"The bear tried to pull me out of the car": the Bulgarian man attacked in Romania speaks out for the first time

The case of a Bulgarian tourist attacked by a bear in Romania while feeding it caused a wide public reaction and was covered by numerous international media. For the first time after the incident, "Georgi Bizhev" from Gorna Oryahovitsa gave a detailed account of what happened during his trip along the so‑called "bear pass" in the morning show "The Day Begins". Bizhev is the chairman of the Sports and Technical Commission of the Zonal Council of the Bulgarian Football Union in Veliko Tarnovo.

Travelling to the Champions League final through the “bear pass”

"A few days ago, that is on Wednesday, my friend and I set off to watch the Champions League final in Budapest. And as every year, we go through the so‑called bear pass, or the pass that is closest to the sky," says Georgi Bizhev.

According to him, this is far from his first time on this route: "Maybe for about the 10th time we pass through there." The area is known precisely because it gives tourists the opportunity to observe bears at close range, often from their cars.

Common practice: feeding wild bears from cars

Bizhev stresses that many visitors go to this stretch with one main goal: "All the people who go on this pass go there only to see the bears." Along the route there are restaurants and shops that sell food specifically intended for the wild animals.

"Along the whole road, until you reach the place where the bears actually come out, in every restaurant and every shop there are special corners where you can buy food for the bears," he explains. Bizhev admits that feeding wild animals is a mistake, but emphasises that it is a widespread practice: "There is no person who goes there and has not fed the bears, which does not excuse either me or the behaviour of the person who was with me feeding a wild animal, but we do not think we did something wrong."

How a moment of curiosity turns into an attack

According to him, the situation began to change when other tourists decided to provoke the animal: "The tourists who were behind me, maybe out of ignorance, maybe because it was their first time there, started whistling at the bear and shouting." This behaviour clearly agitated the wild animal, which until then had approached the cars calmly.

Bizhev says that later, when he watched the video of the incident, he clearly saw the change in the bear’s behaviour: "I saw that the bear’s ears perked up and with one jump…" Then came the moment he describes as shocking: "We saw how the window of our car turned out to be like a newspaper for her."

"It tried to grab me and pull me out"

After the window shattered, the animal directed its attack straight at the driver’s seat. "Maybe the fact that I was wearing a seat belt saved me to some extent. It tried to grab me and pull me out of the car," says Bizhev. He explains that at first the bear tried to seize him by the neck.

"The bear tried to pull me out of the car and bite me here on the neck. Then I raised my arm like this. And it bit me on the arm," he explains, showing the place of the injury. Thanks to his instinctive reaction and the seat belt, the incident resulted "only" in a bite and wounds to the arm instead of a potentially fatal outcome.

"I entered its environment" – an admission of guilt

Despite the shock and pain, Georgi Bizhev does not blame the bear for the incident. On the contrary, he accepts his own fault as a person who entered the wild and broke the rules, even if they are tacitly tolerated by the local tourist business.

"I have entered its environment. I believe that what I did was a mistake. A mistake for which I have paid, as you can see," he says. With his words Bizhev also sends an indirect appeal to other tourists not to repeat his actions and not to underestimate wild animals, no matter how "used" to people they may seem.

Gratitude to doctors and looking ahead

Despite what he went through, Georgi Bizhev now looks at the incident with a rather positive and sober attitude. He uses his public appearance to thank the medical teams who took care of him after his return to Bulgaria – from the emergency services to the hospital staff who helped treat his wounds.

His story turns into a real warning: even an apparently "ordinary" tourist attraction like feeding bears from a car can turn within seconds into a life‑threatening situation. Bizhev’s admission that he made a mistake and his refusal to put the blame on the animal highlight the need for stricter control and clearer rules for visiting such places – both in Romania and everywhere people dangerously approach wildlife.