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Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

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Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#21

Post by chimen »

cromat3 wrote: post #20
chimen wrote: post #7

Joining 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 mani…

Same happened to Croatia. From 2013. when we joined EU, Croatia lost at least 140000 people, which is about 3,3% of population, but unlike Bulgaria, I can say that Croatia is a really safe country.

Croatia is really a sight. Very nice place. On the expensive side though.

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#22

Post by sbmthakur »

robocat wrote: post #13
chimen wrote: post #7

Joining 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 mani…

A few years ago I traveled solo through Bulgaria for a few days from Serbia to Greece on a 50cc Yamaha DT50R, avoiding major roads (due to small engine and it's just fun - spent a month going from Marseille to Istanbul - loved all the ex-yugoslav countries). Never noticed anything dangerous while traveling in Bulgaria, although Sofia has that normal big city be-careful feel to it. No bribes required either. Obviously…

Did you also travel through the night?

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#23

Post by robocat »

sbmthakur wrote: post #22
robocat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I traveled solo through Bulgaria for a few days from Serbia to Greece on a 50cc Yamaha DT50R, avoiding major roads (due to small engine and it's just fun - spent a month going from Marseille to Istanbul - loved all the ex-yugoslav countries). Never noticed anything dangerous while traveling in Bulgaria, although Sofia has that normal big city be-careful feel to it. No bribes required either. Obviously…

Did you also travel through the night?

After dark - yes. Very late at night - no.

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#24

Post by jacobush »

throwaway8342 wrote: post #5

As 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…

Came to say basically what you said. The communist bloc/empire collapsed and was places like these were washed away in the tide of globalization. The same happened in the rest of Europe, but it was especially brutal in the Warsaw bloc. The more capitalist countries were better prepared to handle globalization.

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#26

Post by madaxe_again »

robocat wrote: post #13
chimen wrote: post #7

Joining 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 mani…

A few years ago I traveled solo through Bulgaria for a few days from Serbia to Greece on a 50cc Yamaha DT50R, avoiding major roads (due to small engine and it's just fun - spent a month going from Marseille to Istanbul - loved all the ex-yugoslav countries). Never noticed anything dangerous while traveling in Bulgaria, although Sofia has that normal big city be-careful feel to it. No bribes required either. Obviously…

Ditto, I spent three weeks there last year travelling the hinterlands - everywhere from the Romanian border to the Turkish border, and from Sofia to the Black Sea - on back roads for the most part.

At no point did I feel unsafe - and I drove at night, walked through cities at night, parked my shiny hire car wherever.

We did see plenty of depopulated rural towns and villages, but there seems to be a substantial push into ecotourism, and we met several young couples who had returned to renovate homes in their home villages. Got chatting to plenty of older locals, too - they speak German, the young folks English. Very warm, and welcoming, everywhere we met people.

We did find that almost every museum and historic site had to be unlocked for us, as we were usually the only people at any of them - all the tourists were at Sveti Blas, lying on the beach.

I don’t know - maybe it’s just a relative scale thing - I would count walking through Sao Paolo at night as somewhat sketchy, but not the instant death sentence that people seem to think it is, for instance.

Just because it’s covered heavily in the media doesn’t mean it’s commonplace.

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#27

Post by witty_user_name »

chimen wrote: post #7

Joining 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 mani…

By the way your article would suggest that car theft is a significantly larger problem in Romania than BG.

From https://movafaq.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/romanian-cars-bulga...

> In 2012 (the last year for which data are available) vehicle thefts in Bulgaria rose to 0.4 per 1,000 people in the population ... For Romania, the number is 1.6 per 1000 people

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#28

Post by peshooo »

Jughashvili wrote: post #2

That'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.

And yours is a good example of a troll comment. Living in Bulgaria now is a lot better in almost every way compared to the communist times.

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#29

Post by npace12 »

I grew up in Bulgaria in the 90's and these villages were quite derelict back then as well. During summer break, a lot of parents used to send their kids to their grandparents for weeks/months. I wasn't one of them and I remember being very bored as all my friends would go to "selo" (village)

Now, as a parent living in the US, I can't imagine ever sending my kids to places like these but I wonder what they'd be missing out on development-wise. The villages were great, vast playgrounds.

Re: Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video]

#30

Post by gabbygab »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #3

It's interesting, but I found myself wondering if you could find similar places in the USA these days, also ...

We've had ghost villages since colonial days ( where native americans chased out of their villages or wiped out ) before being repopulated with european settlers, ghost towns from countless boom and bust cycles ( fur, timber, oil, gold, etc and of course the great depression ) and most recently the rust belt which is still ongoing problem.
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