All visitors to Bulgaria are required to register as a foreigner ( registratsiya na chuzhdentsi ) within 48 hours of arrival. If you're staying in a hotel, campsite, hostel or private room rented through an agency, then the job of registration should be done for you by your hosts. If you are staying with friends, or renting a private room unofficially, then you have to register yourself, by showing up at the local police station with your passport, your host, and your host's ID documents. Either way, you should be provided with a dated registration slip which you should keep with you at all times, ready to surrender it to passport control upon leaving the country.

In practice, however, many visitors end up unregistered; either because hotels are ignorant of the regulations, or because individual hosts simply can't be bothered with the hassle. This shouldn't be a cause of major worry: border guards rarely check the registration slips of short-stay tourists with Western passports (nationals of other countries are much more likely to be targeted by over-zealous officials). If you've been in the country for more than a couple of weeks, however, the lack of any registration slips at all may land you in serious trouble (and get you a large fine) at the border, and you'd be well advised to check into a reputable hotel or two in order to get some