#Abandoned school how to#
#Abandoned school series#

In the same village, the secondary school for children 11-years-and-up stood similarly abandoned.

#Abandoned school series#

There was a child’s tricycle left rusting on the rafters a series of posters and wall hangings featuring illustrated nursery rhymes and nearby, a severed doll’s head that lay unblinking amongst the dust and rags. Up there, thin slivers of light spilled in through gaps between the roofing tiles. The kindergarten was spread across two floors, and beyond that a set of steps led up into the attic. One dusty room was dominated by a bulky cathode ray television, its screen thick with dust.

#Abandoned school how to#

There were books of nursery rhymes, and laminated wall panels that taught children how to brush their teeth correctly. Instead, children’s toys, dolls and teaching aids had been left exactly in place. Thanks to the locked doors, the place had been untouched by vandals or the elements. I must have spent an hour or so, exploring the kindergarten. Eventually I made it, and fell onto my face in a small kitchen area. The window was rusted, wedged in place, so that I had to climb a drainpipe then rotate, squeezing myself sideways through the narrow opening. Getting up there was still a bit of a struggle. The entrance to this village kindergarten was locked and barred – but a friend of mine, a local, drew my attention to an open first floor window. These days the children travel by bus to a larger town nearby the old schools, meanwhile, have been closed, forgotten, and abandoned to the slow fate of invisible decay. There were no longer enough families in the neighbourhood to justify the cost of running these institutions. In one particular village I visited last year, both the local school and nearby kindergarten had suffered such a fate. Nowadays, there are many settlements dotted around the country that stand mostly empty – houses, petrol stations, schools and town halls shuttered up, now surplus to requirement. In the decades since the regime changed, the process has continued. It began under the communist party, as they relocated citizens to the cities in order to provide the workforce for newly built factory sites. Bulgaria’s villages are rapidly depopulating.