Bulgaria Country Info - Europe

Description and Basic Information

Bulgaria with its capital Sofia is located in Europe (Southeastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea). It covers some 110,911 square kilometres (slightly larger than Tennessee) with 7,262,000 citizens. Bulgarian and Turkish are the the languages commonly used by the people in Bulgaria. Macedonia, Greece, Romania, , Turkey and Serbia are bordering countries.

Bulgaria is a country in the Balkans on the western side of the Black Sea. The Bulgarian language is related to Serbian, Russian and other Eastern European languages, but contains many international words. Bulgarians use the Cyrillic alphabet which can make the task of getting around the country somewhat difficult if you aren't familiar with this alphabet as most signs are written in it. However, getting acquainted with the alphabet isn't very difficult and may save you a lot of trouble, especially as many common words are homophones of English or French words. Bulgaria is a member of the Schengen Agreement but has not yet fully implemented it. For EU and EFTA (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland) citizens, an officially approved ID card (or a passport) is sufficient for entry. In no case will they need a visa for a stay of any length. Others will generally need a passport for entry.

Pictures from Capital (Sofia)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Bulgaria

The landscape features mostly mountains with lowlands in north and southeast. The average density of population is about 65 per km². The climate in Bulgaria can be described as temperate with cold, damp winters, hot, dry summers. Potential threats by nature are earthquakes or landslides.

To reach someone in Bulgaria dial +359 prior to a number. There are 2,164,000 installed telephones. And there are 10,617,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900, 1800 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".bg". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 230V - 50Hz. The following list are the 28 regions/states in Bulgaria we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Bulgarian population shrinked at a rate of -0.77% (or by 54,903 citizens). With 102,299 deaths and 67,413 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at -0.49%. -20,017 persons more in total emmigrated from the country than immigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Bulgaria: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.