American driving a car in in BG

I drive in Bulgaria, but my Bulgarian husband owns the car. As far as getting a license, for the first year you can drive with a US license w/ the international DP or Bulgarian translation.

After that you are supposed to take the Bulgaria courses and exams to get a Bulgarian license (well, technically before the year is up but after you have lived here for at least 6 months). However, I know quite a few Americans who simply renew their International DP every time they renew their lichna card and have not had any problems. (Not suggesting doing that... I went the legal way and took the lessons).

Thanks. That is helpful. I was also told that the class and exam can be in English. Is that correct?

Depends on where you are. In smaller areas, there are not English-speaking driving teachers. In places like Sofia, Varna there are some English-speaking instructors. The written exam is available in English, but I could not understand many of the questions because they were either British terms or poor translations (a few questions are seriously word salad) you can take practice exams in English here:

https://avtoizpit.com/

I am not sure if there are any English-speaking proctors for the driving exam. Perhaps in Sofia. But your instructor and another student will be in the car with you during the exam, so I suppose your English-speaking instructor could translate for you maybe?

I did all of mine in Bulgarian, so I am not much help there.

kojidae wrote:

I did all of mine in Bulgarian, so I am not much help there.

how much did you pay in total to get your license in total, may i ask?

i'm hoping to find a driving school in varna, that can provide the whole procedure in english (or german).

I paid 600 lev to my school. This included the lessons, a study book, one attempt at written exam and one attempt at driving exam. For them, if a student fails the exam, they just charge the amount the state charges (I think 30 lev for the written and 100 lev for the driving, but it changes each time you have to retake it).

I then paid 20 lev to have my high school diploma recognized in Bulgaria (in addition to the 6 dollars in the US)

I paid 50 lev for the 3 day service to get the license. (Although this was actually two weeks and three days because they have to do a background check on non-eu drivers throughout the eu system).

So about 700 in total, if I include notarization and whatnot.


Beware some schools will advertise that their course is just 400 or 500 lev, but that doesn't include the cost of the exams. So make sure you ask whether the exams are included in the cost of the course or not.

thanks for the info!

i know in the us getting a driving license is rather cheap, but in germany it cost roughly 2000 eur on average wich is like ab.3900 levs.
so to me it's really a great price, even 700-800 lev.
you don't by any chance happen to now an (english speaking) driving school in or around either varna or bourgas?
cheers