A chance encounter during a Bulgarian night at a disco in the US turned the life of Marian Ivanov around completely, and he is now happily married to his wife Anya – who was born in Mongolia. Anya moved from her country of birth to the US where, five years later, she met her husband-to-be. Two years later they were living together and six years later they got engaged. A little afterwards she found out she was pregnant – with the first of their three children - and the two got married. Before they met, Marian had worked as pool lifeguard, then he started driving a taxi and then – a truck. Together with a friend, he set up a small transport company, and when he met his wife they decided to sell the transport company and moved to Chicago, and then to Florida where they bought an already smoothly operating Italian restaurant.  

“People kept wondering why on Earth we had bought it, they kept asking us whether we knew how to make pasta or pizza,” says Marian Ivanov. “But we had got it along with the staff and the menu so we didn’t need to change anything. We had it for three years, then we sold it, I bought a truck and for a while I was a truck driver. After a while we started investing in real estate. We had several buildings there which we rented out. Now we are selling them and investing in real estate in Bulgaria.”

Marian Ivanov says Bulgaria has changed a great deal in the past 20 years, and it has changed for the better:

“I don’t know how and when the change began but things in 2000 and things now are very different. The changes are in the infrastructure, in the way of thinking etc. Here, I can pay by card everywhere, in the US that was not possible. Many people now speak English, 20 years ago that was not so either. I live in Plovdiv and let me say – I rarely see potholes, 20 years ago there were potholes everywhere.”

The family’s inevitable encounter with different institutions also went surprisingly smoothly:

“When we arrived I had to have my personal documents reissued, and get documents for my children issued. I told my friends, and wrote on social media that it hadn’t taken much time at all, and everyone was really surprised. It was really easy to enroll the children in school and I paid the medical insurance. Of course, I am not saying everything is perfect but I was expecting it to be awful,” he adds.

However, Marian admits the children are finding it difficult to adapt because they have not made friends yet because they do not speak Bulgarian well enough. Thanks to his mother, who had been living with them in America for several months at a time, they do know basic things, what they lacked was knowledge of the vernacular.  

His wife Anya adapted quickly. She even started making short videos describing her family’s life. One of the things she talks about in her videos is her relationship with her mother-in-law, which she says she is really pleased with:

“No two mothers-in-law and alike, and their expectations of their son’s wife are different too. What I know about Mongolia is that when the mother-in-law comes to visit, the daughter-in-law has to do everything – clean the house, cook etc., but with my mother-on-law it was very different. When we came home from the hospital after I had given birth she had cleaned the house, cooked, and kept asking if there was anything she could do to help. My own parents also try to be around us when they can, but they are still working so they don’t have much time.”

Anya says her family rarely drink alcohol but they are fond of homemade red wine, and she enjoys mixed grill, steak, gyuvech, moussaka and Shopka salad, but not sauerkraut.

Translated and posted by Milena Daynova
Photos courtesy of Marian and Anya Ivanov