BORN in London, but taken to live in Canada when only six months old, Wayne Harper embarked on a travelling lifestyle at a young age. He lived in Canada, the US and Brazil before returning to England to finish his education, where he took a degree in English. He moved to Italy in 1982, working initially as an English language teacher in primary schools and then at the University of Bologna, before joining the British Council in 1992, where he was the Regional Information Co-ordinator for four years.

Wayne arrived in Bulgaria less than two months ago to take up his position as Deputy Director at the British Council. He got his first, brief taste of the country when he came to take part in a regional team meeting in 1996. "What strikes me this time around is the immense progress that's actually been made since then," says Wayne. "The city's looking a lot better and there's certainly a different mood among the people. Of course, at that time there was hyperinflation and people had very serious economic concerns, so that's a big contrast and obviously a lot of progress has been made."

His job now involves managing teams involved in a wide range of areas including: governance, education, knowledge and information, communications and media, science, literature and intercultural communications, as well as development projects. Currently, he is managing a project entitled EU and Me, a regional project, which about eight other South East Europe countries are involved in. The project is about "trying to develop more of a personalised conversation around the fact of the EU, which obviously is of particular interest in Bulgaria at the moment," says Wayne. "Most of the conversations about the EU are at an institutional level, or in the media, and take a lot of terminology for granted. So, we're trying to give a forum, especially to young people, through a series of seminars around the county."

Seminars have taken place in towns such as Koprivshtista and Stara Zagora. The final three will be videoconference events in which groups of people in Bulgaria will be linked with groups from across Europe and the UK. Wayne says it's a way of "letting people compare experiences across old EU states, newly acceded EU states - Greece, for example, is taking part - and the ones that are waiting to join now". The project has involved working with local community leaders and the involvement of minority groups, having for example, Roma representatives in Stara Zagora.

There is also media element to the project. "Each country will produce a five-minute film about the personalised experience of what the EU means to somebody or a small group of people from that country," explains Wayne. Contracts are being taken up with broadcasters in each of the countries to show all of the films produced. The project is due to end in March, so bTV should be broadcasting the films in April or May.

In his time off from this busy work schedule, Wayne is enjoying seeing a different side of Bulgaria. "What I hadn't seen before was how beautiful Bulgaria is in the countryside. I've been up Vitosha three times already and it's an amazing resource to have." A keen skier, having learnt to ski in Italy, Wayne is looking forward to the ski season in Bulgaria.

He is also enjoying the cultural side of Sofia, which he finds easier to get around than Rome. "There's a lot going on culturally and it's easy to access, whereas in Rome often if something was on in the other side of the city it'd be too difficult to get to." He says Bulgarians have been "very friendly and hospitable" and is a fan of Sofia's thriving `restaurant society' - "I've already spent many very pleasant evenings in very good restaurants. I think the food here is very good. I think the variety is excellent" - and enjoys the "vibrant dynamic" of social life here.

During his short time here so far, Wayne says he hasn't experienced any real problems, but says that the language has probably been the biggest cultural shock for him. All the languages he learnt previously having been Romance languages - French, Portuguese and Spanish - he hadn't realised how different Bulgarian was going to be and says that "the barrier of Cyrillic is a notable one". However, some of Wayne's Bulgarian friends have provided him with an incentive to learn: "they are giving me only until January 2 and then they're going to start talking only Bulgarian to me". He has set himself the goal of learning to speak Bulgarian well enough to have a reasonable conversation within the next 18 months.

Concerning his professional goals, Wayne says, "I'd like to get up to speed quickly and feel I'm making a real contribution to the British Council's work in Bulgaria because I think it's very valuable work. I'm very impressed by the social dimension of the work the Council's doing. I want to add value to that, become a good part of the team and pull my weight." Out of work, Wayne is hoping to visit the Rila monastery and mountains: "I've heard they are fabulous".