Before we chose Venelin, we drove through a lot of villages in the Varna region. We were looking for a place to buy land and eventually build a life — so we looked carefully, not just at the land itself, but at the villages as living places.

We visited small villages near the coast, villages further inland, villages with old stone houses and villages with wide streets. Some were immediately striking. Most were not.

Many of the villages we visited were very quiet. But quiet in a particular way — the quietness of absence. Streets with no one on them. Houses with closed shutters. No children, no sound, no visible daily life. Beautiful to photograph, difficult to imagine living in.

When we arrived in Venelin for the first time, we noticed immediately that the village felt different.

There were people in the street. Older men sitting outside their houses. Children on bicycles. A woman in her garden. The sound of a conversation. A dog sleeping across a doorstep.

It was ordinary. And that ordinariness was exactly what we had been looking for. Village life was still visible here — not preserved as a postcard, but lived as a daily reality.

One of us speaks Turkish. In this part of Bulgaria — the Varna province and the villages around it — many of the older residents speak Turkish as their first language. It is part of the historical and cultural fabric of the region.

Being able to speak directly with older neighbours, without translation, opened conversations that would otherwise not have been possible. It changed how people received us. It helped us understand the village not as outsiders looking in, but as people genuinely trying to connect.

Early on, we walked into the village office and introduced ourselves. We asked the mayor directly: what did he think about foreigners who wanted to come and settle here? Not as tourists, but as people who wanted to buy land, build a home and become part of the village.

He was welcoming. He spoke with us honestly about the village, about its people and about what he hoped for its future. He showed us around. He answered our questions without reservation.

That conversation mattered to us more than we expected.

Finding a village where you can buy land is not difficult in Bulgaria. Finding a village where you feel genuinely welcome — where the people are still there, where the life is still active, where someone in authority actually wants the village to have a future — that is rarer.

In Venelin, we felt all of those things at once. The land was right. The village was alive. The people were present. And the welcome was genuine.

That is why Venelin. Not because it is perfect. Because it is real — and still alive.