The 1.5 million Bulgarians that this country has lost since communism ended in 1989 have gone somewhere – but where? Most of them left Bulgaria for economic reasons, for a chance at a better future,
or at least income, elsewhere. Greece, as Bulgaria’s most financially stable neighbour, received many of these economic immigrants.
The Sofia Echo’s Features Editor Magdalena Rahn recently returned from an extended stay among the Bulgarian community in Athens. Here is what six of them shared.

Elena
Recently single and financially at an end, Elena Georgieva went to Greece in August 1992 on a “three-day holiday” organised by something that resembles a smuggling ring more than a tour operator. “We were like a herd of sheep: you set off for somewhere and you do not know where you’re going, but you go with the hope that you’ll be able to get something out of it. This way required the least amount of money to come; you had to give $200 to the ‘tour operators’ to get your passport through at the border,” she says. “There is someone crafty who knows how to get you in but you do not need to do that now.”

Thirty-eight years old when she came to Greece, and divorced two years earlier, she says that her married life in Bulgaria – which started when she was 18 – had been “a fairy tale” before the changes, that the family was always like a “party”, what with her and her husband’s parents and two kids all in one house. She worked, in production and as a quality controller, because she wanted to, though her mother-in-law desired the opposite, preferring Elena to stay home with her two children.

In another life, with other possibilities, she says that she would have been an architect or an engineer. (She graduated from the elektrotechnikum, a maths- and science-oriented type of trade school in Sliven, where she was born and had lived her whole life.)
But now she’s in Greece and works, for the most part, cleaning houses and establishments, though she also takes on any odd job possible, from renting out the other room in her flat to tailoring to handing out coupons at the supermarket, anything to supplement her income.

The first three months after her arrival in Greece she worked in a greenhouse for roses in Koutsopodi, a town in the Peloponnese. A Greek woman there then asked Elena to come to Athens to care for a relative’s children, in a live-in post. When illegal in the country, such jobs offer the best opportunity to earn money and not be noticed by the authorities.

When, in 1997, the Greek government decided to register all the illegal immigrants that had been living in the country – 373 196 registrees, of whom 6.5 per cent were Bulgarian – Elena was “one of the first to register”. She did so to be able to work freely, not out of fear: “I was not the first and am not the last to do what I did,” she said, referring to her former illegal status.

She had no idea how long the adventure would last, only knowing that she wanted to dive into the culture with zeal: “I wanted to meet a lot of people, to learn the habits, customs, foods, characters,” she says.

Her grandparents were from Kavala, now in Greece but formerly part of Bulgaria, so she had grown up hearing about Greek traditions and singing Greek songs.

To eventually improve her situation there, once legal, she took an intensive four-month course in the Greek language. Working outside a house, she says, you have to not only be able to understand what people are saying, but also to be able to competently respond. “I was very concerned that people should be able to understand me; you feel like a foreigner, and you want to be able to do something.”

Overall, she likes Greece and has no plans to come back to Bulgaria. Her life is there now and Bulgaria is just a memory (she says). In 2000, she brought her son, then 18, to come live with her. He has since learned Greek, completed undergraduate studies there and is in the process of obtaining a master’s in comparative linguistics from the university in Patra.

Behind this all, behind the braveness and drive of Elena, you, still, sense a longing for something better, for less 13-hour days and forced self-sufficiency. But her enthusiasm and dauntlessness remain.

Tanya
Tanya Staneva is also from the Sliven area, from the village of Zlati Voivoda. She and Elena became friends in Athens, when five women from their native city met up for coffee.

Before going to Athens in January 2000, Tanya had been a paediatric nurse. But because her job in Sliven no longer provided enough to support herself she had to search out her options. “Life in Bulgaria was very difficult. After communism ended, thing immediately... You didn’t know where things were going, the hospitals, if they were public or private. It was chaos.”

A quick decision led her to Greece, where her sister was. She had wanted to go to England but was refused a work permit.

At the beginning, she was illegal there, working as an in-house baby-sitter, ie, 24 hours a day on-duty (and this duty would include not only watching the children but also thoroughly cleaning the entire house, daily cooking for the family and cleaning up after their Sunday lunches). But legally, there were no problems; she says that her employers knew of her situation. Six months into her stay, she became legal.

