After exotic locations such as the Philippines, Thailand and South Africa you may be wondering why we chose to land in Sofia Bulgaria for a week.
The explanation lies in what we're seeking.
We're not looking for white sand beaches. Although that'd be awesome. We counted up our beach adventures/days so far in the first six months and it was less than 6. Including one in the Atlantic (read: always cold) in Camps Bay South Africa. We love the beach, shoot we grew up in West Michigan where awesome beaches are less than a 30 minute drive.
We're also not looking for the typical vacation spots.
So we started looking at the lists of cheap cost of living, good internet speeds and cross referenced those with climate information. Sofia shows up on the top of the internet speeds, with the average speed being 45Mbps, that's average. We wanted to find out how true that was. We also wanted to know how much the soviet influence is here.
There's no ocean near by (the sea is 8 hours by train) so we understand why you might wonder why we even spent any time here. But the cost of living is really cheap here, prices of food are about 60% of what they are in Michigan, housing is cheaper too. Internet is fast.
The weather is awesome right now, but through further investigation we've discovered that it gets really cold here. Sofia is almost a mediterranean climate, but it's winters are slightly colder than we're interested in (27F/-3C).
So Sofia gets a "no" from us. Mostly because of the weather, some because it's too much soviet influence, and about 5% because we were sick the whole week we were here :(
http://youtu.be/oe5e7-ZRz94
The Whisky and the Johnie Walker glass came with the apartment. We'll let you guess what is actually inside the glass ;)
Paul Kortman
Dad of 4, husband, blogger, digital marketer, follower of Jesus. I podcast at nomadtogether.com and own connexdigitalmarketing.com We're on this crazy journey to travel the world as a lifestyle. Looking for help in how to live as a digital nomad family? Join this Facebook Group!
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If you were all sick – it was probably the Whiskey!!! :-) Looks like most of you were feeling better? How did you flight go? Looks like it might have been a long flight? Looking forward to hearing what Madrid was like and then where you are settled in in Portugal AND how is everyone feeling?
LOL – Perhaps the whiskey didn’t help ;)
We’re on the mend, only three of us have lingering symptoms. The flight to Madrid was long (4+ hours), but we did fine and had no sickness issues, but we did get sick again in Madrid and are still dealing with the lingering sickness for four of us. We’d love for it to be done! Madrid was fun and a beautiful place but we already know we like Portugal better, as Madrid (real spanish tapas) relied a lot on bread… Portuguese food is more meat focused versus bread, so with our current diet choices that is a blessing. We’ve yet to find a longer term place, but we’ve only been on the ground in Lisbon for 24 hours… Stay tuned!
Sofia is almost a mediterranean climate, but it’s winters are slightly colder than we’re interested in (27F/-3C). Thats wrong….
Sofia has continental climate like the rest of Europe my friend :) The winters are long and cold. Sometimes it evens snows in April. the temperatures can drop to -20 C
Yup, we were way wrong! We only stayed a week abd moved on. I have no idea where we got the information about sofia’s climate but everywhere i look now it is accurate.