Getting to know Sofia does not only mean visiting the local museums or acquainting with its millennial history. Visitors should also try the local food, stroll across the small city streets, have a drink at some of the local pubs and make new friends. Balkan Bites offer such trips to foreign guests who decide to visit Bulgaria's capital.

Kristian Mitov who is a co-founder of Balkan Bites told Radio Bulgaria more:

“Balkan Bites is the first free of charge culinary tour. We have been holding that tour on a daily basis for over three years in Bulgaria's capital Sofia. It starts at 2 pm at Crystal garden downtown Sofia near the Stefan Stambolov monument. We tour four or five restaurants a day and taste national cuisine in each restaurant or at least try meals containing traditional Bulgarian products such as yoghurt, peppers, tomatoes, white brine cheese and wine.”

Foreign tourists rarely have any expectations about that experience, but even the most conservative ones enjoy the Bulgarians meals, because the restaurants offer various, tasty and healthy meals. Some of them discover new food taste. Our Australian guests are very surprised when they taste the traditional cold yoghurt cucumber soup (Tarator) consisting of yoghurt, cucumbers, garlic and fresh dill, because they usually associate yoghurt with various desserts. However, most of them try Tarator and enjoy its taste in the hot summer days.

Kristian and his team members are young Bulgarians who returned to their home country after graduating from foreign universities. Their purpose is to fulfill their innovative ideas in Bulgaria.

“Our mission is to enable the foreign guests to see Sofia from different angles. Five years ago we started our first tour named The New Sofia Pub Crawl. This is not the typical alcohol tour across the city pubs. It is rather an interesting evening tour with people from different countries across hidden places which are otherwise difficult to find. Each evening we tell the stories of those pubs and make our guests feel the spirit of the capital city in a different way. Our evening tour starts at 9 pm again from the Crystal garden. Eighteen months ago we launched a free of charge Communist Trabi Tour (a tour along the streets of Sofia with old Trabant passenger vehicle). We gather each Saturday and Sunday at 10 am near the Berlin Wall piece in the National Palace of Culture garden. The tour lasts for approximately two hours and at the end of each tour the foreign guests can make a free trip with a Trabant car. Two months ago we launched a free tour which shows Sofia street art. Sofia Graffiti Tour is held each Saturday and Sunday at 3 pm and our assembly point is the Saint Sofia Statue. Our foreign guests have the opportunity to see different graffiti and works of art of celebrated Bulgarian artists in the course of two whole hours.”

All types of foreign tourists such as students, millionaires and pensioners join our tours. Some of them fell in love with the city and settled permanently here, Kristian Mitov says and adds:

“When we started our project five or six years ago most guests of Bulgaria's capital Sofia were the so-called backpackers. However, the number of foreign families or organized tour groups visiting Sofia has increased in the past two or three years. They come especially to see this city, rather than making a short stop on their way to Istanbul or Belgrade for instance. The low cost airlines also contributed a lot to that process and we have registered a significant growth in the number of the so-called weekend trips since September 2016. Sofia has huge potential to attract more foreign tourists and I would advise people to visit the Bulgarian capital before that city becomes overcrowded with commercial tourists.”

English version: Kostadin Atanasov