Eventually, when the roads get better

MAARTEN BOSWIJK

Eventually, when the roads get better.

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MAARTEN BOSWIJK

Eventually, when the roads get better.

Kavarna

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Kavarna

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Kavarna

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Kavarna

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Kavarna

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Kavarna

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Shabla

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Reporter: Why are you here in Shabla?

Girl: I live in Kavarna and I'm visiting my grandmother.

Reporter: You're from Shabla?

Grandmother: Not exactly, but I've been living here since '54.

Reporter: Quite a long time.

Grandmother: I went to Sofia but then I returned.

Reporter: What attracted you to come here? The sea?

Grandmother: Not the sea.

Reporter: Love?

Grandmother: Not love. I was attracted by Yordan Yovkov's The Farm on the Border. It was a village back then, a very nice village at that.

Girl: It's peaceful here. It's quiet, unlike Sofia. That's the reason. Otherwise I went to Kavarna last year, because I wanted to run away from the hustle and bustle. There are great places along the seaside, there are archeological and natural reserves. Yailata, the swamp, the Durankulak Lake, there are great places.

The monument, these are places where there is peace and quiet. They must be preserved.

Reporter: Is the northern Black sea coast the place where a person can run away?

Girl: From the hustle and bustle? Yes. -

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla

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Shabla beach

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Shabla beach

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Shabla beach

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Shabla beach

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Shabla beach

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Durankulak

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Durankulak

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Durankulak

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Durankulak

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Durankulak

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Durankulak

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Durankulak

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Kariya

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Ezerets

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Ezerets

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Ezerets

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Ezerets

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Ezerets

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Tyulenovo

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Tyulenovo

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Tyulenovo

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Tyulenovo

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Tyulenovo

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Kariya

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Additional

MUSEUMS OF DEPOPULATION Large-scale areas in Bulgaria are depopulating due to migration to cities, and in the process, creating plethora of ghost villages. Although the names of these towns and communities still remain on maps, this is nothing more than a bureaucratic formality. According to demographic research, this phenomenon is reaching epidemic proportions. Data shows that in 2010, the total population of Bulgarian villages was little more than 2 million people. If the trend of depopulation in these villages continues at its current rate, and the low-birth and high-mortality rates continue to ravage these communities, there may be no rural population left in Bulgaria by 2060.

Rural depopulation issues began their ascent after 1946, when Bulgaria became a Communist nation.

The natural process of urbanization in the world, and the change from a Market to a Planned economy started the migration process. Thousands of rural residents were stripped of their land and lively-hoods to further the goal of Socialist industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Even after democratic government changes in 1989 returned the land to their original owners, the trend of urbanization did not stop. Travel to the rural areas of the country was difficult or impossible for most.

Now, deserted farmland can be seen in many rural areas.

The country’s urban population is 72 percent, while the agricultural population is only 28 percent. The rapid migration of people led to the declination of social infrastructure. Schools and medical stations were closed, bus lines were reduced, and the roads became beaten and cratered. The number of ghost villages is growing every day. They are, in a way, museums of depopulation; villages in which you see nothing but obituaries and the remaining elderly whom live difficult or even tormented lives in the service of their land.

With their last strength they are holding on to it in their remaining years, to try and save it from the weeds. These people have long ceased to notice the colossal misery in which they live and take for granted their depressing poverty, relinquishing their dignity.

In the years of so-called transition, no government made the preservation and development of rural areas a priority. Some argue that the depopulation of certain regions in Bulgaria is a natural process; a consequence of urbanization, globalization, Internet, free movement of human mass, or a global conspiracy. They may be right. Processes are ongoing and continuous, but the neglect and destruction of entire regions in Bulgaria is abhorrent and an ugly, cynical mockery. This is especially so for the generation of my grandparents; the people from a simpler time who gave immense care to this land. How do I tell them what seems to the truth?

That their efforts were all in vain.

Vesselina Nikolaeva -

page 6-7 The Mayor’s view over the city of Kavarna. The city totals about 15.000 inhabitants, and seems to be slowly expanding.

However, about 5km outwards, the patched up roads start getting more and more frequent. Even though Kavarna has a decent amount of tourist facilies, the traces of the economic crisis are visible even here. Along the winding road that leads from the city center to the sea are numerous hotels for sale, which were never fully constructed.

Some have been left untouched for as long as 10 years.

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page 15 Jan. -

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Reneta. page 50-51 Nine years ago, young Reneta married a boy from Shabla and moved to a coast town from her birthplace in the Southern Bulgaria. Her family-in-law owns a 3-store house with guestroom for rent in the summer season and a small grocery shop in front of it where she works.

‘The shop is very empty because we cannot manage to reinvest in new goods from what we sell.

Romanian cars on the way to the southern coastline pass by and never stop for even a coffee’ said Reneta. According to her, Shabla’s population has been decreasing dramatically in the past few years fears that soon the place will come to be completely abandoned.

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page 42 page 35 Zafirka.

