I can only speak for myself but I have to say that I am truly blown away by the kindness and professionalism of many Bulgarian when I need their help the most.
I have mentioned it a few times before that my colleagues at TU-Sofia and the staff at the Fulbright Commission are absolutely exceptional and very approachable. They would always listen, help, and point me to the right direction, otherwise I wouldn’t have known how to navigate through many of the issues at all. We have also asked for help from strangers during our trips and always got that help, and sometimes people offered help without us even asking. The stories I am about to share are related to the orders we placed for the special topic course that I will offer this semester, and I am amazed that things always work out thanks to these people’s help.
TU-Sofia has already prepared dozens of individual Arduino kits that we plan to lend to students so that they can learn and practice no matter where they are. After I came here and discussed with colleagues further, we wanted to get a few more TouchBoard kits for the later projects. The Bulgarian Fulbright Commission was very supportive and generous and they provided the funding for the extra kits when we asked for it. Then we compared multiple vendors and decided to purchase from UK, since despite the 20% Value Added Tax (VAT) after UK left EU, the overall cost would still be a bit lower than purchasing elsewhere. Well, to pay for the VAT and custom duties and fees, I would need to get an EORI number from the customs to be an importer resided in Bulgaria.
There are multiple customs offices in Sofia. Thanks to Google Maps and many reviews on the site, I found a comment saying that the office in Sofia Airport (in Terminal 1, one can take the free shuttle to go between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2) could issue the number immediately while the other office would need a few days as they didn’t have that authority and needed to transfer the applications to another office to get them processed. People generally have that dread to deal with any public office, and I got “Good Luck” quite a few times when I said that I’d need to go to the customs office. However, when I got there, although the front desk granny didn’t speak any English, when I showed her the photo of the form I wanted to fill (I had prefilled a sample), she brought out the form, allowed me to borrow a pen, and even moved out of her seat wanting me to sit down there on her desk to fill the form. I didn’t take that offer and gestured with all my might to ask her please sit down. When I was about to finish filling the form, another lady came by and told me that I could submit the form to her. It must be that granny who found her and told her that I needed to file this form. That lady asked me to stay where I was, and went upstairs to process it. She had a question later and came to ask me about it, but otherwise, I was just waiting. Very quickly, another lady came down and gave me the number I needed. During the whole process, I was just waiting, and it couldn’t be any smoother. I am very glad that the customs office in Sofia Airport could help me out so efficiently. My colleague had also connected me with the carrier’s representative, and we exchanged many emails on status update of the package. The carrier allowed me to pay for the fees using a credit card instead of sending it via wire transfer to the customs office, which would require a bank account and take longer. If without my colleague to help me translate the package content into Bulgarian and find me the correct contacts, the carrier’s representative to guide me on what to do and keep me posted, or the customs office staff to issue me this number so swiftly, I didn’t know what would happen to that package.
The next order was to get some peripherals. The battery’s photo on the seller’s website was not very clear, and I assumed its connector would fit the board, but it didn’t. The connectors are nothing but some small plastic pieces with wires attached to them, so they shouldn’t be expensive, but I didn’t know where to find them. I found them from some U.S. websites but the shipping would have costed too much, and I would need to buy two sets and solder them together myself. My TU-Sofia colleague finally helped me to find an online store with its headquarter in Sofia that seemed to carry the parts, but those connectors didn’t have wires attached to them per their online images. Afraid to expect too much to get disappointed, I went to their headquarter to see if they could help me out.
Their building doesn’t look like a store, but more like an office building (and hence a headquarter instead of a store, but they serve customers there anyway). There are shelves of products lining the space, but people don’t really go there to check things out, but just to pick up their orders, so they would come and go. The front desk lady heard me speaking English, then asked me to wait for a moment. She called another gentleman who spoke English to come to help me. That gentleman was from the service department. We tried out the sample connectors to confirm that they fitted our boards and batteries, but there were no wires attached to the connectors. The gentleman then assured me that he would attach the wires to the connectors for me. He was very careful to determine the polarity of each port, and the new battery was actually in the opposite polarity of the board and the charger, so he’d cross the wires to flip the polarity. The connectors were so tiny and he needed to find the clamping tool at the right size from another colleague to get the job done, and he did it perfectly. He essentially customized the cables for our need, which would not have been on sale anywhere else in the whole world. I didn’t know what to expect before I went there, but I knew that what he offered to do was way beyond my expectation.
I didn’t want to advertise any business on this blog site, but I’d make an exception for this company, in case anyone else might also need their help on electronics. They got their suppliers’ shipment every day with perhaps the biggest inventory of electronics in town or in the country, and they would go out of their way to make things happen. Thank you, Comet Electronics! The gentleman later told me that this company was founded and owned by two TU-Sofia faculty members, and this company often offered workshops on Microchip at TU-Sofia before COVID and likely will continue in the future. Speaking of the close ties between TU-Sofia and the industrial and business sector, I used to visit an automation lab at TU-Sofia with its equipment and space being funded by a company, which was created and owned by an alumni. During the conference, another colleague presented a project done by his spin-off company for a local business owner. It is great to see so many examples during my short stay in Sofia so far.
Meanwhile, I don’t want people to assume that things are perfect in Bulgaria, or anywhere in this world, for that matter. For example, when my host tried to help me to get the registration card, which is required for foreigners during the first three days after they land in Bulgaria (hotels use a separate system when things will be taken care of automatically, but airbnb or other lodging options would do this manually), we had to go to three different offices. The law said that we should go to the nearest police station, but the police station we went to was perhaps too small to handle it and they pointed us to the second office. The second office also said some reason and pointed us to the third office. Finally at the third office they allowed us to file the form, but reluctantly, as they thought that we should get it done in a police station as the law said (which we did but couldn’t get it done. If they didn’t help us, we would get stuck in this infinite loop). The third office had the form and handled my case eventually after my host explained our situation. It was naturally frustrating when we were told to go elsewhere twice, but my host was not complaining nor arguing, he just took the suggestion and followed through. He helped me to get it done with such steadfast coolness. After all, to get things done is the most important thing, isn’t it? And, we did get it done. All’s well that ends well.
Also, at some museums, the staff member might be a bit stern to ask us to follow the right direction of the tour. If we went backward or skipped a room, they’d ask us to go along the right direction. It might make some people a bit uncomfortable when s/he was told what to do, but wouldn’t it be nice if we knew for sure that we would have seen everything that the museum had to offer?
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