There were no problems with the culture, either, save the language at the beginning. Self-taught, she now converses in Greek and has a Greek boyfriend, the owner of a large bookstore.

Tanya, who is 43, had planned to stay long enough to save up enough money to buy a house in Bulgaria (“A person without a house is a tree without roots,” she quips). Which she did. But she did not return because her roots are now 863km south of Sofia. “I like it here (in Greece) and I do not feel like going back. I have insurance, I have work.”

She still works as a baby-sitter but in a live-out position, averaging seven hours a day, so she is able to have her own life. “I like working with kids,” she says.

What does she like about Greece? Besides preferring the climate, she finds Greek people much more open, accepting and communicative than Bulgarians. She personally has become more responsible and organised since arriving. Also, the situation in Greece is not so miserable.

Eventually, she would like to be able to open up a house to help the down-and-out of the older generation. “When a person is in misery, he cannot live well,” she says, referring to the overall conditions and the mentality in Bulgaria.

“I had nothing specifically bad (in Bulgaria). I decided, I came. I’ll stay till I die.”

Vanya
While we’re sitting in a centrally located cafe that Saturday evening, Tanya’s friend Vanya Vulchova arrives.

From Byala Slatina, Vanya went to Athens in spring 2004 to escape what she describes as “a bad family situation, a bad economic situation, no support for my child, no support from my family”. That she got sent back twice at the Greek-Bulgarian border only made her try again. And she got in.

To learn the language, she started by living with an older couple for one-and-a-half months. She quickly became proficient and says that Greek proved no problem. Once she mastered the language, after other positions as a live-in baby-sitter and as a cleaning lady, she got her own flat and decided that she could benefit from her status.

When Vanya, now 27, had enough money, she took courses in hair styling, in order to have a certified trade skill. “The 3000 euro I’d saved up would do nothing in Bulgaria. If I put it in a bank account there, it would just moulder away.”

As soon as it is financially possible, she wants to bring her small son to live with her there.

Living in Greece has taught her priorities in life, namely, that as an economic immigrant you cannot forget yourself. Meaning that no matter how much you want to help the folk back home by sending them some extra euro, you cannot deny your own life and own needs.

Unsure of how long she will remain, she says that if she succeeds at her profession, she could return to Bulgaria and open up her own hair salon, to have her own business, to not work for someone else.

“It has always been a personal fight to make a good life for myself. I do not expect things from others. I now have a future because of my job.”

Nikolai
Two-thirds of the immigrants to Greece from Bulgaria are women. The rest, men. More often than not they are single and young and work in construction/manual labour or in restaurant and taverns as cooks and waiters.

Nikolai Georgiev from Rousse has done a little of everything.

With an impetus unlike most, he went on a whim at the age of 19, at the idea of his then-girlfriend’s mother who was working on a Greek island. On his 20th day in the country, after afternoons of fishing and exploring Lesvos, an Albanian man asked Nikolai if he would want to start work as a painter. Nothing contrary and he had landed a job.

That was in 2001. Nikolai is still there.

Eventually, he had to get legal. A Greek man who owned an ostrich farm and some Bulgarian families he knew helped him with the paperwork.

Two years on that island, being paid sub-par wages (23.50 euro a day for intense physical labour), he knew it was time to move on. Though he had never set a time limit, he thought that two years in the country would be enough. But, he stayed “because I still do not see any possibilities for myself in Bulgaria. I’m looking for a way to return, and live a normal life. A normal life, you understand?” he says.

In Bulgaria he was a consumate athlete, having specialised in kayaking at a sports high school. He also worked as a bellboy and in reception at Rousse’s Riga Hotel.

In Greece, before his current position in an atelier that crafts furniture, he did everything from painting houses to construction to being a waiter – which spurred him to improve his knowledge of the Greek language, which he mastered and still continues to make himself study. He is now learning English.

Possessing a wealth of knowledge about ancient Greece before arriving, Nikolai says that he knew little of the current state of the country. In Bulgaria, he was heavily involved in music and performance as part of the dance group Spider, a dreamer. “Now I still dream, but not as much,” he says. “I’m more of a realist; it’s easier.” As for being an immigrant in Greece, he says that “however good you are, you’ll always be a second-hand person. Few are the people who value you as a person”. This sentiment is echoed by most Bulgarian immigrants.

