The problem with Bulgarian people

Not sure if this is also the case in other nations but since I’m living in Bulgaria right now. I will document what I see.

Background: Young Asian woman working in Sofia as a software / AI engineer in an international company so I speak English at work and don’t speak Bulgarian.

If I have to select a few words to describe “these people”, I would say these dominant key traits: mean, rude, xenophobic, backwards, conservative, grumpy and depressing.

I have seen many Bulgarians openly admit how hateful they are towards everyone, especially people that do not look like the norm here such as LGBT+, foreigners, non-white people, etc. Some of them even go further and feel justified in their “equal” hatred to all groups of people so they would absolutely reject it if you call any kind of behavior you witnessed in this country as racism.

Also another thing I just remember, a lot of them hate Gypsies - I use this term because they literally introduced this term to my vocabulary and also show you how openly and shamelessly they “categorize” others that are just slightly different than them even tho these Roma people are still Bulgarians. A lot of them may not show and speak directly about their hatred but I have noticed that indifference towards the suffering and discrimination of a group of people in your society equal supporting this discriminatory degenerating pattern to continue in their society. It’s the same with people that support ICE in the US.

The thing that bugs me is it is so obvious how miserable the majority of them are. Rarely see anyone smile or have casual chatters in public. Everyone, especially old people, always carry this disgusted look on their face no matter where they go and I don’t even know why they look like that. As the economy gets better due to cheap outsourcing from the West, I can notice people start to afford nicer things in life but their facial expression is still flat and soulless most of the time as I observed during my transit in public transportation. My statistics could be biased because the well-off people wouldn’t use public transportation and wouldn’t have those hateful features I describe above. It’s true that I have met educated people in Sofia (only in Sofia) that are friendly and nice in general but most of them speak English so I’m not sure if they are pure hardcore Bulgarians who have never left the country or maybe these nice people are mixed or have experience living abroad so they are more open minded.