My moment of 2024...
While I was travelling around the eastern reaches of Serbia in July this year (average temperature: 38 degrees Celsius), I had some time so on the cuff I decided I'd head off to the point where Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania meet. To get there, I had to turn off the main road that goes from the Serbian city of Negotin to the Bulgarian border and go down a pot-holed, near-forgotten road to the final village before the border, Srbovo. Trust me, this road was not looking promising. But when I arrived into Srbovo, I immediately noticed two things. The first was...
- The houses in this village are beyond huge!!!
Now, I've seen the huge Roma-built houses in Romania and the famous ones in Soroca, Moldova, but Srbovo is not a Roma village. The houses in Srbovo are not as gaudy (just) but are just as large, with the biggest ones having up to 30 (!!!) bedrooms and up to five storeys high!
The other thing I noticed about Srbovo was...
- It was almost devoid of people!!!
And how was this evident?
The complete lack of shops or services in the village.
So apart from the few old people left to look after these monstrous buildings, where are the owners of these houses?
As could be seen from the car plates of the few cars in the village, Vienna, Austria mainly, but generally outside Serbia.
These huge houses are only occupied for a brief period in the summer or whenever a major family event is happening, such as a wedding. They are testimony though of a few things: the concept of belonging, return (but ultimately never happening), nostalgia, displaying "success" and one-upmanship.
While these concepts and their physical manifestation via the ancestral hearth ("ognjište") are very much a product of the Balkan migration experience, the extent that this was on display in Srbovo was at a level I've never seen before.
And as I later discovered, Srbovo is not unique. All the villages in the region are just like it... as well as the cemeteries. Check out the pic and see.
The biggest question is if no one is living in these houses and are unlikely ever to be fully occupied, then what will become of these houses in the future? Often the children and grandchildren of the owners of these buildings were born, have grown up and lived all their lives outside of Serbia, so why would they want to uproot and return to a village with no people? And what of the environmental impact? Were such resources and expense all worth it? Time will tell.
I'd like to wish you all a wonderful 2025!
.%20A%20day%20of%20campaigning%20%E2%99%80%20%E2%80%A6%20or%20a%20day%20to%20buy%20flowers%20%F0%9F%92%90.jpg)
