Moving from Bulgaria to France
Stupidity or adventure ?
June 13, 2026
I'm sure that everyone has dreamed of living in another country - whether the reason is to escape or to experience something new. However it's much more complicated than just buying a cheap ticket plane on WizzAir (or any other low-cost airline service) and erase all of your problems like that. You not only have to be mentally prepared to leave all of your friends and family from your home country, but also be willing to accept that, like it or not, you'll have to adapt to the environment, integrate with the culture and "act" like the locals.
Every gesture they make, the way they dress, the way they speak, the way they handle themselves, whether they speak loudly or quietly - you have to be like them. That's how you actually integrate.
If you are currently thinking about living abroad - more specifically, living away from your own people and culture to explore a whole new world, where the people there speak an unknown (and quite funny) language and with different interests, then I think this blog post will help you make the decision. It's not to scare or reassure you if you should or should not try to live abroad, but I want to share with you my personal experience and make you draw conclusions of your own.
I don't have the decision for you my dear reader - nobody knows what's best for you better than you do.
Finding work in another country was tough to say the least...
At that time I didn't really know anyone close to me to help me find an IT job abroad. I didn't want to work remotely, since that'll kill the idea of living in another country, so I had to specifically look for companies, that are willing to take the risk and hire someone from another country.
We talked with an italian friend about it and we realised of how ungrateful we are of being in the EU - we can travel and live to almost anywhere by just handing over our ID cards to the border control officiers. So if your home country is within the EU, then great! You'll have higher chances of finding a job, but if you're outside, then you'll have to make sure you're the best candidate the company can find and that they'll definitely miss out if they don't hire you now, as another company might steal you from them.
Coming back to my story. As I said, I didn't really know anyone, that can help me find work abroad. In reality, I really didn't have a lot of friends or people to just talk to. At that time I was in the middle of completing my Master's degree and I also had a full time job. I didn't have much time to socialize, let alone find international friends. When I recall about my past situation, sometimes I'm wondering if I was lying to myself just to feel better and to say that it wasn't my fault for being in this situation, that I was just too focused on my career and education and that I've intentionally delayed the fun activities (like socializing, going to bars) for later, maybe after I get a good job with a good salary and finished my education. And yet, at that time I really didn't believe myself.
Then in late February 2025, a random HR person messaged me on Linked in. This was usual to me, as I have already updated my status to #Open to work But this message was different from the rest. Something caught my eye. The position wasn't in Bulgaria or being completely remote as most job offers I received - the job was actually in France, more specifically in Nice.
Honestly, at that time I have never heard of a city called Nice. How do you pronounce it ? Do you pronounce it like the word Nice literally or Niece ? What a ridicilous name the colonizers gave to this city. Since this message caught my curiosity, I agreed with her to get on a call for next week. At that time I was actively searching for a job and all of them rejected me. So I was actually expecting to fail on this interview as well. I didn't really care. I just wanted to try my luck.
A week pases and we are in the end of February, we get in a call. I expalined to her my situation, that I want to live abroad and that I'm also finishing my Master's degree. I wanted to be completely transparent with her. We got along really well, surprisingly. I did present myself of pretending to be a normal human being, that is able to form coherent sentences. She was also really surprised of how well I was speaking English. The reason was that before this interview I had many other interviews like this, where I primarily spoke English and therefore I greatly improved my presentation skills. But outside of work if I dared to speak English with another person, that was kind of a disaster to me.
After this meeting, Beatrice was quite excited to meet me in person and she immediatly wanted me to move to the next interview's step to have an interview with the Business manager. By the way, every interview I had was scheduled weekly, meaning that I had enough time to prepare. If you are wondering how I was preparing, then I couldn't be able to answer you - because I don't realy remember.
Advice: The most important advice I can give you (at least for IT related jobs), is that you have to be better at your presentation skills than your technical skills. Honestly that's how I'm able to find IT jobs. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter how much you know, it matters how you present yourself, so that you can convince the person that is interviewing you of what a great candidate you are and that you won't be bothered if they potentially reject your application.
This skill is mainly a social skill. What that means is that for you to prepare for an interview - you just have to socialize and not sit in front of the screen 8 hours a day. It's a bit inlogical, I know, but in my case the DevOps position mainly revolves around people and processes, not purely writing code like a developer.
One week later and now I'm in the meeting with the business manager. She seems like a nice lady. We had a good conversation, nothing out of the ordinary. She then told me that there is one more interview left - the technical interview. Then the time comes. I have a meeting with a man, that is around my age. He didn't seem very experienced in conducting interviews. Since I was worried that this interview will end the same way as the previous ones, I started talking most of the time - about my previous projects, about what I've done, about the technologies. I was trying to flood the interviewer's head with too much information, that he didn't even ask. After bothering him for 1 hour, he finally gives up and told me after 2 minutes after that I'm accepted 🎉.
