OK, now I am slightly insulted in my national pride.
There is a payment law for employees of the German federal government who are travelling
one of its rules is that the traveller gets a daily allowance for each day spent travelling
and there is a table of how much the traveller gets per day depending on destination country.
Of all the countries in the world, Bulgaria gets the second cheapest allowance, 18 Euros per day. Only Moldavia is cheaper with 15 Euros.
There are tons of countries on that list which I think have a lower living standard than Bulgaria. African countries, for example.
Interestingly, the highest sum is paid for Angola, 64 Euros per day. That's more than for Norway or Liechtenstein.
they are probably going of Mercer rankings
And this text (in German) says that the rankings are specifically made with sending employees to foreign countries in mind:
finanzmarktwelt.de/…
so for poor countries with low security standards and possibly high racism, they assume that professional travellers have to be sent to rich people ghettos or apartment complexes with heavy security
and these are rare and expensive, which makes the average cost of sending people there very high.
That's how Luanda gets to be on top of the list.
Sofia gets the lowest ranking for EU capitals, because the cost of living there is really the lowest from all EU.
But also it is a place where foreigners are very safe (I would suppose even much safer than in some inner cities in the USA) so they can live in an average hotel.
Hey, I never knew about the Good country index. Looks interesting!
