{"id":548733,"date":"2026-07-14T06:23:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T06:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/548733\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T06:23:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T06:23:16","slug":"friends-who-visit-me-in-ireland-ask-why-are-you-complaining-the-weather-here-is-amazing-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/548733\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Friends who visit me in Ireland ask why are you complaining? The weather here is amazing\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Desislava Andreeva (36) moved from Bulgaria<\/a> to Dublin<\/a> in 2022. She grew up in Canada<\/a> and says that much about Ireland reminds her of there. However, the big difference is the weather. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn Canada we had four seasons, here we just have rain and sun,\u201d Andreeva says. <\/p>\n

Much to Andreeva\u2019s annoyance, any time people have come to visit her here, it has been exceptionally sunny.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they say, why are you complaining all the time? The weather here is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andreeva\u2019s family is from Bulgaria, but her parents emigrated to Canada when she was two years old. She grew up and attended school in Canada before moving to Sofia, Bulgaria\u2019s capital city, for medical school. By the time she started at medical school her parents had retired and moved back to Bulgaria.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents moved in their late 20s, early 30s. They grew up in Bulgaria and then went across the world in the early 90s. It was a very big shock and I don\u2019t think they ever got used to it. They always wanted to go back,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She decided to do her medical degree through English as, although her family had always spoken Bulgarian at home, she did not feel completely fluent. Her medical class was very international. Most students were American but there were some from Ireland and the UK. <\/p>\n

Eventually she choose to specialise in ophthalmology and specifically eye surgery. <\/p>\n

\u201cI really love drawing and painting, so I found that it was very close to that. Ocular surgery has an art to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DrDr Desislava Andreeva plans to stay in Ireland. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

While she made lots of friends at medical school and loved being close to her family, she never fully felt at home in Bulgaria. \u201cI grew up in an English-speaking country,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Once her time at medical school was over, many of her friends moved back to where they were from. She firstly got a fixed-term contract in the UK and while she was there her brother, who is also an ophthalmologist, got a job in Ireland. When the place where he worked was seeking another ophthalmologist, Andreeva decided to apply \u2013 even though she had only been to Ireland once before to visit her brother. <\/p>\n

In Canada, she spent her formative years surrounded by people who proudly proclaimed their Irish heritage and believes that as a result the Canadian and Irish cultures are very similar. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a few friends in Ireland and I did ask them before I came, how is the healthcare system? What is Ireland like in general? They only had good things to say so I decided to give it a try.\u201d <\/p>\n

She works across a few different eye clinics in Dublin and Kildare.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see anything from red eye, to maybe a bit of steel in their eye, to swollen eyes or sudden loss of vision. It can be something very small to something very serious,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lot more chaotic in Sofia, here it is a lot calmer<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Dr Desislava Andreeva<\/p>\n

While finding somewhere to live that was convenient for her work was a challenge, today she feels happy and settled in her life here. <\/p>\n

A big difference she has noticed between life in Sofia and Dublin is people\u2019s attitudes towards driving. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot more chaotic in Sofia, here it is a lot calmer.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Andreeva, people drive a lot faster in Sofia and have a more relaxed attitude towards the traffic laws in general. <\/p>\n

She was surprised by the lack of public transport infrastructure that Dublin has, compared to Sofia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the public transport here would be a lot better. In Sofia there\u2019s an underground, there\u2019s buses which are always on schedule, there\u2019s trams and it\u2019s very, very easy and convenient to get from one point to another.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From Boston to Ireland: \u2018It\u2019s been almost three years, but I\u2019m still a foreigner\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In Dublin, she has found that sometimes buses do not turn up at all or won\u2019t stop if they are full, and says this happens quite often. <\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you can be standing in the rain for a while waiting for the next bus to come. You don\u2019t really know when it\u2019s going to come.\u201d <\/p>\n

It also came as a surprise to her that passengers can\u2019t pay for their fare on the bus or train with contactless payments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was once stuck without cash, I just had my phone with me. The bus driver said \u2018cash or Leap card\u2019. I didn\u2019t know what a Leap card was,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In the end the bus driver let her on to the bus so that she could make it home. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0 People New to the Parish \u2018We came back to Ireland in late October, not the best time to come back. It was quite cold\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Andreeva believes Ireland has better supermarkets than Canada and Bulgaria.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of the produce is better because it is produced locally. In Bulgaria they import a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also brought her beloved dog with her when she moved to Dublin. Before she moved, she was under the impression that the city would be more dog-friendly than it is. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the restaurants say they are dog-friendly, but they make you sit outside,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Whereas in Bulgaria, she says that there is no issue with people bringing their dog into any restaurant or shop. \u201cMy dog is small so I can hide her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andreeva sees herself staying in Ireland long-term.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like the people, I think the people are very kind. If you want to go on vacation, it\u2019s a very quick flight to the beach \u2013 two, three hours and you are there.\u201d<\/p>\n

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com<\/a> or send us two lines about yourself using the form below. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Desislava Andreeva (36) moved from Bulgaria to Dublin in 2022. She grew up in Canada and says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[69542,72,289,615,61,60,3770,37614],"class_list":["post-548733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bulgaria","tag-business","tag-canada","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kildare","tag-new-to-the-parish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}