Seducing Sofia (Bulgaria)

As a nomadic seducer, in Sofia, I got laid more, got paid more, established better friendships, and left with more good memories and lessons learned than the previous cities I spent equal time in.

As opposed to crediting this to Sofia itself (herself?) or some unquantifiable metaphysical influence or self-help principle, I know exactly why my time there was so productive in all the dimensions that are important to me. I No Fapped and No Boozed the majority of my time there, I completed 30 Days of No Fap and 90 Days of No Booze. abstaining from these two vices simultaneously really is a synergistic lifehack for productivity and happiness. For a man, these two habits really are symbiotic; when I’m No Fapping I’m way more motivated to go out, make friends and meet girls but No Fapping for this long requires serious discipline that is all but impossible if you are even a moderate social drinker.

While I seduced Sofia, Sofia seduced me...

I got married (and remain happily married) to a witty, beautiful Bulgarian girl. Every day, in the morning and evening you might find us strolling through the city center, walking my wife’s cute little Pomeranian.

As an 8-year digital nomad dude/pickup artist, I encountered dozens, if not hundreds, of men that traveled to exotic places and then failed to get girlfriends or even get laid. In my new book, Don’t Stick Your Dick in a Blender, I have a deep dive chapter breaking down just what they did wrong on their international skirt-chasing missions. If you’re going to spend the money and time to come to Sofia (or anywhere in Eastern Europe) with the aim of seducing the local girls, at least read the chapter, Dating and Marrying Exotic Foreign Women.

The Women

Bulgarian women are aesthetically a whole lot closer to my fantasy girl; they are curvier and a little darker than Ukrainians yet refreshingly elegant and well put together compared to the frumpilicious Romanians. A bŭlgarski trotting down the avenue in her heels, form-fitting jeans, and fashionable scarf could easily be confused for a light-skinned Colombiana until she opened her mouth and spoke quite competent English.

Most of the Eastern European woman stereotypes apply; they are feminine and pleasant, relatively submissive, and take extra care of their appearance and but they don’t have a ton of personality, aren’t really chatty like the modern Western woman of Anglo extraction, and don’t have a lot of money.

At least in Sofia the women, while not nearly as feminist as say, German women, are modern European women;

• They speak English well.
• Most of them attend college and are eager to discuss their careers and politics.
• They are more family-oriented. Almost all of them come from nuclear families who they seem to respect and love.
• I’ve met zero single mothers. I’m sure there are some here but I’ve met known in my social circle or dating here.
• They are a little religious, they attend Eastern church service a couple of times a year but most are not pious practicing Christians.
• I don’t meet a lot of married young women as I have elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
• Like Latinas, you kiss them on both cheeks when greeting them.
• Ukrainians age better, although you do encounter most Bulgarian women over 35 who are still relatively attractive and skinny. So if you’re considering a long-term investment, take a good look at her mother and ask yourself if you in 20 years would be happy with an approximation of that in your bed every night.

I’ve slept with two women here, I’m not sure if that’s enough experience to rate the general sluttiness of the bŭlgarskis but based upon my experience and that of other guys I’ve talked with they are probably easier than Russian or Ukrainian girls but will require more investment than Western women who you hook up with two hours after meeting them. I feature the Bulgarian model, Nikoleta Ivanova, in the Euro-Boudoir-style trailer for my tantra course for men... 

The Nightlife

In nightclubs in Eastern Europe what you see repeatedly is a table with a few older guys, who look like they served in a war about 20 years ago and have been drinking hard since, with some doll-faced and dolled-up younger girls. The girls dance alone, the guys just sit there trying to look tough while they drink away half their paychecks.
This kind of reminds me of Colombia where people also go out in large groups and the guys always pay for everything of course, but in Colombia, they actually dance with each other. If you go out with a group of girls and spend $20 (or equivalent) on liquor for the group you will receive vigorous reggeaton-inspired vertical lap dances from the girls all night long, it’s pretty fun actually. In Bulgaria they barely touch each other on the dance floor, the guys buying the bottles are basically just paying to be seen with the girls. Unless they’re hookers, and they are fucking them, but likely only after paying for the girl’s taxis to the club, paying for their drinks in the club, paying to fuck them, and then paying for their taxis home.

