DW: Why is Bulgaria So Dirty?

The travelers around our lands probably feel as if they found themselves in a hospital room of a patient with depressive disorder: the bed is unmade, a musty bowl of yogurt by the window, flies buzzing around the chamber pot. Any doctor will tell you: one of the signs of depression is the loss of desire to keep things around you tidy.

Bulgaria has sunk into depression. And in waste

Why is it so dirty in Bulgaria? If you, like me, walk a dog in Sofia, you certainly know that the streets are littered with bones and all sorts of other discarded food - my pet must think he's going out to a restaurant. Dogs' masters do not clean up after their pets, and if you ask them why, they will offer a lame excuse that having in mind the number of stray dogs the overall effect of their conscientious attitude would not be much noticeable. Dry leaves are rotting in the streets by and large, and if someone decides to set up a small garden in front of an apartment block, it would be only under their own balcony. During the Covid crisis, restaurants switched to selling takeaway food, the result is that mountains of empty boxes and plastic bags are piling up in the nearby bushes and around the trash cans. But the most curious is the way they deal with the wall graffiti in Bulgaria - because no one bothers to clean them, they get thicker, form layers, and in the end the graffiters give up because they see that their hobby occupation is pointless.

I live on a small street in a central neighborhood, and I haven't seen it washed even once in ten years. In my childhood, I also lived on a small street, but I remember that every month street washing trucks would come to clean it. I see weeds running riot in all kinds of crevices, perhaps under a wildlife...