Specialists from the hospital in Kavarna visit once a week for a few hours to see patients who require special care. During the summer when tourists visit, communication is nearly impossible due to the fact that none of the medical personnel speaks English.

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page 44-45 Featuring a large garden the size of a football field, the Green House is a showpiece of the European Union’s investment in Bulgaria. The Green House was build as a tourist information center and a place for locals to convene. While the Green House is bustling with it’s own occupants and workers, visitors are rarely seen and it seems to serve very little useful purpose. Many in Shabla share the opinion that the money should have been better invested.

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Up to two decades ago, any selfrespecting enterprise, factory, office, or union had a rest house- both in the Black Sea and mountain resorts. Individual municipalities also used to support camps where parents could send their children for two weeks during the summer holidays. After the land restitution, many of these holiday bases were returned to their original owners or their heirs.

Most of the camp-structures were easily demolished due to their light construction, while the rest remained abandoned. What followed was a massive sale of land, and most of these affordable holiday resorts ceased to exist. The rest have been frozen in the era of socialism.

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In the year 2000 according to the nota (law) ‘Natura 2000’ many areas in Bulgaria came to be protected where new building projects were restricted. Such area is the beach line of the Shabla city with the nearby swampy lake.

Nothing much has really changed on this beach since the fall of Communism twenty years ago.

Some small bungalows remain for rent and the old (formally government owned) hotel is getting some patch up work. The new manager is a 52 years old Plamen Stavrev, who works at the Varna harbour and who has no previous experience in catering Plamen is renting the restaurant from a rich bulgarian businessman who recently bought respectful amount of land on the first and second beach line and who is probably awaiting the building restrictions to be overruled so he demolish the old restaurant and build on it’s place a new luxurious hotel.

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Besides her own restaurant, Kornelia manages the Lake Hut, which is very popular with fishermen during their working season. The Hut’s accommodations are very basic, it’s not known for its luxury says Kornelia. The appeal is it’s sense of homeliness and simplicity.

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page 65 page 77 Bai Pesho. page 85 Krassi.

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page 62-63 Typical Bulgarian mentality: ‘I am going to eat all the apples, but will not give you even one’ says Kornelia, the owner of a new restaurant just few meters away from the shore of Durankulak Lake. She shares the opinion of many that most of the European Union funds for road development and tourism are not being used effectively, and are often returned due to conflicts of political interests at the municipality of Shabla. >

This cabin is the former house of Bai Pesho, when he was still acting out his job as a fisherman. When he and his wife started a restaurant in 1998, the cabin had been transformed in a small table section. After adding two additional floors of hotel rooms, they are trying to sell their business. No buyers have shown any interest. People from surrounding villages used to visit frequently to enjoy the panoramic view of the sea from the restaurant tables. Now, even customers on weekends are scarce.

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Between the months of March and December, Krassi makes his living as a fisherman. Earning about 3000 euros, it’s just enough to cover expenses for his family in Dobrich. His visits him on the weekends at his small house which he built himself.

Along with about 25 fellow fishermen, he’s living on land which is not regulated to built on. About 500m north there’s a small village named Kariya, which is the only officially registered fisherman’s village of Bulgaria.

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Dessislava.

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The EU invested money for windmills in the whole area.

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page 104-105 Kutsi.

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Years ago, Kutsi used to live in Sofia, where he had a job in a parliamentarian campaign office. As if often the case with a change in power structure in governments, many lost their jobs and had difficulty finding new ones. Now Kutsi lives in Ezerets, and earns a living from a part-time job as a social worker, selling eggs to the local supermarket, and renting his three spare bedrooms to tourists during the summer season.

Shortly after the start of the renovation of Ezerets roofless church, budget miscalculations halted construction, and the workers abandoned the project.

They told Kutsi as they left that ‘the church will get its

Ezerets is advertized as one of the few places near the Black Sea coast which has preserved its unique atmosphere of serenity and peacefulness.

It would almost fool you if not for the huge wooden pirate ship of the Wild Duck Resort, standing as the only big and new building at the very center of the village. The hotel complex is built to attract and satisfy the tastes of tourists who will not settle for the modesty of a local restaurant. The seating area is adorned by small bridges which span over narrow channels of water. There is a playground for children, and a small pool inhabited by black swans. The fenced-off ostrich pen is a popular spot for goers to snap photos.

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roof when your beard grows to touch the ground’. page 97 -

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‘Had you come 20 years ago, you would have been a small boy, but there would have been a lot to see.’

‘Now, for example the empty beach, with no lifeguards, but at least there’s peace and quiet.’

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COLOFON Photography: Maarten Boswijk

Design: Léon Wijnhoud

Text: Maarten Boswijk/ Vesselina Nikolaeva

Thanks to: Galya, Krassi, Denka, The Green House, and all of Shabla’s local inhabitants who made me feel most welcome during my stay.

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Production/Translation: Vesselina Nikolaeva

1/10 - Kariya