Home sweet home
"Region on the rise?" A bold question being asked in an economical report about the state of Eastern Slovakia.
In this series i provide a peek into one of the most desolate parts of European Union, destroyed environmentally by excessive heavy mining industry and socially by ever growing racism, xenophobia and remnants of former communist behavioural relicts.
The former glory of this area shines through debris at every corner - abandoned villas, estates and factories occupy majority of the land, providing shelter for homeless or just quietly deteriorating amidst the harsh mountains surrounding them.
Abandoned 19th century industrial estate with its own church.
Village of Rudňany is mostly abandoned. The inhabited houses can easily be identified by their facades painted with lively colours, the rest serves as a refuge for alcoholics and drug addicts. Some of the buildings such as an immense former culture centre are covered with a thick layer of empty plastic bottles and needles.
Village of Rudňany with desolate spruce forests around it
Abandoned culture centre, clearly oversized for a village of couple hundred inhabitants
The decorations on the ceiling are still apparent
However the rest of the building is completely destroyed
A thick carpet of empty plastic bottles covers the floor completely
In the centre of the village an information board tells a story about this region, its vivid photos in sharp contrast with perceived reality.
Information board provides a window to times when future seemed bright
Size of the bus stop gives a hint about how frequented this place was in the past
Most of the infrastructure has been put in place in order to transport people from neighbouring villages to numerous factories. Whole towns were build to serve a single purpose - provide a roof for the worker.
A train stop, still fully functional
Eastern Slovakia is infamous for its racial problems, issue picked up by the new rising right wing populist political parties.
Segregation effectively persists in these areas. Villages have their Roma ghettos with dramatically lower living standards. Noticing that Romas sit in the back of the bus makes you draw a parallel between this and social development in US couple decades ago.
With hardly enough money to survive the environmental issues get put on hold
A house that provides home for three families
There is a strong contrast between the christian values majority of the population praises and the way they treat each other.
Here a decorated cross put right across the street from a ghetto.
You have to be inventive and courageous with the little money you have.
Here clothes being dried on an power station fence.
Houses put together out of scrape material found lying around
With missing infrastructure some people are forced to use primitive public toilets
It was communists who built this football pitch several decades ago
The most prominent effect of this dynamic can be seen on young generations. Mistreated by their teachers and prepared by their parents for the harsh white-people dominated world around them they grow up only to perpetuate the racial hatred.
Instead of visiting school it's customary to see kids collecting firewood along the road, sometimes as young as 4 years.
A usual sight - children collecting firewood, often times illegally, along the country roads
Kids
P.S.
You can often see riverbanks covered with colourful rugs. People wash them in the stream and let them dry (more or less effectively, depending on the weather) on the adjacent fields. It feels like a picnic site abruptly abandoned due to some threat, with all the blankets still lying around unmoved.