Sofia is a "tough town" for nightgame; different cultures have different attitudes about meeting new people while out partying, in most countries, girls are pretty open to talking to a friendly foreigner for a few minutes, in Bulgaria not so much. I think it’s more of a culture where people go out to socialize just with their current social group. Usually, I’m quite good at the cold approach itself and can get myself at least a few minutes of conversation yet here I had just get blow out after blow out many nights. You need to play the numbers here.

Even at the more alternative scene kind of spots, I repeatedly got that cold-shouldered icy response that I only usually get from the most modelesque girls hanging out in the swankiest of venues. I even got the same blasé vibe from the 15 or so sets that I did at a drum’n bass rave I went to with friends. You would think the PLUR chicks would be a little more excited about talking to an exotic cross-eyed guy while rolling their metaphorical balls off. The rave was a pretty stark contrast from the electronica festivals of my native Denver, Colorado; no lasers or cool event design, no gogo dancers, nobody dressed up in fabulous angel costumes, no cuddle piles on the floor of shirtless strangers giving each other massages, while there were some cuties there they definitely weren’t dressing to impress anyone, there was just loud music and a lot of flashing strobes.

One opener that doesn’t work well here is asking her if she speaks English, counter-intuitive to the way I imagine I’d like to be cold approached, sets are way more likely to hook if you roll up on them completely disregarding their mother tongue.

After going out clubbing about a dozen times I concluded that mainstream nightclubs were NOT going to be my niche in Sofia. Now that I think about it, the +80 approaches I’ve done on the hyphy dancefloors of Sofia have yielded surprisingly few results.
Contrary to a lot of my experiences in Colombia and Denver, Colorado, my most fruitful sets have not occurred in loud, raucous nightclubs, but in salsa clubs, meetups, smoking areas, and patios. Bulgarian men and women are just not big fans of touching each other while dancing.
From a PUAs perspective, the trade-off for hanging out for hours in mainstream clubs blasting Hip Hop or reggaeton is the likelihood of rapid kino escalation on the dancefloor. In a culture where girls are opposed to being dry-humped and groped on the dancefloor by perfect strangers while shaking their asses to the misogynistic lyrics of the latest Lil Wayne club banger, I see a whole lot less reason to spend a lot of time in these clubs.

Salsa or Latin dancing clubs turned out to be where the opportunity was in Sofia. Why are salsa clubs a win for PUAs?

• Guy-Girl Proportion — XX chromosomes often outnumbered XY in salsa clubs. In salsa clubs, there’s almost always a free girl, sitting there bobbing her head just waiting to be asked to dance. I’ve never had to wait more than 10 minutes in between sets in a salsa club. I’ve yet to experience a Latin club that is anything resembling a sausage fest.
• Hotter girls — Bulgarian girls are pretty attractive but at least during the winter, they try to convince you they are NOT with dorky sweaters and the atrocious hipster attire that is sweeping Europe. Girls at salsa clubs are the exception to this, they do dress sexy; skirts, heels, cocktail dresses — and they pull it off without looking like total hookers. I think salsa chicks exercise more and do squats as they just seem more toned and curvaceous.
• Less drunk people — If you, like me, don’t like to drink while gaming, you’ll likely find salsa clubs a whole lot more conducive to your temperament. About 60% of the girls are stone sober. It’s super rare that you’ll encounter the kinds of rude, drunken antics at a salsa club that you so commonly do at mainstream clubs.
• Girls approach you — Yes, girls actually approach you and ask you to dance. One of the hottest girls I’ve met this year, actually cold approached me while I was standing alone beside the dance floor, antisocially playing on my phone. Talk about a role reversal!
• Single girls — Latin clubs are also a place where you will find the elusive one-set — who is not a hooker — just a normal girl out to socialize, make friends, move her hips, and sweat a little.

The disadvantage of salsa clubs is that approaching and dancing with a girl is not an explicit way of communicating intent. Lots of guys and girls go salsa dancing just to dance. Girls will dance with you who have no interest in actually getting to know you. You’ll quickly observe that many guys who are amazing dancers have none existent game, they will tear it up with a girl on the floor, get her all hot and sweaty, and then just leave (or more likely she’ll leave him) without making even the most minimal effort to make conversation, banter, build rapport or number close. Actually, some of the best salsa dancers are gay guys. So you’ll need to be a little more upfront about your interest. It’s a little bit different game, but I like it!

The Culture

Bulgaria is not exactly the backdrop of a 007 movie, that documentaries like this would have you believe it is, but make no mistake this is the wild wild east.

