Eight weeks ago, the sidewalks outside Bulgaria’s national bank overflowed with tens of thousands of protesters demanding new leadership in a country that has seen a carousel of 10 elected and caretaker governments over the past five years.
But on Saturday, the eve of one of the most dramatic cultural changes for Bulgaria in generations, only a short line of people stood silently at the bank’s door.
It was the last day before the lev, Bulgaria’s currency since the 1880s, was replaced with the euro. Though the changeover was long anticipated, it nonetheless divided public opinion, and those standing in line to trade in their leva for euros expressed both support and regret, some tinged with a whisper of melancholy over parting with a piece of their history.
“I’ve been using it my whole life, so I kept some leva in my house until the very last moment, just for sentimental reasons,” said Aneta Petelkova, 79. “And they are very beautiful, very pretty. The euro feels more papery.”
Nikolay Bagdatov, 23, carried bags that threatened to rip under the weight of about 26 pounds in lev coins he had gathered from around his home and car. “I don’t care if it’s euro or lev or denari or dollar — just something for the economy to work,” he said.
The changeover comes at an uneasy time for Bulgaria, one of the European Union’s poorest countries. The president stepped down three weeks ago, and the prime minister resigned in December after accusations of government corruption and amid public resistance to planned tax increases. Elections to choose a new government have not been scheduled, nor is it clear when they will be.
Switching to the euro has spurred concern among Bulgarians that consumer prices will rise, at least temporarily, as is common in currency changeovers. Even so, weariness over the constant political churn dampened some angst over the transition.
“It’s like one more change in the middle of nowhere,” said Velimir Bachev, co-owner of the Coffee Syndicate cafe, which borders a plaza between the national bank and the Parliament building where protesters had gathered in December.
Written in marker on the wall behind him were prices of cappuccinos, espresso shots and other drinks, in both leva and euros, as is required until next August to help customers adjust. The dual display by retailers is intended to prevent businesses rounding up the difference and causing higher prices.
Most of Mr. Bachev’s customers pay with credit or debit cards, making the transition easier. But during the past month, he said, his shop had not always had enough euros to make change for cash-paying clients because banks had run out. Other times, customers wanted to pay with a mix of euros and leva, making for a messy conversion.
“Sometimes the clients acted like we are the currency exchange, which is not OK, because they come here with 100 leva for a cup of coffee to get the change in euros,” he said.
Bulgaria introduced the euro on Jan. 1, giving the country a month to phase out the lev. As of Friday, the final working day before the changeover, about 75 percent of leva had been removed from circulation and replaced with about 6.1 billion euros, or $7.2 billion. An estimated 7.7 billion leva — amounting to nearly €4 billion — remained in circulation, according to Bulgaria’s national bank.
One euro amounts to slightly less than two leva, an exchange rate that had been locked in for nearly three decades. Economists say that means the transition should not result in dramatic price swings or spikes in inflation, and it could even lower costs for trade and tourism because there will no longer be currency conversion fees.
“People were expecting to have problems with the switch over, but I would say these fears were overcome quite swiftly,” Vladimir Ivanov, head of the Bulgarian Euro Coordination Center, which has managed the transition, said in an interview.
Of about 6,000 nationwide spot checks to ensure that retailers and other businesses were properly phasing out the lev, only 8 percent were found to have violated the rules, Mr. Ivanov said. Most of them were small retailers or businesses in rural areas that he said had been slow to accept the change. Repeat offenders faced fines of up to €100,000.
Perceptions that adopting the euro had brought increased inflation and economic stagnation in other countries fueled skepticism in Bulgaria. Far-right politicians and conspiracy theorists also stirred anti-euro fears.
“I’m absolutely against the euro,” said Veselka Deneva, a 44-year-old honey producer, noting that prices in Bulgaria had already increased over the past year.
“I’m going to miss the lev,” she said, tearing up. “I hope it will come back.”
Bulgaria’s monthly inflation was 0.7 percent in January as the euro was phased in, a slower rate than the same period a year earlier, said Petar Ganev, a senior researcher with the Institute for Market Economics, a think tank based in Sofia, the capital. He noted that public opposition to the euro was probably more focused on the timing of the changeover than on the changeover itself, likening the switch to going to the dentist.
“In the long term, you know you need to go,” he said, “but if it is tomorrow, you probably try to delay it.”
Some glitches persisted.
Vladimir Dimitrov, 52, was in line on Saturday to see if the national bank would exchange a €500 bill that he had been paid for construction work into smaller denominations. Local banks had refused to do so, he said, because the note’s issue date was 2002 — the first year the euro was issued — and deemed suspicious since it was so old.
Other than that, he said, he was not bothered by the changeover. “It will be easier when we travel,” he added.
Bulgaria is the 21st of the 27 European Union countries to adopt the euro. It applied to join the eurozone in 2018 as Europe was recovering from a decade-long debt crisis. Final approval by the bloc came in July.
On Sunday, the first day in some 145 years without the lev, any concerns about the change were muted as a soft afternoon snow blanketed Sofia. At the Rainbow Factory, a brunch spot where Italian tourists mingled with locals, customers preferred paying with cards. That was also the most popular option at a pastry shop, DaDonuts, “because we really don’t have enough euro in our register to give back change,” said a 17-year-old clerk, Elisabeth Stefanova.
In Buhovo, a town on Sofia’s outskirts, a shopkeeper, Elena Vladimirova, 56, said that some customers tested the waters by trying to pay with leva on Sunday, “just to see what would happen.”
Some of her customers, especially older residents, have been anxious about the changeover, Ms. Vladimirova noted, and she has sought to reassure them that she will help them navigate the transition.
“We’re a small town, and I know all my customers,” she said. “I often tell them, ‘There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll show me the bills and the coins, we’ll look at them together. We’ll figure it out together.’”
Lara Jakes, a Times reporter based in Rome, reports on conflict and diplomacy, with a focus on weapons and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. She has been a journalist for more than 30 years.
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