@Carolyn
"No other Bulgarians touched them for the record and after my incident I looked to see if there were any signs about not touching them. There were not." 
- Hence the mind's inertia since the times when restrictions where everywhere...

"Bulgarian men tried to cut in front of me" 
– This is another typical mentality of ignorance/arrogance combination.

"As for not having a new phone, oh well." 
- Is your old phone working? Does it ring? Can you make a call? If yes, then you do have a phone. After all, this is what a phone does - receives and places calls. Why complicate your life with more gizmos, each one of them crying for attention?  When I need a toast, this is all I need from the toaster, a toast.  I do not need the toaster telling me what the temperature on the surface of the toast is, or show me what the current time and day it is, and I do not expect it to be a radio.  

We need the technology to serve us, and not us serving the technology. Do not forget the title you choose yourself : Still rocking my simple phone, smartphone be damned” 

"I guess it’s a good way to save some money. Wasn’t that also an element of the planned economy–forced savings?" 
- Yes, and it was one of the very few advantages we had: We could not compete between ourselves at the material level, we were all equally poor.  It is like going to school in uniforms - everyone is equally cool.
-Adrian