Bulgaria is one country where not drinking you really feel like an outsider. Every time I asked a bartender for a non-alcoholic drink they would look at me like I had just ordered a glass of abortion baby blood.

When I first arrived in Sofia I befriended two young Bulgarian guys who could be loosely described as hostel employees. They were your typical POS dudes, who toked weed, drank beer, and smoked cigarettes all day and night yet in the four days I stayed at the hostel these two guys must have had 6 different cute, young girls over to hang out. They watched stupid movies and pop music videos for hours and hours with these girls. This made me suspect that Bulgarian girls are less susceptible to grown man game and respond better to party boy game.

Bulgarians are pretty ethnocentric, they don’t like gypsies and are (naturally?) wary of Turks and Arabs. They seem to like Americans just fine despite our bombing their cities into rubble in WW2.

The Language

Bulgarian is a southern scion of the Slavic language group, it’s not worth learning unless you are going to make a serious commitment to this country. About 90% of the girls you approach will speak English. A lot of older Bulgarians speak no English but I speak just enough Russian that I was able the navigate the few interactions I had with them.

Someone told me that Bulgarian girls like to speak Spanish, and I discovered this to be the case frequently. Eastern European girls romanticize Latin culture and yearn to portray themselves as cosmopolitan Europeans as opposed to products of their respective backwater countries that are still shadowed by the ghost of the Soviet Union. The first three knockout Bulgarian girls I approached in a bar in Berlin spoke Spanish and actually about a third of the young, attractive Bulgarian girls I met in Sofia spoke at least some Spanish, and were eager to practice with me. While I’m not a fan of language tutor game, if you speak some Spanish it imbues a bit of an advantage here.

Online Game

You guys know I’m not a big fan of online dating in its myriad forms. My #1 digital pickup line, which usually yields at least a 60% response rate interestingly underperformed here; I used it:

• Messaging about 40 girls on Couch Surfing.
• Texting girls, I met gaming.
• Facebook Messaging girls.

And it really fell on its face, I almost totally stopped using it. Or perhaps it’s true what they say…

In game, yesterday’s epiphany-inspired tactic becomes today’s gimmicky crutch.

The Weather

I found Bulgaria quite a bastion from the soul-chilling (and sock-soaking) winter of Eastern Europe. I arrived in early Jan, the Balkan winter is downright moderate compared to Romania and Ukraine. I saw snow once, many days I barely needed a coat. Bulgaria assuaged my Vitamin D deficiency, many days were sunny and I could hang out on my patio. It rained about every other day for a few hours, not a torrential downpour but it’s a good idea to bring an umbrella with you. If you’re a nomadic seducer in Europe, looking to geoarbitrage your lifestyle and income, Bulgaria is a great option during the colder months. As you can see in this video blog about meditation that I filmed in the center, the weather is gloomy but not bad enough to prevent you from day gaming.

I pulled twice here just by offering Adaptogenic tea, my magic herbal anti-aging tea, which they could get exclusively back at my flat. Which was a bit of an epiphany for me, in the past I had always thought I had to come up with more elaborate reasons to pull.

Cost of Living

Sofia is cheaper than Berlin and Bucharest but pricier than Kyiv.
If you are going to be staying in Sofia don’t waste your time staying at hostels, which cost about $10 nightly even for a bed in a dorm, when private accommodations are so affordable. I rented a spacious room in a penthouse apartment off AirBNB near the center for $370 a month, which apparently is a little higher priced for Sofia, you could rent a not-terrible room there for under $300 a month.

• Groceries are a little pricier for Eastern Europe, my weekly budget for the two simple meals I eat at home a day was $45 a week. Like in many poor countries eating out is often a better value, a tasty sandwich or salad at a cafe is about $3, and a filling sushi dish at a nicer restaurant is about $10. A decent (but not great) quality coffee is about $1.50 at a cafe. A decent beer is about $3, a glass of wine is even cheaper and the shitty local beer is almost free.
• The most outstanding value I found was a 24/7 accessible coworking space (in a not-amazing location} for $40 a month.
• I got a very relaxing but not exactly therapeutic (and definitely not sexy) 60 massage for about $22 which is a pretty good value.

Transportation

There is no Uber in Sofia but there are two quite intuitive Apps, Taxime and Taxistars that are almost as good, and so cheap I got in the habit of taking taxis once or twice a day. I’ve never had to wait more than 10 minutes for a taxi using it.

