People in poorer countries always have a romantic image of just how perfect life is in the United States or the European Union compared with what they have to endure in their homeland. Throughout my travels in Russia and Eastern Europe, for example, people I'd meet would say things like, "we have many of potholes in our country! In America, you have not potholes, right?"

Sure, things were and still are bad in many parts of the former communist empire, but life is never as perfect as most people imagine it to be in the West. And that is why I had to laugh at the short animated film above. It basically sums up this concept as it flashes between life in Bulgaria and life in the EU. Naturally, everything is just perfect in the EU; Bulgaria, on the other hand, is falling apart.

Filed under: Bulgaria, Video