Bulgaria joined the EU in January and Sofia, its capital, is ready for visitors. It may not be as glamorous as those favorite eastern European capitals, Prague and Budapest, but this city of just over a million, surrounded by snow-covered peaks, is a pleasant surprise.

It’s not just the cheap beer, disco beat, and ample golden beaches that have made Bulgaria’s seaside resorts the new package holiday hot-spot for Europe’s masses. For the Brits, there’s familiar food such as bacon sandwiches and chicken curry…and English is spoken everywhere. Even so, it’s not only Brits and Irish coming here in great number. Golden Sands and Sunny Beach (Bulgaria’s two largest resorts) are a multinational melting-pot of Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Greeks, Czechs, Russians, and Hungarians.

Strategically located between Europe and Asia, Bulgaria mixes influences from Russian, Greek, Armenian, Roman, and Turkish cultures into a distinctive new form. Some customs here seem deceptively familiar–as I discovered when I ordered lunch with no trouble but then had the waitress tell me “no” when I wanted to leave afterwards. The first time this happened, my reaction was to keep repeating myself in English: “Please, can I have the check…please?” I even broke into my rusty Russian skills, but still, she just shook her head.

The main reason why places like Golden Sands are netting visitors is price–Bulgaria is far cheaper than the Spanish Costas and Balearic Islands. You can get a beer here, for example, for about 50 cents.