
Altimir: Life in the depopulated Bulgarian countryside [video] - oska
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9Ufhi_42h0
======
Halluxfboy009
Very bored with "documentaries" showing Bulgaria as under developed country
with people living in villages, thinking it will be "original". 74% of the
population is in urban areas, so showing this village with no roads is really
trivial. If you wanted to look into the problem you should have filmed the
young people who are living the country and why. Also why you present content
which is a few years old without specifying that?

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Chico11Kidlet
1\. It's NOT the world's fastest shrinking country 2. Filming a god-forgotten
village located in the poorest region of certain country does not depict
anything. It's like saying that the ghetto part of Detroit depicts America.

~~~
chewyland
It actually is the world's fastest shrinking country due to facts that it is.

~~~
HNLurker2
[https://www.populationpyramid.net/bulgaria/2029/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/bulgaria/2029/)
Yes see context

See Denmark for comparasion:
[https://www.populationpyramid.net/denmark/2029/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/denmark/2029/)

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wowxp
As bulgarin I don't see anything sad in this video. This happens everywhere in
the world, everyone is going to big cities for better perspectives. In some
countries the depopulation of rural areas is happening faster. It's how the
world works nowadays.

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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.

~~~
nikolay
I go back to Bulgaria every summer exactly because I want my kids to spend
time in places like Altimir, not rot in toxic urban environments in the US. In
fact, my kids spend their time in a much smaller village. They are around farm
animals, they roam free all day long unsupervised and only come back when they
are hungry, i.e. twice a day. My only worry is the ticks, but so far, we've
been lucky, plus, I have Tetracycline always handy.

~~~
londons_explore
Where human populations are lower, there are fewer ticks that bite humans.

Bits of woodland near cities and also with wild animals are where you should
be most worried.

~~~
nikolay
It makes sense.

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throwaway8342
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 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.

~~~
kgwgk
> the majority of people were content

Definitely they couldn’t complain.

(By the way, you meant “capital”, not “capitol”.)

------
chimen
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 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...](http://www.reporterntv.ro/stire/vacanta-de-cosmar-pentru-o-familie-
din-constanta-hotii-din-bulgaria-i-au-lasat-fara-masina-video)

\- [https://www.romaniatv.net/romani-lasati-fara-masini-in-
timp-...](https://www.romaniatv.net/romani-lasati-fara-masini-in-timp-ce-se-
aflau-in-vacanta-in-bulgaria_341849.html)

\- [https://www.promotor.ro/opinii/george-buhnici-despre-
problem...](https://www.promotor.ro/opinii/george-buhnici-despre-problema-cu-
masini-furate-in-bulgaria-6113082)

\- [https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/social/romani-
ramasi...](https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/social/romani-ramasi-fara-
masina-in-bulgaria-le-a-fost-furata-din-parcarea-hotelului-787526)

\- [https://movafaq.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/romanian-cars-
bulga...](https://movafaq.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/romanian-cars-bulgaria-ro/)

\- [https://www.b1.ro/stiri/auto/varna-hoti-romani-furati-in-
bul...](https://www.b1.ro/stiri/auto/varna-hoti-romani-furati-in-
bulgaria-221797.html)

\- [https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/masini-furate-in-
bulgaria-17...](https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/masini-furate-in-
bulgaria-1751574)

\- [https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/vacanta-in-
bulgari...](https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/vacanta-in-bulgaria-s-a-
transformat-intr-un-cosmar-pentru-o-familie-din-constanta-cum-au-ramas-fara-
masina-in-bansko.html)

\- [https://observator.tv/social/vacanta-la-schi-in-bulgaria-
a-l...](https://observator.tv/social/vacanta-la-schi-in-bulgaria-a-lasat-o-
familie-din-constanta-fara-masina-de-30-de-mii-euro-200016.html)

\- [http://www.bmwclub.ro/forums/topic/171395-bmw-furat-in-
bulga...](http://www.bmwclub.ro/forums/topic/171395-bmw-furat-in-bulgaria/)

I can go on but there's no point.

~~~
robocat
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 only a few days and not a local and maybe I didn't see the rough
areas...

Edit: obviously there is danger throughout many parts of Europe. I just wanted
to say that travelling solo through mountainous roads on a 50cc motorbike and
often staying in hick areas, I felt welcome. Then again: I wasn't in a
campervan or riding a BMW; I am not from a usually hated country; YMMV.

~~~
sbmthakur
Did you also travel through the night?

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

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

~~~
itronitron
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.

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zokier
I 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").

~~~
emptyfile
It's really not especially weird.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe)

Bulgaria and Romania experienced extreme level of emigration but almost every
country in Europe is dying out. The countryside in these countries is
depopulated and dead, in a country like the UK or France it is merely grim and
miserable.

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growlist
Perhaps it's actually better in environmental terms to concentrate development
in fewer places?

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Jughashvili
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.

~~~
ido
You think the Soviet Union needed help collapsing? It was mostly doing that on
their own, Reagan et al just sped up the process a bit.

