A few years ago I traveled solo through Bulgaria for a few days from Serbia to Greece on a 50cc Yamaha DT50R, avoiding major roads (due to small engine and it's just fun - spent a month going from Marseille to Istanbul - loved all the ex-yugoslav countries).

Never noticed anything dangerous while traveling in Bulgaria, although Sofia has that normal big city be-careful feel to it. No bribes required either.

Obviously only a few days and not a local and maybe I didn't see the rough areas...

Edit: obviously there is danger throughout many parts of Europe. I just wanted to say that travelling solo through mountainous roads on a 50cc motorbike and often staying in hick areas, I felt welcome. Then again: I wasn't in a campervan or riding a BMW; I am not from a usually hated country; YMMV.

Ditto, I spent three weeks there last year travelling the hinterlands - everywhere from the Romanian border to the Turkish border, and from Sofia to the Black Sea - on back roads for the most part.

At no point did I feel unsafe - and I drove at night, walked through cities at night, parked my shiny hire car wherever.

We did see plenty of depopulated rural towns and villages, but there seems to be a substantial push into ecotourism, and we met several young couples who had returned to renovate homes in their home villages. Got chatting to plenty of older locals, too - they speak German, the young folks English. Very warm, and welcoming, everywhere we met people.

We did find that almost every museum and historic site had to be unlocked for us, as we were usually the only people at any of them - all the tourists were at Sveti Blas, lying on the beach.

I don’t know - maybe it’s just a relative scale thing - I would count walking through Sao Paolo at night as somewhat sketchy, but not the instant death sentence that people seem to think it is, for instance.

Just because it’s covered heavily in the media doesn’t mean it’s commonplace.

Avoiding the major roads/popular routes is an effective means of avoiding these types of problems. The criminals aren't interested in setting up an overnight road-block robbery/car-jacking where zero wealthy targets pass through.

I also think people in general tend to disproportionately exaggerate risks relative to the actual probabilities. Something exceptionally brazen and bad happens a few times making it into the news and now it's certain to happen to you should you go there.

Regardless though, if an alternative exists with 100% fewer reports of such problems, it's probably a safer choice relatively speaking.

But in my limited experience I have never found a "dangerous" place to be anywhere near as dangerous as its reputation described.

Did you also travel through the night?

After dark - yes. Very late at night - no.

I have visited over 80 Bulgarian towns and villages in my campervan over the last 6 years and have never seen anything what you are describing.

Sure, lots of empty towns, plenty of poverty and old people but did ever feel fear or see any violence, not once.

BTW, I'm just a random friendly Canadian who talks with everyone.

I'm from Bulgaria. The stuff in OP's post definitely happens and there are more than enough areas like what he describes. Generally the area around Sofia/Plovdiv is civilized (South-West quadrant). But the South-East is depopulated and if he's going from Romania to Turkey, he'll be passing through the rougher parts of the countryside. I wonder if Google Maps or similar made him take a route off the highway as well. Don't do that. 100% on point about the road police.

I wouldn't blame the EU for these developments though, it's the natural consequence of how our country developed post-Soviet rule. I also can't blame the old people for voting how they do, for them it's life or death. At least the EU can keep some check on the corruption, without them we'd be a de-facto Russian vassal and there's no corruption like Russian oligarch corruption.

Same happened to Croatia. From 2013. when we joined EU, Croatia lost at least 140000 people, which is about 3,3% of population, but unlike Bulgaria, I can say that Croatia is a really safe country.

Croatia is really a sight. Very nice place. On the expensive side though.

I visited (from Germany) last summer & it seemed very reasonably priced to me. Guess it depends on expectations & context!

By the way your article would suggest that car theft is a significantly larger problem in Romania than BG.

From https://movafaq.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/romanian-cars-bulga...

> In 2012 (the last year for which data are available) vehicle thefts in Bulgaria rose to 0.4 per 1,000 people in the population ... For Romania, the number is 1.6 per 1000 people

I've lived here for a couple of years and traveled most of the country. I've never seen anything like you describe.

There are enough challenges for this little country without the need to fabricate more of them.