Name: Andy Anderson
From: London, UK
Age: 37

A cycling tour initially brought Andy to Bulgaria six years ago. For the past four and a half years he has been living here first working for the Beautiful Bulgaria Project and now developing his own business of selling property to British people.

ANDY first arrived in Bulgaria on tyres.

When he came here in 1996, he was cycling from London to Istanbul.

"The first time I arrived in Bulgaria was on a bicycle in Silistra," Andy recalled. "I remember the beautiful countryside, I was cycling through forests and just camping out."

Fate, however, did its job and three years later Andy was back working for the Beautiful Bulgaria Project. At that time, he had a job in urban planning in London. He had also applied to the United Nations because he was "interested in going to work abroad on some sort of technical assistance".

"I was at home, I had taken a couple of days off work to redecorate my flat and I had a phone call from Germany saying, could I be in Bulgaria in two weeks time and would I like to go and work on something called the Beautiful Bulgaria Project."

Ten days are not a long time to make up you mind, get permission from your company to take a year's sabbatical, hire someone to finish decorating your apartment and say goodbye to family and friends.

But Andy did it and 10 days later, he was on an aircraft to Sofia.

It was a combination of many things that helped his decide to undertake the adventure. The job of renovating old buildings and historical sites appealed to him and he was going to a nice country in Europe which "is quite nice because it means it would not be too far from England if I wanted to go home."

At the end of his year of sabbatical, Andy was enjoying his work so much that he decided to give up his job in London and stay with the project.

The Beautiful Bulgaria Project began in January 1998. It was led by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and was funded by the European Union with assistance from the United Nations Development Programme.

Andy remembered the beginning of the project whose first phase included only five cities in Bulgaria - Sofia, Varna, Plovdiv, Rousse and Veliko Turnovo.

"The first year was just these five cities and the focus was really to create employment, Andy said, "to find work that was useful and needed in renovating streets, town squares, parks and highly visible buildings."

At that time, Andy was director of the Beautiful Bulgaria project in Rousse.

When he arrived in Rousse in the beginning of February, there was neither an office nor any staff. Four months later work was proceeding rapidly.

As a result of the project, 20 sites were renovated in Rousse. "The nice thing about it was that the results were so visible. Because all the work you do was right in the centre of towns - you either did it well or you did not and it was visible to everybody."

In its second phase, the project became even more challenging. It expanded to six more cities and Andy was put in charge of northeastern Bulgaria.

What was special about the second phase was that many foreign governments put money into the renovating of Bulgarian towns. "At the end of three years, we moved to the third phase which is a sign of how popular the project was - it is actually the Bulgarian Government and municipalities that provided 90 per cent of the funding."

Four months ago, Andy finished working with the UNDP.

In the meantime, last year he set up a business selling property to British people. His partner in Stara Planina Properties is another British expatriate, Steph Lambert.

Andy said he knew from the beginning that Bulgaria was a country which had a lot to offer and that would be great interest to British people who usually buy property in France, Italy and Spain.

Andy has been advertising in the UK, and as a result has been getting hundreds of inquiries. "We have had 300 to 400 inquiries in the last six months through advertising," he said. The company, however, is currently holding back on advertising and tries to deal with the few clients it has now as efficiently and give them the best service possible.

"The majority, 90 per cent of people are looking for something on the coast. They are looking at Bulgaria as a sort of a holiday/retirement home. They want something by the sea, they want something like a villa with three or four rooms, perhaps a garden and swimming pool possibly."

The other 10 per cent, Andy went on, are looking for something different such as old farmhouses in the mountains.

While advertising their business, Andy and his partner try to show people that Bulgaria is as good as Spain, that the weather is comparable to that in Spain.

"It is basically undiscovered - wonderful nature, less crowded compared to Spain."

Europe's best kept secret, as the slogan on the company's website www.stara-planina.com reads.

Andy believes the business will be very successful in the future when there would be less bureaucratic restrictions and procedures, when restriction on foreign ownership are removed and some of the visa requirements are clarified.

Andy is definite about staying in Bulgaria and already calls Rousse his home. And it is a home, indeed, because he already has a family here - a year ago he married Maria from Rousse.

"Both my wife and I want to stay," he said. "I am committed to developing this business certainly over the next three years."

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