Incredible photos and a great story. Thanks for putting this together. People forget all too easily how everyone in this world is trying to live their best life with the resources they have. That becomes exponentially more difficult when someone treats you as less of a person for whatever delusional reasons they rationalize in their minds.

Thanks, my pleasure.

Thank you for your article. I now know more than about my country than before. We have similar ghetto in my home city Burgas, but due to my grand-father working in the area, and my mom too - never felt that much threatened.

You use the word "gypsy" a lot. The Roma I've met consider it very offensive, almost n-word level offensive. Is that not the case in Europe?

Although at the NGO level activists claim that "Roma" should be used instead of "gypsy", it is very common when talking to Balkan Roma to be corrected by them: “Don’t call us Roma, we’re <locally used exonym equivalent to ‘gypsies’>". Obviously their own endonym is Rom, plural Roma, but they sometimes bristle at outsiders using it.

I have the impression those being better off, with (somewhat) higher social status, education being better connected to the majority population find "Gypsy" to be derogatory.

But once I met a poor family referring to themselves this way, so a bit perplexed and curious I rather asked them directly if they consider themselves being Roma or Gypsy... only to get an ambiguous answer.

Edit: I met that family in the eastern Slovakia.

Not that I have encountered. Perhaps all of the Gypsy/Roma I have spoken with are too polite to let me know otherwise.

Here in Czechia many use the 'vulgar' variant (cikán) themselves. I wouldn't use it in my writing though.

It's "циганин" (tsiganin, or ciganin) in Bulgaria. But this is now deemed offensive, hence roma.

In Brazil (which has a sizeable Romani population, and had two Romani presidents), the direct translation of this, "Cigano", is still the one officially used.

I didn’t know that Brazil had two presidents with Romani origin. According to Wikipedia they are Juscelino Kubitscheck and Washington Luís.

Interestingly, many variants of that word in different European languages. See section Exonyms in:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

It depends. Sometimes, older people will call themselves "Gypsy" and may even correct you if you call them "Roma". But younger people have been taught that "Gypsy" is an offense, so they will get offended if you use the word.

It’s complicated. Ultimately it’s rude to refer to anyone by their skin colour, ethnicity or racial “group”. There are almost no situations where it’s appropriate.

In the US and certain upper-middle class echelons of other Western nations, maybe.

Outside of that bubble, though, it ranges from neutral to positive to acknowledge a person's ethnicity.

Lol at the nominative determinism!

I didn't even realise. That's hilarious!

This is how I understand the world to be too

As a long-time "hobby" photographer of street and neighborhood life in certain parts of Mexico, I'm curious, how did you build rapport with the locals for the sake of your photography, and that friendly acceptance. I'd love to hear any advice or observations you have.

Just be kind, confident, honest, and friendly. As with most things in life - practice practice practice.

Of course, but were you frequently asked why you were taking photos? In your case, what explanation would you give? Wonderful shots by the way, and thank you for your reply.

Thanks for the compliment! Yes, I was asked several times that day what I was doing. My explanation was "I'm just taking photos". Lame, but it works if you show a little smile.

Exactly what I've done so many times! Good to know it works just fine in other contexts.

Be a white English-speaking foreigner, and spend money.

I want to echo what chimen said, with a bit of nuance. There is discrimination, real and pretty strong. But on the other hand it's rational to discriminate - if a group of traditionally dressed roma is entering a shop, you'd better bet the security guard will follow their every step without even bothering to be subtle, and that he's doing this from experience. And walking around in roma neighborhoods as a foreigner is a _very_ chancy activity. Nobody local will even cry for you if you get robbed.

The main reason for this state of affairs is roma's traditional reliance on internal law and complete disregard for outsiders and their laws. Coupled with this is a tendency to just not apply morality to whatever you do to outsiders. This makes it very very hard to change their ways from outside - even 40 years of communism barely made a dent. Best strategy I know of is to make sure each individual has full protection of the host nation's laws and support mechanisms, and that they know it. This makes it possible for them to disregard internal laws with less fear of being ostracized. It's a slow strategy, but I know of none quicker.

And to end on a brighter note, in the next elections I'll be voting for an independent, who is the newest rising star of local politics. He's a gypsy.

You wrestled with a screaming guy trying to rip the camera out of your hands.

A common travel cliche is "99% of people are friendly to you". That's a good thing, but I want to know what the 1% and 0.1% are likely do to you.

Mostly peaceful

How does it compare to Luník IX?

I haven't visited - but Stolipinovo is much larger.

The first thing that stands out to me is the choice of the word "gypsy". While many Roma are perfectly fine with it and even use it themselves, there are also many who find the word offensive and it has historically been used as a racial slur. Why not drop the word alltogether and fall back to the (at least to my understanding) neutral "roma"?

Such a silly choice. If some people really hate a group won't the new self designated word become a racial slur too? What then?

You get what is commonly known as the "euphemism cycle", or the "euphemism treadmill": https://www.jstor.org/stable/3087798

Gypsy was always a slur. It's not a case of a euphemism treadmill.

In all honestly many people in North America would not know who the Roma are but would know what group you are talking about when you say gypsy.

