clearly shown by our dysfunctional healthcare system, which is supposed to maintain people's health. Or by the low salaries, or by the high prices, or by the inhumane treatment of people by doctors, government officials, etc.

But to advertise the inhumane living conditions in a dysfunctional country as wonderful, and through a branch of a foreign media outlet, seems completely incomprehensible to me. Who orders and who pays for this?

It's one thing to come for dental tourism to Varna, for example, where everything will presumably go perfectly, organized down to the last detail by local health merchants for good pay. But it's quite another to come to live here. And how are you going to come to live here? You can't just pack your bags and come.

Both articles mention in passing two things that cannot be ignored and nothing could happen without their presence.
Connections are needed. At every stage and every step of a foreigner's coming to live here. And not only that.
Constant assistance is needed, on a daily basis, to deal with the daily challenges that every local person faces, which even local people cannot deal with, without lawyers and without connections.

Of course, Bulgarians, like any poor people, are servile and hypocritical when it comes to foreigners. They love foreigners because foreigners by default have more money than them and the possibility of receiving something from this money as a reward for their servility is present. But the possibility of a foreigner being scammed on a daily basis, for every single thing in everyday life, is also present.
I know that many foreigners live on the Black Sea coast, but I have already told you about the impossibility of obtaining medical services there, even by Bulgarians, let alone foreign tourists. So life there is quite difficult. And what remains for a pensioner, if there are any diseases and complications.

Personally, I was lied to by my GP for two whole years about my rights as a patient who had paid all their health insurance. Only recently, in a casual conversation with an acquaintance, did I find out that I had been lied to. And so I had to find another GP, which also turned out to be quite a difficult task.
I could have realized much earlier that I had been lied to, of course, but how could a person assume that their GP would lie to them? That they would not give them referrals to specialists, endangering their health, with explanations that they/the patient/the health insured person had no right to these referrals?

And if local people are subjected to such treatment, then what could be expected as treatment for a foreigner, if this foreigner is not constantly accompanied, at every step of daily life, by a trusted person who can fix the messes and put everything in its place.

I'm not just talking about the complexity of the language, which is a good thing to learn in order to reduce misunderstandings and deceptions to some more acceptable level. I'm talking about difficulty, almost impossibility of dealing with simple everyday things.

And what about the water and electricity cuts? A house purchased by a foreigner must be completely off-grid in order to be able to live in it normally.

There is no better way to temper your patience and will to live in these inhuman conditions than to have your water shut off in the middle of summer, when not only can you not take a shower, but you also can't stop the fire that broke out in front of your house. Or your electricity is cut off in the middle of summer and all the food you've painstakingly collected in the freezer goes bad. Or your electricity is cut off in the winter after the government has advised you to stop heating with wood and has given you a cheap air conditioner that is unusable when the electricity goes out in the winter...

Or... Or...

There are so many conditions that make life here ugly, literally impossible, especially when seen through the perspective and worldview of a Western European.

I personally can look at it that way too, having once lived in Western Europe.

So, who is paying for this crap and pushing these manipulative lies, aimed at whom - the local population to convince them how good life is in this wonderful, poor country, or the poor German pensioners to get them to sell everything they own in Germany to move to live in this wonderful, poor country? 🤔

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|