Finally, after 50+ interviews I finally got an offer, and on top of it - it's in a different country. Exactly what I wanted!
The BIG move
Now that the most important part is already handled (getting a job), I had several chores that I needed to take care of:
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Inform my landlord that I'll leave her flat
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Move my furniture somewhere
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Prepare my luggage
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Find a flat in France
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Plan these activites in a timely manner
Since at the moment of the company informing me that I've been accepted against the starting date, that they're expecting me to come (1st of May), I actually had less than a month, meaning that I was in the mercy of my landlord to understand my situation and make an exception for me.
Alas, I was lucky enough that she was understandable and let me leave early (about 20-ish of August). So chore number was completed!
Advice: If your home country is in Eastern Europe or some other place, where the rules are quite flexible and are not strictly followed by the book, then you'll for sure be surprised that in the Western side you'll have to follow the country's rules, where at the start you won't even know what the rules are, so that you can comply to them accordingly. But please, do not immediatly think that the new place sucks and that you should be soon packing your bags because it's so different. Different doesn't necessarily mean bad - it's a new experience, which will make you grow into a better person.
As for number , the person I wanted to "gift" all of my stuff is my mother. You see, she is not in a good financial position and she's living paycheck to paycheck. I wanted to help her somehow... and what better way than to make it more convinient for her to make an omlette for example, or to be able to clean her house with a vacuum cleaner.
Since it was my first time hiring movers, I had no idea which one should I choose, that are reliable and won't decide to steal my stuff. Moreover, I also had to travel to meet my mother before departure. And in fact she lives quite far away - I had to take 2 trains from my home city to her place - in total that would be 10-11 hours in total just for pure traveling.
Luck was still on my side. The movers were very kind to me and decided to give me a ride towars my mother's place, which I was truly thankful to them. They even gave me a sandwich when we were on a break. They were a couple in their late 40s - early 50s. The wife was the navigator and the husband was the driver. They are a good team! If you're searching for movers in Varna, Bulgaria, then I cannot recommend you enough to use their service. You won't regret it! https://hamalikrasi.bg/
On number , it was quite straightforward as you can imagine - I had 2 small luggages from my brother and somehow that was enough for me to put all of my clothes there.
Mental note: If you feel like you've become attached to certain items, then moving to another country is a great way to leave them and live with less. I've found during the move that I felt quite lost when I left my city and I felt guilty about leaving. I do not know why, it felt like I was making a foolish decision, that I'm throwing all of what I've built (connections, career, risking my Master's degree) just because I was so bored and wanted to have a new experience. Now looking back at it, I've learned way more for 1 year than what I've learned from 18 years old till 25. It's surprising how much you can learn just in a relatively short amount of time. Leaving out of your comfort zone makes you vulnerable, for sure, but you'll become stronger (mentally) and just better overall.
That is actually why, when I'm currently writing this, that I miss living in a foreign country, not necessarily missing France, but living somewhere elsewhere where it's not my home country - where it's not Bulgaria. I miss the experience of exploring the place, of having to understand the culture all over again, having the incredible difficulty understanding the locals of what the hell they're trying to tell me. It's not an obsticle, it's a new experience - and I miss it 🙁.
For the quest on completing number , thankfully the company provided me an real estate agent, who on behalf of me searched an apartment for me. She is one of the nicest people I've met. She did her best in finding an apartment for me and was recording the apartments from inside in Whatsapp.
Thankfully after just 2 weeks of searching, we found an apartment, that was just for me. When I saw it I imagined myself of living there (that's usually good hint that you've found the right apartment for you). One thing to keep in mind is that in Western Europe the rents are quite high, especially in the southern in France, but I was sorta expecting this.
Just for a comparison - the rent I had in Varna was 200 euros vs the apartment which I'll be moving in southern France (Cagnes-sur-mer) was 875 euros per month. That is one of the lowest rents that I was able to find. I mean not only that, but it's way smaller - moving from 55 square meters to 34 square meters. Ouch.
And lastly for the planning for dates was a bit random - it was my first time moving out and I didn't know what I was doing and if I'm making the right choice, but I must admit - I was enjoying the chaos I was in.
It gives you a real independence and responsability to your own actions - if you screw up, then it's all on you and nobody will shout at you or belittle you. Thankfully I managed to finish everything right on time and on 28th of April I hopped in a plane at 6:00 AM and after 2 hours I was in Nice!