Since you sounds honest and not sarcastic, may I take this opportunity to ask you what mechanism do you believe will help improving the actual situation once the word have been successfully changed (assuming for the sake of discussion that the word can be effectively changed) ? I have always been intrigued by the power of words.

Racism is not that obviously immoral behavior depicted in Disney movies when ugly people misjudge good people for frivolous reasons. Racism is when a group of people consider another group as inferior / less worthy for some reason conflated with their biology or culture (of which most often than not very little is actually known). Racism is exactly the thoughts you have just expressed.

Upvoted for your honest contribution that sheds some light on what's racism in 2020's Europe, despite it makes me sad how easily one still associate the conduct of some members of a minority that's discriminated against with the genuine culture of that community.

> biology or culture

Sorry, no; racism is just about biology, by definition. Culture is not race.

Discrimination based on culture has other terms like xenophobia.

Discriminating against some culture may be justified. For instance, to some extent it is justified to discriminate against a culture that tolerates theft and vandalism.

If you assume that someone with a certain physical appearance automatically belongs some specific culture, and then discriminate against them based on that assumption, that is then racism.

The discriminating against that culture per se isn't racism, and not even necessarily wrong; it depends on the culture.

Not all cultures are equally good.

> Sorry, no; racism is just about biology, by definition. Culture is not race.

Unfortunately, some people have redefined "racism" to mean dislike of anything related to another ethnic group. Biology, culture, religion, whatever.

I agree with you here. Blaming the culture is the opposite of blaming the biology. But the meaning of "racism" has expanded from "blaming biology" to, well, "noticing anything negative about anything". The only non-racist behavior is to say the differences don't exist at all, or blaming them 100% on oppression.

Racism is not about noticing patterns, it's about erroneous generalization and the prejudice they comes with it.

In Bulgaria where gypsies live in poverty, many thieves are gypsies, therefore all gypsies are thieves, therefore not hiring gypsies.

Compare with: many thieves are gypsies because poverty lead to antisocial behaviors.

If Bulgaria and Romania are racist, we beg you, please, take home our gypsies and treat them with respect. They've been integrating into Europe since the 15th century with no measurable success. The Communists tried that hard, too; they gave them free housing, many privileges like they could get into any university without exams. Yet, it would help if you watched documentaries of what they turned those apartment buildings into - the whole complex had to be destroyed as it was inhabitable.

Again and again, a "gypsy" is not a matter of race or ethnicity as there are many well-integrated gypsies who distance themselves from the other gypsies, nobody calls them or considers them to be gypsies - being a gypsy is a matter of social irresponsibility, not following any laws, and having crime (mostly theft) as heritage.

If you look into recent genetic studies, gypsies are descendants from the untouchables caste in India. The same thing they do in Bulgaria and Romania, they've been doing in India, and that's why they were persecuted and moved from Asia to Europe. They were not a different race back in India!

The problem is this "heritage." Not all heritage should be cherished and preserved. As an extreme example, I will give you cannibalism.

Gypsies teach their kids to pickpocket at an early age. It's not considered immoral. In fact, in gypsy culture, theft is only when you take away gold or silver. It's not only a way to make a living for them, but they also consider it an intellectual challenge - how to outsmart people.

Another gypsy heritage is the bride marketplace. Women in the 21st century are sold like cattle. There are tons of documentaries on the subject. Should this heritage be preserved and celebrated, too?

So, let's stop calling Bulgarians and Romanians racists! We're not. It's been 500 years already, and gypsies have killed more Bulgarians and Romanians than Bulgarians and Romanians have killed gypsies. Yes, often older people in the villages are getting tortured and killed over 5 euros.

I can speak about Bulgaria, which has been a multicultural country way before many new Western democracies. We've welcomed thousands and thousands of Armenian refugees; we live in peace with Bulgarian Turks. We have many Jews - we saved all our Jews during WWII even if we were allies of Germany. We have Russians, Greek, Italians, Macedonians, and Serbians living in Bulgaria. During Communism, many Libyans, Lebanese, and Syrians came to study in Bulgaria, get married and stayed. I can't recall any racism and ethnicism against any of them - there's a different attitude only toward gypsies!

Regarding the pocket-picking - I had a currency exchange business on the main street, and I've witnessed in the past many gypsy troupes "working" tourists. Of course, they wouldn't try to pickpocket from Bulgarians as when they see a gypsy, everybody grabs their bags and protects their belongings. With Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU, these troupes are now all over Europe. Back to when I had that business - often gypsies were coming to me offering me 20% of what they steal if I let them "work" in the store!

And, please, let's not victimize them and point fingers at Bulgarians and Romanians - they are victims but of their own "cultural" heritage! The change can only change if kids are not allowed to be "trained" into being a "gypsy" (the social behavior) by their parents! I don't get why "racist heritage" could be bashed, but "theft heritage" cannot be!

First of all, I'm not calling Bulgarians and Romanians racists. I'm calling _you_ racist.

