Like most foreigners that he meets in Bulgaria, Richard Smits came because his wife is Bulgarian. They’ve been here for almost five years now, before which they were in Denmark, which is where they got married and where their son was born. He says that they have no plans to leave, but that it’s hard to see far ahead when living in Bulgaria, so it could happen some day.
Why Denmark?
I was working in the research department of a company that supplied catalysts and engineering to the chemical industry. Before that I was a post-doc in Tokyo, where my wife and I met.
Were there any challenges encountered in moving to Bulgaria, such as legal or cultural issues?
No, not really. I’ve never lived in a single place for more than 10 years, so I am used to moving and quickly feel at home in a new place. Compared with moving to Japan, it was easy. Of course living in Bulgaria is a challenge sometimes, but things always turn out all right in the end (until now). It took almost a year before I had my residence permit, because our Danish marriage certificate needed to be legalised. It helped to have seven years’ experience in living with a Bulgarian (ie, my wife).
What similarities do you see in the people and in the way of life between Bulgaria and the Netherlands? Difference?
When living abroad, we tend to focus on the differences. I think that Bulgarians and Dutch have much more that unites them than what separates them; Bulgarians are definitely Europeans (although they have an Asian side to them). I noticed that non-Asian foreigners in Japan split into two groups: the North Americans and the Europeans (to which Australians and New Zealanders also belong). Apparently there is something that Europeans have in common that North Americans haven’t, but it’s hard to describe what it is.
The main difference in the way of life between Dutch and Bulgarian people is the attitude towards time and rules. Bulgarians take time to keep their relations with friends, which also means that things take more time to arrange. The Dutch are more punctual and use time more efficiently, but this is at the cost of relations between people. I prefer the Bulgarian way.
The Dutch like to use rules, but only when they make life easier. When they make life more difficult, they are ignored. Bulgarians ignore rules most of the time, even when following them would make life easier. I find it remarkable that sometime when traffic lights in Sofia break down, traffic flows better than when they work.
What do you do for holidays, living away from your family and such?
We usually spend Christmas with my parents in the Netherlands, also because it is often the only opportunity to see my brother, who lives in Italy. Quite often there is also a get-together of my friends from my student days around that time. My parents like to come to Bulgaria and usually spend two weeks each spring and autumn in Sandanski to enjoy the climate and the spa. Business trips also bring me to the Netherlands occasionally, where I use my parents’ home as a base. Of course in between we keep in touch using Skype and e-mail. Until now we’ve always spent our holidays in Bulgaria. I’d like to go to the Netherlands on holiday sometime, so our son can get to know his fatherland a bit better, but until now it hasn’t come to that.
What do you make of learning Bulgarian?
When we started our married life, we were putting all our efforts into learning Danish, so we haven’t had any formal education in each other’s languages. Instead we learnt it as we went along, and now I can manage all right in Bulgarian. We learnt a lot from following the conversations around our dinner table: my wife and son speak Bulgarian together, my son and I speak Dutch, and my wife and I use English, and in this way we have each learnt a passive understanding of the language we don’t speak at the table.
What would you expect of a Bulgarian immigrant in the Netherlands?
To treat the people around him with respect, nothing else. The current tendency in the Netherlands to expect foreigners to blend in completely and become more Dutch than the Dutch themselves worries me. I don’t see why people born on the other side of a border should be treated differently and forced to give up their cultural identity, while those from regions within the borders are encouraged to preserve their regional identity (dialect, local cuisine, etc).
Do you have something else that you’d like to say?
I would expect that after asking what I did in the past, you’d like to know what I do in the present. My main business is my company CSI (www.csi-bg.com), which tries to find foreign companies that would like to outsource chemical research projects to Bulgaria and connect them with qualified people in Bulgarian public research institutes. Once such a company decides to outsource a project, I can manage that project locally for them and ensure that commercially interesting results are obtained.
In addition, I occasionally try to connect Bulgarian companies with potential customers in the Netherlands and Dutch companies that are interested in importing products from Bulgaria with potential Bulgarian suppliers.
I am interested in the state of education, science and innovation in Bulgaria and try to offer my experience to improve the situation. I also try to promote trade between Bulgaria and the Netherlands by being active for the Bulgarian Dutch Business Club and by helping to organise the seminar “How to do Business with the Dutch”.
