Gorna Bela Rechka
| Gorna Bela Rechka (Горна Бела речка) | |||||
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| Basic data | |||||
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| State : |
 Bulgaria
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| Oblast : | Montana | ||||
| Residents : | 61 (December 31, 2013) | ||||
| Area : | 19.975 km² | ||||
| Population density | 3.1 inhabitants / km² | ||||
| Coordinates : | 43 ° 11 ' N , 23 ° 21' E | ||||
| Height : | 300-499 m | ||||
| Postal code : | 3544 | ||||
| License plate : | M. | ||||
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Gorna Bela Rechka ( Bulgarian Горна Бела речка) is a small village in northwest Bulgaria , around 25 kilometers from the Serbian border. It belongs to the municipality of Varshets in Montana Oblast . Nothing is known about its history. The northwestern provincial capital of Montana is 36 km away.
geography
Geographical location
From Montana to 1 passes to the southeast along the roads no. 1621 and 162 of Gorna Bela Rechka. On the way, first the place Krapchene and then Trifonovo remain on the left. Later on Sumer and Stoynovo are crossed. When Dolno Ozirovo has passed, the route becomes more mountainous. After the junction in front of Varshets there is Dolna Bela Rechka and then Gorna Bela Rechka, which is surrounded by forest, fields and mountains. Behind the village, road No. 162 leads through the forest to Sofia Oblast . The capital Sofia is just under 80 km - as the crow flies: 55 km - south of Bela Rechka and can be reached by bus and train via Lakatnik in just under two hours.
climate
The Montana Oblast has a continental climate with hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters. The hottest month is usually August with a minimum temperature of 22 ° C and a maximum of 29 ° C. The coldest month is February with 0 ° C to - 6 ° C. Rainfall is generally low, lowest in March with one day and highest in January with 12 days.
Economy
Gorna Bela Rechka is located in a region that is known as the “poorest area in the EU”. The gross domestic product in northwestern Bulgaria is only 28% of the European average. The whole region is affected by a primarily financial "depopulation of rural areas". The Montana region alone has lost over 50,000 inhabitants since the turn of the last millennium. This has led to loneliness and an aging population. In 2013, there were only 61 residents in Bela Rechka, all of them over 70 years old. In particular, many women have left their homeland. You have hired yourself to care for the elderly in other European countries in order to be able to support your relatives who stayed at home in this way. The filmmaker Stephan Komandarev dealt with the consequences of this economic and social misery in his 70-minute documentary The Town of Badante Women using the example of women from nearby Varshets. Because there are no more young people in Bela Rechka, the situation in the village has changed. Here the people mainly live from their goats and sheep. They use goat milk to make traditional foods, including a special goat cheese. The products from Bela Rechka meet the Slow Food criteria .
Culture
In 2015 Francesco Martino wrote about the place: “Gorna Bela Rechka is no exception to the sad reality of this region - poor, desolate and sleepy.” After the collapse of a “centuries-old cultural and culinary tradition”, the cultural life of the inhabitants was on goats - and sheep breeding reduced. Cultural events, as they are known elsewhere, there was just as little here as a school or a church. As of 2003, the situation changed and since then there is every year in May with the international Goatmilk Festival to German Goat Milk Festival , a lively cultural life where the locals and guests arriving involved. That is why Ger Duijzings does not consider the place a typical example of the region:
“Yet Bela Rechka is perhaps not a typical case. It can be singled out because of its residents' heightened awareness of the urban-rural distinction and their conscious attempts at self-positioning within or across it, which triggered by two factors: past rural-urban migration and the present opening up of the village to the world via the annual Goatmilk Memories Festival. "
“But Bela Rechka may not be a typical case. The residents are very aware of the urban-rural difference and they consciously try to oppose it. This is caused by two factors: the rural exodus in the past and the current opening of the village with the Goatmilk Festival of Memories. "
In 2019 the director Susanna Schürmann released her documentary The Red Heritage - Artists and the Socialist Past on Arte . In her film she reports about the photographer Nikola Mihov, who has been photographing monumental sculptures in Bulgaria for many years , and about a group of young artists who illegally artistically rededicate these sculptures serving the former regime under the name Destructive Creation . In addition, the Bulgarian journalist Diana Ivanova has her say with her Goatmilk Festival project , which is also reported in detail.
