Which European Country Works the Hardest?

by Josh Lew on

I have always been under the impression that Europeans worked fewer hours than Americans. However, a new survey shows that more than one country’s population averages over 40 hours per week on the job.

Romania and Bulgaria are home to the hardest workers on the continent. According to research conducted by The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), the citizens of these new EU members average 41.7 hours per week at the office. The UK ranks next, at 41.4 hours.

Overall, the 12 newest EU states worked more than the original members (40.6 hours compared to 39.5). At the other end of the spectrum sit the French. They work a leisurely 37.7 hours each week. That might sound like a healthy workload, but France’s Minister of Finance recently criticized her country-people for not working hard enough. Italians also boast an under 40 hour work week (38.4 hours). Eurofound put the mean number of days off per year at 25. In the US, the average number of paid vacation days is 14.

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Bulgaria versus the European Union

by Neil Woodburn on


People in poorer countries always have a romantic image of just how perfect life is in the United States or the European Union compared with what they have to endure in their homeland. Throughout my travels in Russia and Eastern Europe, for example, people I’d meet would say things like, “we have many of potholes in our country! In America, you have not potholes, right?”

Sure, things were and still are bad in many parts of the former communist empire, but life is never as perfect as most people imagine it to be in the West. And that is why I had to laugh at the short animated film above. It basically sums up this concept as it flashes between life in Bulgaria and life in the EU. Naturally, everything is just perfect in the EU; Bulgaria, on the other hand, is falling apart.

Studentski Grad: Partying with the Students in Bulgaria

by Neil Woodburn on

If you want to know the best places to have fun in a foreign country, go where the students go. In the case of Sofia, Bulgaria, this would be Student Town.

The communists like to centralize things when they were in command and often created enormous complexes that housed monopoly industries for the entire nation. This was often the case with universities as well. Student Towns usually consisted of a half dozen high-rise dormitories where students from various universities lived. Like the rest of communist housing, they tend to be cheaply made, prefabricated dumps.

New York Times journalist Robert Reid recently made the journey to the outskirts of Sofia to check out what has become the most popular Student Town in perhaps all of Central Europe. Studentski Grad (literally, Student Town), has transformed itself into a haven of fun. Instead of just housing the students, dozens of discos and bars have popped up within the massive complex to entertain them as well. The communists would be proud; the capitalists have managed to centralize partying.

So if you happen to find yourself in Sofia with nothing to do, make your way out to the bleak cityscape of Studentski Grad where strobe lights and pumping music will surely entertain you until the wee hours of the morning. And the best thing is that unlike everyone else you will be drinking with, you won’t have an exam the next morning.

Golf Bulgaria!

by Iva Skoch on

Today’s NY Times ran an article on a new set of real estate developments in Bulgaria that mix new, modern real estate developments and golf courses.

This news, in conjunction with recent news that Bulgaria has its date set to become a new EU member, may mean heady times for the former Soviet country. Course design notables, such as Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus, are involved in the courses noted in the article. The country is scheduled to go from its current count of three courses to nine in rapid time.

Golf as a pastime has really taken off in many areas of the former Eastern Bloc. Immediately following the collapse of communism, it was low on people’s list of favorite sports in many areas because it was seen, like hunting, as a sport for the Bolsheviks. And communists themselves–at least officially–had frowned on it as “bourgeois.” During communism, many courses were left fallow or even destroyed. While popularity is now skyrocketing, the sport is retaining an elitist feel in most of Europe; and most courses are private, requiring at least a handicap card to play as an outsider.