"It's because I'm black," I said to my hubby despondently one day. He looked at me rather doubtfully and pointed out reassuringly that they did it to him, too. And the cause for such distress…? Our local corner shop.

I replayed the conversation that I had just had with the shop assistant as I walked the short distance home and I wondered what I could have said differently. Surely my question in Bulgarian was properly phrased. Why then the abrupt response? Her irritated screech of "kakvo?" when I asked her if they had any cornflakes said more then I wanted to hear. It was just dismissive and plain rude and it had made me feel less than human, but should I take this so personally? I mean, this is Bulgaria after all... You know… the land of beautiful mountains, great wine and rude shop assistants!

I have always disliked it when my expat friends complained about certain aspects of Bulgarian culture, partly because I have always felt that as foreigners, my friends and I should be trying to understand and even eventually celebrate the cultural differences that we encounter. But that day it was hard for me to find anything positive about my cultural exchange with that shop assistant… I mean she was just plain offensive, and she didn't even try to hide it.

My husband was almost in total shock when he visited America for the first time last year. "They are so polite!" he kept on exclaiming on his calls back home. "They keep asking me if there's anything they can do for me!" But, of course, all good things must come to an end. And it came to an end with a great big bump when he landed back in Bulgaria and the shop assistants here seemed not to care less whether he bought anything from them!

Billa was another revelation for him. For a time there, my hubby was doing the weekly family shopping at our local Billa. A weekly shop is something that we have been used to doing from our England days. It just saves time. But it seems that that's not the way that things are done over here. First of all, he had to get used to the looks other fellow shoppers gave him and his very conspicuous trolley as he edged his way through the aisles on packed Saturday afternoons.

But what really got his goat was the look of indignation and pure irritation, huff and puffed-ness really of, you guessed it… the shop assistants! What was with them? You would think that they would be grateful to serve a customer like that…even give him a token gift for the amount that he was spending in their establishment. But would they do that? No! Instead what would he get but a pouty huffing and puffing, a skewed pair of lips that made him feel like a naughty school boy. All that was missing was the wagging finger and the "tut tut".

And then all at once I remembered the supermarkets in London, where they were so nice, and the shop assistants so polite and helpful. And for the life of me I couldn't remember a single time when somebody was rude to me at Tesco or Sainsbury's and definitely not at Marks and Sparks. It just wouldn't happen...right?

It's so easy to romanticise one's past visits to Tesco or Sainsbury's, or anywhere else you frequented when you were "back home". Does the phrase "rose-tinted glasses" come to your mind as it does to mine at this point? Because it's no longer Tesco, Sainsbury's or Marks and Sparks any more, it's Billa, Metro and Fantastico and, of course, our dear corner shops. So maybe I should just get used to how things are done over here and stop my complaining.

But one is still left with the problem that entering some Bulgarian shops often means having to armour oneself with that pathetic smile that one often sees on fellow shoppers. "Go on, go ahead, hit me over the head with your rudeness but I'm gonna keep my cool… Yes I'm gonna keep my cool `cuz I need to get this shopping done and I probably couldn't say in Bulgarian all that I'd wanna say to ya' anyways, you rude… person you!" That's what that smile would scream if it had words. And, oh, how I understand those sentiments, I share them with you, because often you have no choice but to do exactly that…to grin and to bear it, to suppress your complaints for lack of words and for the plain fact that you need to get your cornflakes for tomorrow's breakfast, right?

As I've said before, I don't like it when expat friends complain about Bulgarian culture, even though I personally do it myself. I find it unsavoury that one should complain about a culture in which one is the guest. Our way of life here is just that much more… affordable, for one! I'm comforted that as time has gone by I have already gotten used to so many things about Bulgaria, like driving on the wrong side of the road, the taxi drivers, shopska, lyutenitsa, and the language itself, so I guess that there is some hope that eventually I'll even get used to Bulgarian shop assistants. And I will, too, even if it kills me!