An interesting post @steevc. I love those little bee hives and wonder if they are still there.
We went to Bulgaria some years ago and experienced staying in an old Soviet apartment building in a fortuitous accident.
i was happy to go there before everything is modernised. at the time people were still ploughing the fields by hand. I imagine things will have changed a lot already.
It was interesting to see how a place like that can change, but some aspects will take a long time due to corruption. My mum went to Romania before their revolution and that was a much more extreme example of a 'communist' state.
From what I read here @steevc there are still a lot of problems in Romania. As you say it will take a long time for corruption etc to change. 😊