Goatmilk Festival
The Goatmilk Festival was created on the initiative of Diana Ivanova. She curates it together with Mariana Assenova. In the meantime, an international cultural festival has developed from this, which is enjoying some popularity. There is a video documentation by Rayna Teneva. It has been held in May each year since 2003 and is always dedicated to a selected topic. The motto of the 2016 festival was “Fear, let's talk about that” - let's talk about fear.
The bell
In 2008 the Goatmilk Festival was all about getting a church bell back . Although there was no church, Bela Rechka had a bell tower with a bell. This was important to the locals because their ringing also structured social life. It was stolen in the 1990s. Artists from all over the world wanted to give Bela Rechka a new bell. With the help of the European Culture 2000 program and numerous sponsors, Bela Rechka finally got a new bell. The video documentation from the Goethe Institute is evidence of this.
Web links
annotation
- ↑ For the history of the region see the section "History" in the article "Montana (Bulgaria)" .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gorna Bela Rechka. In: Guide Bulgaria. Retrieved May 22, 2016 .
- ↑ Municipality Varshets. In: Guide Bulgaria. Retrieved May 22, 2016 .
- ↑ Weather forecast for Montana in Oblast Montana, Bulgaria. In: Storm247. Retrieved May 23, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Maia Ivanova: A lot of new things in the northwest. In: Bulgarisches Wirtschaftsblatt and Süduropäischer Report. March 30, 2011, accessed May 22, 2016 .
- ^ A b Francesco Martino: Rural Bulgaria: between abandonment and redemption. Gorna Bela Rechka. In: Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. March 2, 2015, accessed on May 22, 2016 (English, own translation).
- ↑ Diana Ivanova: Bread-winning badante. In: signandsight - Let's talk European. April 10, 2008, accessed on September 14, 2016 (English): "In the end, I think that what is happening to these women is the best that can happen."
- ^ Stephan Komandarev: The Town of Badante Women. Information about the film (Bulgaria: 70 min.). (No longer available online.) 2009, archived from the original on January 19, 2016 ; accessed on May 25, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity: Bela Rechka Kozya Izvara. Retrieved September 14, 2016 (English, Italian).
- ↑ Francesco Martino: L'abbandono è ovunque. L? Importanza della terra in Bulgaria. Retrieved September 14, 2016 (Italian).
- ↑ Diana Ivanova, Mariana aces Nova: Goatmilk - People and Events. (PDF; 9.9 MB) 5 years of Goatmilk: history, background, photos. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 24, 2016 ; accessed on May 24, 2016 (bilingual, Bulgarian, English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Ger Duijzings: Global Villages: Rural and Urban Transformation in Contemporary Bulgaria . Anthem Press, London, New York, Delhi 2014, ISBN 978-1-78308-351-0 , pp. 142 .
- ↑ The Red Heritage - Artists and the Socialist Past. Protest on ruins: Bulgaria. Arte, October 20, 2019, accessed on October 23, 2019 : "This episode accompanies, among others, the photographer Nikola Mihov and the filmmaker Diana Ivanova, who discovered evidence of the enduring power of the old rulers in archives."
- ↑ Balcaniecaucaso tells the touching story of Bulgaria's Gorna Bela Rechka. In: Novinite.com. March 3, 2015, accessed on May 24, 2016 (English, own translation).
- ↑ Rayna Teneva: Goat Milk Festival Bela Rechka 2012. Video documentation on Vimeo (2:16). Retrieved May 24, 2016 .
- ↑ Fear, let's talk about that. Program 2016. In: Goatmilk. Retrieved May 23, 2016 .
- ^ The bell of Bela Rechka. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 25, 2016 ; accessed on May 24, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Julia Bakalski: Memories - Goat Milk Festival. In: YouTube channel of the Goethe Institute. April 19, 2010, accessed on May 24, 2016 (Bulgarian, German, subtitled).