Also he says that it is very difficult for a foreigner to be integrated into Greek society. “Even Greeks themselves ... now divide themselves into groups. If someone is from Thessaloniki and another is from Athens, they consider the other a foreigner. You can imagine what they think about Bulgarians.”

He never sets boundaries for himself and is thankful that the random decision to go to Greece has allowed him the opportunity to know another culture.

About the future, he says that you cannot lose hope. “I love Bulgaria,” he says, “but if I had stayed there, I would constantly want to know what else existed in the world. I hope for the quality of life to improve in Bulgaria, for people to become more interested in the arts, to read, to remember from where they come.”

Galena
With us at one of the numerous Bulgarian establishments in Athens – in this case, a cafe called Bedrock – is Nikolai’s girlfriend Galena.

Galena (known to friends as Galya) Dimitrova is also from Rousse, though they only got to know each other here. She went in October 2006 to visit her mother, who has been in Greece for five years and earns her living as a cleaning lady.

At first intending to work a short spell, she then met Nikolai, and decided to stay. (At that point, Bulgarians were only allowed to remain in Greece for three months legally. Now, they are allowed to stay as long as they want but still do not have the right to work without legal documents.)

She had been planning to attend university in Bulgaria the coming year and had never before held a job.

In the beginning, she lived with an older woman who she also worked for, which was hard, because that type of position on-duty is 24 hours a day, “and you have to be able to get along with different people and all their various problems”. When it was possible, she switched jobs, first to being a live-in baby-sitter and now to cleaning an office every morning, starting at 6am.

Having been in Greece once before, on a holiday, she found actual life there much different and much less pleasant. In truth, Galya, aged 20, does not want to stay in Greece and longs to come back to Bulgaria, to her friends, her father and her older sister. “I really want to return, to study, to be with family, to be able to raise my children there,” she says. “That’s where I belong; despite the money. That’s what is most important. People who come here to work, they really are not able to save up much money.” Still aiming to go to university in the near future, she would like to study management or education.

The good thing about her experience there, in addition to the overall higher standard of living, is that she herself is now more open to foreigners – in Bulgaria and elsewhere –, something she wishes were also true of Greek people. “Greeks aren’t too friendly towards foreigners. They will never accept you freely,” she says.

Most of her acquaintances in Athens are Bulgarian. No wonder, with official estimates for Bulgarians in Greece from 2004 at about 66 800 and unofficial at something more.

“When you go to Omonia, you often hear only Bulgarian. Sometimes I think: What? Did Bulgaria move to Greece?”

“If a person is intelligent, they can get along anywhere,” she says. “They just have to know for what to look – and many Bulgarians have done this.”

Nedka
An hour out of central Athens, Nedka Ivanova is taking advantage of her three hours off a day to cool down at the shore. The Razgrad native has a live-in position with an older woman, pretty much the same thing that she has been doing since she arrived in Greece in May 2006. “I am with a very kind lady; I’m like a member of her family,” she says, noting that not every immigrant is as fortuante.

What should have been a hard-earned retirement from the Bulgarian pharmaceutical industry was made impossible by her 150 leva-a-month pension. The job opportunities for, as she puts it, the not-so-young-and-beautiful in Bulgaria (Nedka is 55) are pitiful. “They do not want us,” she says. “I thought (Greece) would be better, because it is closer (than Germany or Poland) and many from Bulgaria say that there is work here.”

But she is coming back to Bulgaria soon, where her husband, two married daughters and “a number of grandchildren” await, saying that a year-and-a-half in Greece is “enough”. The job options are good there, but it is hard not seeing her loved ones.

And, Nedka says: “There are some people who value us here, some who do not. There are some of the lowest characters on earth here. We are slaves.”

In talking with other Bulgarian immigrants, many said the same thing but wished to remain anonymous.

As for her home country, she says that she does not know if things will change now that Bulgaria is in the European Union, but she does not see things getting any better, only worse.

“When the money is gone, I’ll have to come back.”