Ivancha's Derelict Buildings

With a steadily declining population of only seven million inhabitants, the landscape of Bulgaria is freckled with abandoned structures. With the fall of communism, individuals struggled to find work in the rural villages they called home, and were forced to move to the cities, often abandoning their former homes entirely. In other cases, elderly individuals in the rural villages have passed on, leaving their homes to their children, which as a result of the societal changes, primarily reside in the larger cities and leave their parent's homes to rest, having no means to sustain them or market to sell them. As a result, entire villages have perished, and others have experienced exponential population loss. Ivancha is no exception to the transitions, having gone from supporting a population of over two-thousand people, to less than five-hundred in a matter of years. The village schoolhouse now rests in a state of perpetual decay, destined one day to be no more than rubble, and the percentage of derelict public and private buildings is substantial. Now, one can walk room from room through the old houses and observe a time past. Most of them are still furnished, and all are slowly being taken back by nature in one form or another - some harbor plants, rodents, or martens, and others, serpents.