According to an English insurance company whose clients are mostly expats, Bulgaria is the number 1 country for people wanting to start a new life abroad. Out of the company’s top 10, Bulgaria comes 4^th though it is number 1 in Europe, with the steepest increase in its expat community in the 1990-2020 period – from 43,000 in 1990 to 1.7 million in 2020. There is no accurate data regarding the number of foreigners living in the country at this time, but there are a number of reasons why they have chosen to come here – new job opportunities, meeting a kindred soul or just wanting to escape the rat race.

What brought Alex Martinez from Paraguay to Bulgaria was love – his girlfriend got a job offer in Sofia:

Soon after that Alex met his current wife and admits he is really very lucky to be married to a Bulgarian lady. They have a 3-year old son called Nicholas whom he has named one of the beers after -  manufactured jointly with another brewery. Its ingredients include bourbon vanilla and coconut.

Alex Martinez is one of the pioneers on the craft beer market in his own country – Paraguay:

“With one of my best friends and business partner Jose we opened a brew pub there 10 years ago – and we started the movement of craft beer there and it grew super fast. Paraguay is a beer-drinking country – but mainly mainstream beer, so craft beer was new. People travelled and they would bring back a bottle. People were curious and we couldn’t find any such beer on the local market, so we decided to import it from Brazil. But then nobody knew these brands so we knew were going to going to have a hard time selling it. So, what we decided to do was open a brew pub and start making our own beers. We first did courses so that we ourselves could learn, and after that we started doing classes for people who wanted to become home brewers.”

His advice to people who want to become brewers is to start small and then grow, but he adds that it is a lot of work. He says that from his own experience, as he has his own brewery which he faced quite a few problems with when he had to legalize it:

“Two things, but they are mostly my fault. One is that my Bulgarian is a disaster. I know pure basic, I can order a coffee, a beer and a banitsa,” Alex says. “I cannot have even a basic conversation about business. The other thing is knowing the culture, and how slow and bureaucratic the processes are.”

Alex Martinez says he has no one else to blame for coming to this country and starting a business of his own, but goes on:

“What I like here is that people are, in general, honest, I feel that. I come from a very corrupt country. Things that it will take me weeks here, in Paraguay I will have in minutes, but you have to pay something. Of course, I prefer things to work out in the proper way, here it will take longer but it will be the right way. Another thing that I really like about Bulgaria is that you have a really good work and family balance,” says Alex Martinez.

Translated and posted by Milena Daynova

Photos courtesy of Alex Martinez