May 16; back from the space/time continuum 🛸
1,500 km through four countries... this was my week 🚗💨
Happy Sunday,
Today’s title pretty much explains how my fellow travelers Mirela, Irina, Kamen, and I felt when we returned to Sofia late on Friday, …and delved directly into the Friday night craziness of the legendary Sofia Beach Bar. It was as if we had been lost in some different universe, coming back to a summer-weekend Sofia frenzy I hadn’t seen since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak; thousands of people on the streets, bars and cafes filled to the brim, and the virus seemingly a distant memory. How different it had been on previous days for us…
As we left Sofia last Sunday, we drove the 600 km stretch to Tirana, Albania in one go, arriving on time for dinner with our friends and hosts for the week, the wonderful crew of the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program.
I’ve done this drive about 20 times in previous years, and it remains to me one of the top most breathtaking sceneries I’ve ever driven, up there with California’s Highway 1, and the St. Bernard pass in Switzerland.
In Tirana, like in the following days in Prishtina (Kosovo) and Skopje (North Macedonia), we’d spend our time meeting local entrepreneurs and (prospective) angel and fund investors. All in small lunch and coffee settings, as larger gatherings are not allowed yet, unlike in Bulgaria.
It felt really good to reconnect with the venture communities in our neighboring countries, that I’ve spent so much time engaging with in the past. On the one hand, Covid-19 took a much harder toll on these non-EU brothers and sisters of ours, and we could feel it in our meetings; people had tougher stories, and were generally more reserved about the near future than we are used to in Bulgaria. On the other hand, and positively so, I personally noticed a great degree of maturity; better-prepared founders, more reported angel and VC rounds, and a great eagerness from the local investor community to step up the game. A big shoutout is in place here to the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program, whose local teams are doing excellent work facilitating mentorship and guidance for founders and investors.
One of the aspects I consider a huge privilege when it comes to living in places like Bulgaria and this region in general, is that you get to play a first-hand role in shaping entire societies and economies. Growing up in more developed countries, in Western Europe and US, you’re always offered a proven path within your profession or area of interest; and while that works perfectly well for many of us, being generally predictable and comfortable, here in places like the Balkans you get to actually co-design the way the entire system works. That process is sometimes tiresome and frustrating, but every time I zoom out in my mind, I feel like I won a ticket to witness history in the making. It just feels like a very lucky place to be in.
It was also beautiful and insightful to be traveling internationally again, after 14 months of being confined to Bulgaria. Without doubt, we have had it relatively easy at home, compared to the neighboring countries. In North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania, the availability of vaccines is still very low, and the majority of available ones aren’t the mainstream ones approved by the EU and US CDCs.
In all three countries, you’re still supposed to wear masks when moving outdoors, and in North Macedonia it even extends to traveling by car when not alone in the vehicle. Also in North Macedonia, there is still a curfew in force in Skopje from midnight till 4am.
I really enjoyed this past week of traveling with Bulgarian friends and colleagues, and reconnecting with other friends in the region. It somehow feels like we’re nearing the end of the hard phase of the pandemic, at least as far as Europe and North America are concerned, and we’re coming stronger out of it than we were before.
Having crossed six borders in as many days and undergone two PCR tests, I am looking forward to obtaining our full vaccination certificates in a month with Ellie, after which we can and will go back to visiting our most cherished places in Europe this summer and fall. And then perhaps back to the US as well before the year’s end 🤞🏻🙏🏼😇
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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