The Dogmatic PUAs of Sofia

Sofia had a great local RSD group, I arrived about 15 minutes late to their free meetup and everyone was speaking Bulgarian, out of the +20 guys in the room I think I was the only foreigner there. They actually switched the entire meetup to English, just so I could understand. I thought that was extraordinarily accommodating of them.

I befriended several of the PUAs from the group who seemed cool and shared my fertile hunting ground with them, all but one refused to join me in my salsa gaming — to them, it just wasn’t game if you didn’t spend the night enduring blow out after blow out from the icy Balkan queens of the disco.

One young wingman of mine in Sofia lamented to me how hard it is to cold approach here, yet outright refused to join me in gaming the friendly girls at the salsa clubs because he didn’t know how to dance and didn’t care to learn. Pickup dogmatism at its least pragmatic. To each his own.

Update

Bulgaria actually ended my career as a nomadic seducer because I met and married a great Bulgarian girl…

Mission accomplished

On vacation in Primorsko

Just out walking the dog

Date night dining

Life is good on the black sea coast

At Obzor beach

Catchin' some rays

The wifey brought some sexiness to this video about downloadable medicine

We are very happy now living in Sofia. I explain here why I choose to settle down and live here…

Here are the Daygame and Nightgame spots in Sofia...

Vitosha Street

This classic Daygame destination is a wide pedestrian street lined with shops and touristy restaurants.
Just two seconds… This is probably the best Daygame spot in Sofia, Bulgaria. I’ve been out here on Saturdays and Sundays mostly. The abundance of opportunity is pretty good but it’s not the best I’ve experienced.

Club Bedroom

The kind of night that makes you question doing game. I went on a Wednesday night. This was the kind of night that makes you question doing game.
I was on day 11 of No Fab and the club girls in the club were the sexiest I’ve seen since Kyiv, so I was super motivated to approach.
Opening in this club was rough. It doesn’t really have a dancefloor, it’s one of these venues with a bunch of tables so people are isolated in groups of seated mixed sets, which is something I can usually deal with, but this night I just got blown out of set after set. A few were a little friendly for a minute but then gave me the cold Bulgarian shoulder.
The groups typically consist of a couple of serious-looking guys just sitting there drinking hard and a few girls (actually the girls usually outnumbered the guys) dancing or swaying to the music. Bulgarian men and women don’t dance with each other. Despite the thumping booty-shaking music I saw little to no bump’n grinding.
It’s not overrun by foreigners or annoying drunk English guys, yet I got nearly none of the attention I’m used to as a foreigner in foreign lands.
Opening by asking if (or stating that) they speak English is an almost for sure blowout. I had almost as bad of luck by rolling up and calling them a dangerous penguin in Bulgarian. What seems to work better than anything else, is just to assume they speak English.
I opened a few groups of guys who were either too drunk to understand me or just not amused by my banter.
The cameraphone opener didn’t even really work.
Even late in the night, the sloppy, drunk Bulgarians didn’t want to make friends. Even my wingman was getting exhausted from blowouts by then so we called it a night.

Sugarclub

I’ll have a WATER! I went on a Friday (ladies' night) and was pretty impressed with the quantity and quality. There are a lot of hot girls that go there, the ratio was about 50:50 in the club.
The girls aren’t particularly good dancers, they just kind of sway sensually on the dancefloor. Bulgarian chicks are hotter than Romanian chicks, but a lot of them dress in a kind of dorky/hipster style that I’m not crazy about. I’d say 50% of the groups were 2-sets or 3-sets, and the rest were larger groups — good news if you like small sets.
I did not see a whole lot of bump’n grinding happening on the dancefloor.
1 star deducted for no non-alcoholic beer. I had to order bottled water — the official drink of PUAs since 2001!

Mall of Sofia

The swanky mall in Sofia. Where is the pet shop? I did some Daygame here during the dreadfully cold winter.

Fabrica 126

Fuck techno! I went on a Saturday night with a wing. There was a birthday party upstairs where we failed to make any friends. On the main floor, there were about 3 girls and +15 guys dancing like retards to electronica.

Finally...

Over the years I’ve met a ton of dudes that struck out in epic fashion trying to get Bulgarian, Colombian, or Ukrainian girlfriends. Naivete and cultural ignorance are the recipe for failure in dating abroad. Frankly, unless you’ve spent years learning and practicing game you’re going to be a little naive when it comes to exotic foreign women. If you want to cut about a half-decade off your learning curve as a seducer, read my new book…

Don't Stick Your Dick in a Blender

 

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