Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
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Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#2That's a good example of the results of the healing powers of capitalism, that the western propaganda talked so much about, when they were collapsing the Soviet Union.
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#3It's interesting, but I found myself wondering if you could find similar places in the USA these days, also ...
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#4It's interesting, but I found myself wondering if you could find similar places in the USA these days, also ...
Absolutely... neighborhoods, towns, and roads surrounding former major industrial centers (or mining towns), and occasionally the city itself. By land area, a lot of the US is like this, you just have to do a lot of driving if you are on the coasts, or fly to a small airport and drive to a different small airport.
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#5As much as the story pains me as Bulgarian, I'd like to provide some more facts rather than emotions.
Before the end of communist rule in Bulgaria everything was distributed rather evenly across the country and believe it or not the majority of people were content, there was work and some pay and most people got the same. The exceptions were not visible. After this the country "reset" and places with critical mass of well-educated people did well and the rest not. This is one of the latter ones. It had the bad luck to be close enough to the capitol (50-100km) which basically has zero unemployment rate and good salaries. It is nevertheless not so well connected so you can't easily commute there to work. The population is not enough to have critical mass to attract good investments. There are no universities in this part. Then Bulgaria joined EU and it became even easier to have better life quickly. It's one of the negative effects of globalization if you are not on the winning side.
In contrast, there are places in Bulgaria that are doing great. Plovdiv sports 150+ factories with Magna, Airbus, Liebherr and is currently the European Cultural Capitol. In Sofia you can find pretty much any IT company - HP, IBM, Paysafe, SAP, etc.
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#6As much as the story pains me as Bulgarian, I'd like to provide some more facts rather than emotions. Before the end of communist rule in Bulgaria everything was distributed rather evenly across the country and believe it or not the majority of people were content, there was work and some pay and most people got the same. The exceptions were not visible. After this the country "reset" and places with critical mass of…
If communism hadn’t collapsed, would these places be better? It’s a fair question, since you cannot keep things in stasis.
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#7Joining EU had this effect on my country as well (Romania). There are entire villages (I lived in one of them for 6 years and I can make a difference) where just old people can be found. The young left for other countries (mostly UK and Italy) and to the bigger cities but the latter did so because, for some reason, they couldn't find anything abroad.
What you're left with is nothing but old people who are easily manipulated into voting for whoever promises a bigger pension - sad but true, they dictate the future by majority. It's been years since we're fighting corruption at the highest level without success.
Bulgaria is even scarier than that. We travel to or through Bulgaria almost each year (going to their beaches or to Turkey) and we happen to go through huge areas without seeing people at all. Often times, when stopping for gas (true story, happened to us last year), you encounter really shady people that simply look for trouble - especially with the ladies. In one occasion we stopped for more than 30 mins and the individuals started "gathering up" and doing whatever they can to spark a fight with us.
I have friends who traveled at night and swear to not do it again. They encountered the same type of individuals that were cutting trees onto the road to prevent you from going any further and try to rob people. We have a rule, never travel Bulgaria alone, even if you're alone at the border you need to find someone else going to the same direction and go in packs.
Sad to see a country go down like that. We have witnessed this country getting worse and worse each year. Also, they seem to be even more corrupt than us, we prepare batches of 10 euros for police because we know they will stop us, we just get the paper out of the windows, salute and go...that's all they want.
I'm curious if other Bulgarians are aware of the difficulties we have to deal with while traveling in their country.
Edit: I see some folks complain that I'm fabricating. I own a tourism small business and we always warn people of 2 things when doing Bulgaria:
1 - Never park your car where it's not being guarded, filmed, monitored (lots of cases with people left without their vehicle) 2 - Never stop at night on the road (if you can)
Romanian journalism (requires translation). The internet is filled:
- http://www.reporterntv.ro/stire/vacanta-de-cosmar-pentru-o-f...
- https://www.romaniatv.net/romani-lasati-fara-masini-in-timp-...
- https://www.promotor.ro/opinii/george-buhnici-despre-problem...
- https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/social/romani-ramasi...
- https://movafaq.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/romanian-cars-bulga...
- https://www.b1.ro/stiri/auto/varna-hoti-romani-furati-in-bul...
- https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/masini-furate-in-bulgaria-17...
- https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/vacanta-in-bulgari...
- https://observator.tv/social/vacanta-la-schi-in-bulgaria-a-l...
- http://www.bmwclub.ro/forums/topic/171395-bmw-furat-in-bulga...
I can go on but there's no point.
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#8I was reading on the history of Bulgaria from wikipedia, and came across this curious snippet:
> Facing declining birth rates among the ethnic Bulgarian majority, in 1984 Zhivkov's government forced the minority ethnic Turks to adopt Slavic names in an attempt to erase their identity and assimilate them
So the population decline is not just some recent post-communist depression, but something more deeply ingrained in the society. This is especially weird as it seems the nation was doing relatively well for an underdeveloped communist country in the 80s ("per capita GDP quadrupled by the 1980s").
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#9It's interesting, but I found myself wondering if you could find similar places in the USA these days, also ...
Appalachia...
Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]
#10As much as the story pains me as Bulgarian, I'd like to provide some more facts rather than emotions. Before the end of communist rule in Bulgaria everything was distributed rather evenly across the country and believe it or not the majority of people were content, there was work and some pay and most people got the same. The exceptions were not visible. After this the country "reset" and places with critical mass of…
> the majority of people were content
Definitely they couldn’t complain.
(By the way, you meant “capital”, not “capitol”.)