HAVING found out that travelling by bus from Germany to Poland was hardly a viable option, Dirk Wiesemann decided to offer an alternative, an affordable air travel service.
That is what brought him in Bulgaria last November.
The service that he set up, he said, was as affordable as a coach service, but with the comfort of air travel.
He decided to start a similar operation in Bulgaria, because the small size of the market makes it easy to enter.
Since his arrival in November, he has learnt many of the "dos and don'ts" of Bulgaria.
"Initially I thought that it would be more difficult to find business partners," he said.
But, he said, his firm now had a wide range of agencies with which it was working.
Another challenge was to find German-speaking staff to deal with calls from home base.
At the start, things were difficult, but now have settled down, and he has found people to work with.
He said there was an ongoing "political" attempt to stop Flybexx.com from operation, but said his firm would not be deterred by this.
There have been other, quite ordinary, things that have caused trouble in Wiesemann's life in Bulgaria since arriving.
"My 12-year-old car disappeared shortly after my arrival in Bulgaria."
He has also been bitten three times by stray dogs, and went back to Germany for emergency medical treatment.
There have been regular attempts by taxi-drivers to rip him off but now he knows the appropriate amount he should be paying according to the distance travelled.
However, he loves living in Sofia and compares it to sport.
"Living in Sofia is like sports and a marathon, and it is a great challenge that amazes me. You cannot just transfer money to pay a bill but you would have to send somebody to do it."
Some things that bothered him initially have become matters he has learnt to accept, and the matter of paying bills "eight leva here and two leva there" is among them.
"The collecting of receipts from taxis and getting the appropriate invoice are things I am used to now," he said.
He is amused by the times when the post office could not sell him stamps simply because they did not have any.
Getting a telephone turned out to be as difficult as getting stamps.
He was told to call in two weeks and be allowed to pay then for a landline.
" I needed permission to pay," he said with a smile. However, he noted that fees for the service were lower than in Germany.
Wiesemann went to East Germany many times but was not used to "niama marki" (no stamps) or to a police office with typewriters and no photocopy machines.
"It is really fascinating," he said.
Today he has adapted to the lifestyle and has found that it suits him.
"I am not always on time, and sometimes have a drink at 11 am," he said.
One of the things that he would like to achieve in the coming future is to learn the Bulgarian language. "I love languages," he said.
One of his observations of the country is that people are not very used to being treated nicely. His staff are trained to be nice over the telephone and to be responsive.
He has seen that his staff are eager to learn and to make progress, and he described the care his staff take of him as "amazing".
"They buy me lunch and give me advice," he said.
One feature that he sees as a hangover from the past is how people react when they have made mistakes.
"When people make a mistake here, they never go to their boss, but try to hide it. For us it is very important to analyse the mistake, and to deal with it."
One thing he still cannot accept and understand is why Bulgarians want to join the European Union.
"I don't recommend it and I will hate it," he said. "Cigarettes, for example, will become 20 or 30 per cent more expensive," he said. He said that the EU will be very restrictive. "People here have the impression that in 2007 (the scheduled date for Bulgaria to join the EU) Hercules will fly over Sofia and drop thousands of dollars," he said.
But in Poland he has seen that accession to the EU does not mean instant wealth for everyone.
"I think it is that the EU controls countries," he said. "Somebody needs to pay to the people in Brussels, right?" he said.
The city of Sofia is nice, according to him, and the old trams are "quite charming". "Everything is slower and that is what I really love about this place," he said.

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