West Devon became a little more multi-cultural recently, albeit temporarily, with the arrival of four Bulgarian students.
The two young men and two young women — Zhivko Nenkov, 23, Yasen Petrov, 20, Patricia Mindova, 19, and Borislava Nedyalkova, 20 — are students at the college of tourism in Burgas, a town on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.
They will spend the next five months at the Manor House Hotel near Okehampton, learning many of the practical aspects of Britain's hospitality industry, as well as improving their English and . . . well, just having a good time.
Yasen is from Burgas. Zhivko comes from Sliven, 100km west of Burgas. The women come from Varna, the capital city of the coastal region.
'We wanted to see the way the English work in the tourism industry and we also wanted to visit the country and we want to improve our English,' said Zhivko.
So what did they make of this rather verdant bit of England they'd landed in?
'We were very pleasantly surprised when we got here because England is a very nice country, despite having the reputation of being very highly developed,' said Zhivko.
Bulgaria, situated in south eastern Europe on the Balkan peninsula, is bordered by Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Yugoslavia and Romania and enjoys a fine climate. England they found a little cold and damp.
Both men, although young when democracy was restored in 1989, remember life in a Bulgaria stifling under almost half a century of totalitarian rule after the Soviet invasion.
'We remember communism very well,' said Zhivko, who was 13 in 1989. 'Up until 1989 we didn't vote every four years for a new government. There was only one for 45 years — the red one.'
Yas said democracy had made big differences to their lives — for one thing it had allowed them to make this trip — but Bulgaria's streets were not paved with gold for the majority of Bulgarians.
'The situation is still not very good,' he said. 'Wages are only about £50 to £60 a month. You can only just pay your bills, there's nothing left over to go out with.'
In a more literal sense, the streets are paved with industrial grime. The giant petroleum refinery in Burgas, so big it contributes some 20 to 30 per cent of the Bulgarian GNP, is not constrained by the same environmental laws as other parts of Europe.
'Our town is one of the most polluted places in the world. It is very dirty,' said Yas.
'The politics in Bulgaria are very dirty too,' said Zhivko. 'There are a lot of poor people and some very, very rich people too.'
The whole town is industrial and in communist times everything was exported to Russia, but now there is high unemployment and the factories which can't pay their bills are closed down or sold.
The rash of privatisations has meant there is a lot of money to be made very rapidly by the unscrupulous and a lot of corruption.
'Some people are becoming very rich and other people are struggling to live, but it's not clean money, their money. And they are really rich, even by European standards,' said Yas. 'We are a very capable nation and the government is trying to combat the corruption — although there's corruption in politics too.
'For 45 years our country has had only state-owned industry — there was no stimulation to work hard, you just got paid for your hours, but Bulgarians are very clever, we can work very well, we are good professional people.
And despite the carbuncles of eco-unfriendly industry, Bulgaria is still a beautiful country.
'Yes, it's a very beautiful country — nice resources, good nature, nice coast. We hope our tourism will develop over the next few years and become very good,' said Zhivko.
And, despite the terrible ethnic hatred raging elsewhere in the Balkans, Bulgaria which includes Gypsies, Turks and Greeks, is very peaceful.
Bulgaria is currently trying to join the EU, but Yas said they would not be very good for the EU and he could understand why they weren't being allowed to join.
'But I hope in five or ten years we can join the EU — there's a lot of investment and we hope it comes to Bulgaria,' he said.
Even so, many youngsters can't wait, including Yas, who would dearly love to live somewhere else, and that's a problem.
'Everyone wants to get out of the country,' said Zhivko. 'Bulgaria is losing its young generation.'
So it's a happy little interlude in the UK.
'We already started to enjoy ourselves — we've been sailing for example, and we want to get around the country and see the nature and the environment,' said Zhivko. 'We thought the English were a very conservative people, but as we have seen they are not — they have a good sense of humour. It's good fun to be here.'
'They are very energetic, they laugh a lot, it's unbelievable,' added Yas
'They are very kind, very polite,' said Zhivko.
They seem to have been lucky so far, but, even if you can't generalise an entire nation, I guess most of us would be happy to hear ourselves described like that.