"My name is Gabriel and I am a Romanian living in London. From time to time we come to Bulgaria. And I have decided to volunteer. I want us to unite people and municipalities and set a personal example. If a Romanian living in England can clean up Bulgaria, so can you. I know that you love Bulgaria a lot, but love it clean!" - this is how Romanian Gabriel  starts his video address to the Bulgarians, which he uploaded to his Facebook page "The Romanian Cleans Bulgaria". Its purpose is to inspire Bulgarians to make their country cleaner.

He is an agronomist engineer. He learned perfect Bulgarian thanks to his wife, who is from Varna. The Bulgarian-Romanian family lives in the British capital, but regularly travels to Varna and also to Sofia, where one of their children attends physiotherapy.

In March, while waiting for his child to finish the procedures, Gabriel spent 1-2 hours a day for a period of a week to clean the green spaces nearby, which were partially turned into a parking lot and even into an unregulated dump. In this way, the Romanian wants to contribute to the cleanliness of Sofia. When he returned to Varna he continued with his selfless work and example, we learn from a report by Alexander Yordanov from BNR-Varna, who spoke with him at a playground in the Troshevo district:

"Even on this playground, my child, who was not yet walking, crawled on all fours and went to what looks like a sandbox," Gabriel says. “I saw very tall grass growing there. I dug through the grass and found nails and three sharp metal objects sticking out of the ground. I went to the mayor and told him about the problem. Municipality workers came in 3-4 days and cut them. I have decided to make the whole place clean and clear the grass between the tiles.”

Gabriel's last action was a few days ago in the Hippodrome district of the capital city of Sofia. Thanks to his efforts, the children's playground on “Sofiyski Geroi” Street is unrecognizable - there is no trace of the ugly graffiti on the children’s facilities. The Romanian posted photos of the playground with the following appeal: "Please take care of this playground, which is a place where children get their best memories from. A little acetone, a sponge and then water will remove the drawings if someone decided to vandalize it again."

In this way, Gabriel wants to show that a true patriot not just loves their country, but makes sure that it is clean. According to him, not all Western European countries have such a rich history and wonderful landscapes as Bulgaria, but it is sad to see waste in the cities and in the mountains:

"We need to help ourselves first and not to wait for someone else to do it. If we blame the mayor and then the mayor says that people make garbage, then we would continue blaming ourselves for 50 more years and keep living in filth," Gabriel says.

The Romanian citizen, together with his wife, plans to move to Sofia and his voluntary actions to become more and more frequent.

See also:

• A Briton works for the benefit of locals to turn Stoikite in the Rhodope ‎Mountain into a model village

• Dr. Payam Forghani from Australia - Bulgaria is a spiritual land, but it lacks solidarity and trust

Text: Veneta Nikolova /based on report by Alexander Yordanov from BNR-Varna/

English version and publication: Al. Markov