June 27; Plovdiv weekend and all kinds of tech
From getting my vax passport, to EVs, kickboards, and bohemian times in Plovdiv, this was my week ☀️🚙🛴
Happy Sunday,
Ellie and I just got back from a fantastic weekend in Bulgaria’s cultural capital Plovdiv, which was a great way to wrap up an eventful week.
Vaxxed and certified 💉🛂
This week started with me finally receiving my EU Green Passport, right on time for the July 1 kick-off of its rollout in Europe. I got my AstraZeneca shots together with Ellie on March 2 and June 2, respectively, but unlike Ellie, with me they messed up some of the data in the government’s system, so I needed to file for corrections, and wasn’t able to get my certificate on the June 16 date of my full vaccination. Thankfully, eight days later it was all fixed, and I’m now very excited to be able to travel around Europe with peace of mind, and knowing I’m not posing risks or difficulties for local efforts to combat the pandemic.
Bulgaria is still tailing in the vaccination charts of the EU CDC, with an embarrassing 13.8% full vaccination rate as of tonight. I see how the government is doing all they can to speed it up, with vaccination centers in malls and parks, so let’s just hope that we improve on these numbers by autumn, and avoid another wave of the disease. One of my favorite Sofia bars is taking a lighthearted attitude towards it all, offering vaccines on draft… quite a good joke:
Now that I have my certificate, my plan is to visit at least one other European country every month, and hopefully we can start looking at destinations outside Europe by the year’s end as well 🤞🏻
Blazing fast 5G 📱✨
My local phone network offered me to update my data settings to 5G last weekend, and lo and behold, I did not expect to see this kind of performance:
This is by far the fastest internet I’ve had anywhere, let alone on my phone. It’s about 8 times faster than my landline hookups at home and in the office. Incredible to see, and marvelous to imagine what kind of content we’ll be streaming and consuming in the coming years!
Plovdiv weekend 🔥
Ellie and I set out for Plovdiv on Friday, to hang out and have a good time with a few friends, while I had the extra idea to spend some time at the annual national Bulgarian EV meetup, which is traditionally held in Plovdiv every summer.
The weather was classical Plovdiv summer, varying between 40 degree C scorching heat, and violent thunderstorms. We managed to watch a movie in the central city park with a friend, and even had the luck of finding a spot under a tree that kept us dry as it started thundering and raining. The movie was Borg vs. McEnroe, a great biopic of the legendary 1980 men’s Wimbledon final between the two champs.
One pet peeve I have with Plovdiv is the lack of nice hotels in the historical downtown. There’s one place that Ellie and I like a lot, called Hill House, but it was booked out this weekend. We decided to stay in one of the classical Bulgarian-Revival BnBs that are plenty in the Old Town, but when we arrived, we were told the A/C isn’t working, and neither is the card terminal. Quite uninterested in paying cash for staying in a furnace, we reverted to my favorite Plovdiv hideout, the Jägerhof German beer garden and hotel. It’s a 10-min drive from downtown, and it may seem like a strange place to stay, but their restaurant is 100% authentic Bavarian, as are their self-made beer and sausages, and the hotel itself is super nice, modern, and flawlessly A/C’d. And another great perk: they have free EV charging stations!
On Saturday Ellie hit the gym and I ventured out to meet my EV buddies at the national meetup. It was quite the sight, with 30+ EV models available for checking out, and hundreds of EV enthusiasts present.
Bulgaria is still pretty slow with adopting EVs compared to the rest of the EU, but we’re starting to catch up. Currently, the incentives to switch to EV is forfeited car ownership tax (about 150-300 euros a year, so not radical savings), and free parking in almost all downtown areas in Bulgarian cities and towns (very convenient!). The rumor is that next year the Bulgarian government will start offering a substantial subsidy to trade in an old ICE car for a new EV one, so that should push things further along.
It was quite cool to see most of the mainstream brands starting to offer very decent and diverse EV models this year. I really hope that in a year or two, the shift will start becoming visible in this country, especially in Sofia, where winter smog is the number one health concern among residents.
Another cool electric-mobility related thing in Plovdiv this weekend, was to see my Vitosha investment Hobo Bulgaria launch its kickboard operations here, as they expand beyond Sofia to other cities in Bulgaria. I got the chance to try one out on Plovdiv’s main street, and had good fun doing it. Plovdiv has an extensive pedestrian downtown area, and the kickboards are capped at 5km/h there, which is of course very slow, but then also very safe. And when it’s 40 degrees C, moving at that pace on an electric device is actually much more pleasant than walking, it turns out!
The evenings in Plovdiv were all about roaming the little streets and corners of the Kapana creative district, a downtown area in Plovdiv that has been transformed in recent years to Bulgaria’s no. 1 (and pretty much only so far) pedestrian nightlife district. With hundreds of little bars, quirky restaurants, and lots of galleries and street art, it’s a sight very common in most European and Asian cities (and lately, US ones too), but here it’s a first, and hopefully an example for other places.
Vitosha portfolio and meetup 🥂
As I mentioned last week, I’m pumped that we are finally starting to have something that actually looks like a portfolio at Vitosha
This week I visited Bulgaria’s prominent business talkshow Business Daily with Dimiar Vuchev, to talk about our latest investments, and to share some ideas on the road ahead with us. It’s in Bulgarian, so have a look if you’re a BG speaker:
And again, as shared last week, we’re throwing an event this coming Tuesday for everyone who is in Sofia, or willing to come, to celebrate our latest deals and host the founders of our portfolio companies and any and all venture friends. Click below to sign up if you’re planning on joining, I’d love to see you there!
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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