A Street in Lozenets, the Roma Neighbourhood, Krassimir Iliev, Stara Zagora

2006-04-21T19:38:00Z

I live in Lozenets, but not the Lozenets in Sofia you are thinking of. It’s Lozenets in Stara Zagora – the Roma neighbourhood.

The neighbourhood is on Stara Zagora’s outskirts, near fresh air and the woods. It is up a hill, away from the centre of town and from the poisonous gasses during factory leaks.

In front of me is Kinder Garden No. 20. This is where I grew up as a child and where my son grew up too. If you want to hear children’s laughter – this is the place. Next to the rubbish container is a woman with a child. Is she able to send him to kinder garden?

Two or three hundred metres up the hill are two of the biggest buildings in this part of town. The Hristo Smirnensky Secondary School is on my right. The building is run down, the windows are broken and the playgrounds are overgrown with grass. The broken doors and the missing stucco make me think of the woman next to the rubbish container. This school educates young people who have barely started their education before they leave.

On my left is the Medical Faculty of the Thracian University – a newly renovated building with aluminum windows and well-kept grounds with flowers. It’s as if it’s laughing at the old school.

Further up the hill, between the school and the Medical Faculty, is an unfinished building started twelve or thirteen years ago. It is meant to become an educational and cultural centre for young people from the neighbourhood. So many hopes and expectations for so many years. I hope they complete it and it helps people find their way from the school to the university. As they are, the school and the university are far apart. They belong to different worlds.

I go up the hill and I reach the Municipality and the neighbourhood’s piazza. The piazza, the benches, the playgrounds and the stairs leading to them were never fully finished. The benches are broken. Broken before they were finished. Look at the piazza and don’t even ask about the people! Victory Square, it is called.

If you stand in the square and look down, you can see the whole of Stara Zagora – the Samara Flag Monument, the former Factory for Nitrogen Fertilisers, and many other former things. This is to the East. To the West is the neighbourhood – a colourful patchwork of houses – small houses, big houses, blue ones, green ones, red ones, houses with and without balconies, houses with and without vault arches, houses full of people, empty houses. Colourful as a Rhodopean rug.

To see Krassimir's pictures click here

Моята улица: A Street in Lozenets, the Roma Neighbourhood, Krassimir Iliev, Stara Zagora

A Street in Lozenets, the Roma Neighbourhood, Krassimir Iliev, Stara Zagora