Secondly, I've tried my best not to bash you nor your countrymen. And I do not even disagree with many things you have said: indeed, some gypsies consider it fair game to steal from tourists, some have no respect for property, etc. Sure. The same could be said of many other discriminated minorities, and I'm pretty sure we've all heard and read the exact same complains that $Xs are just thieves, cannot be educated, will never give away their long heritage of misbehaviour, etc, etc, where $X is the minority of the day and place.

The discriminated minority varies, but what does not vary is the false generalisation ("all $X are thieves"), the scapegoating ("$Xs are why the economy is bad"), and the reassuring feeling of superiority ("we have been nice to $Xs to no avail yet they were never nice to us"). This is exactly what racism is all about in my views.

Listen, I'm not calling you a bad person for that. I totally understand that when pockets of poverty and antisocial behaviour do exist in one's country then one is upset about it. Just be aware that no minority is inherently bad; minorities have their own dynamic that depends upon many things (on top of which: having to live in a ghetto), but not upon the inner biology/heritage/wtv of any individuals. Do not delude yourself into thinking you would behave any different were you born in the same circumstances, into the same ghetto, etc.

I do not know what have the previous regimes tried to end the discrimination and integrate gypsies, and I'm sad if that has failed. I'm certain though that ghettos are not improving anyone's situation, be it in Bulgaria or in France.

Let's always try to think about the problem practically, to look for solutions/improvements not to look for revenge.

I don't care what _you_ call me because that's your personal disoriented _opinion_ and nothing more. Unlike you, I did propose solutions that will work. By calling people racists, you solve no problems - the solution is to root out the reasons for profiling, and this is very much what MLM said about the ghettos in America, too! Most of the issues need to be solved from inside first - you cannot expect people to tolerate systematic and widespread unlawful behavior because some Westerners are victimizing them without bothering to look into the centuries of goodwill efforts! Compare the level of hate crime in Bulgaria to some Democracies in Europe! Yes, we may be pretty blunt about what we don't like about the majority of that minority is doing (yes, this are not empty words, there's a lot of statistics although much of it's not reported because in Bulgaria a theft is considered if something is worth at least a minimum wage and also many Bulgarians don't report these, because they know nothing will be done anyway and that later the criminals will terrorize them much more). I have two relatives who died directly from gypsy terror! They kept terrorizing my grandmother daily and my father later, too, stealing everything, breaking daily in their homes when they were out, and so on. At night, they were attacking my grandmother's house, and she died from a heart attack from this terror, as they kept vandalizing her home, trying to steal everything they can find use in them or sell them for change. It's easy to judge others when you don't have to experience this daily - from the comfort of your home here. I am not saying gypsies are bad people or that all are thieves - not sure where you draw that conclusion from, but that they are allowed to commit crimes, they always claim they are being discriminated against, they regularly attack the couple policemen in small villages and towns, and, yes, they are victims, but victims of their own heritage. Before we talk about human rights, we need to talk about laws and responsibilities as rights build upon a social contract foundation. The liberal view that everybody is a victim, so they are not responsible for what they do simply does not work. And that's why in Italy and France, there are double standards, and gypsies are treated differently, too! So, again, given gypsies are not a racial issue, as Indians live in Bulgaria and nobody profiles them although morphologically their look similarly and belong to the same race - it's the "culture" that people cannot accept and be silent about! If we can live well with Turks, who for 500 years were killing us and terrorizing us under the Ottoman Yoke, why do you think we are so loud about the gypsies? It's because Turks, Armenians, Jews, Russian obey the social contract, and gypsies don't! Although you called me _racist_, I'm working to help greatly a project [0], which is the only solution, and multiple Western organizations back it. It's very much aligned with my vision on how to solve this problem. If you want to learn about it and not just talk empty words, go check it out!

[0]: https://amalipe.bg/en/home-2/

P.S. I forgot to mention that some Protestant churches got into the ghettos, and they educated the gypsies about theft being a bad thing. They are hugely successful, too. So, again, this is another proof that the negative heritage should be rooted out. There's a lot of negative heritage in Bulgaria, also! For example, some pagan rituals, which predate Christianity, such as dog spinning [1]. Should we keep it, because it's heritage! Of course, not!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_spinning

How can slavery be called integration? Having Roma slaves was a thing much longer after 15th century.

The fact that Romani people successfully integrated in US might indicate that there exists a bigger cultural divide in Europe.

Slaves of Bulgarians or slaves of the Ottomans? Because Bulgarians were Ottoman slaves, too! In fact, gypsies came to Bulgaria through the Ottoman Empire. And I cannot talk about Western Europe and how it treated gypsies as I've never studies it; I can only talk about Bulgaria and we never had slavery, so, can we quite extending Western guilts to Bulgaria?

> The reason they don't get hired is because it is always a gamble doing that.

So if you don't let them make an honest living, how the hell will they survive?? You claim they're all thieves and they don't want to be integrated, so you deny them any job prospects. And then you turn around and wonder why they steal!! How else will they feed their families or afford the basic necessities, man?

I'm not saying they're all honest people; but if the honest ones are not given a chance, they will have to resort to dishonest means.

It takes 2 to tango. You need both sides to make compromises.

This whole episode reminds me of how blacks were treated in America. Were it not for WW2, I wonder what the situation of blacks would be like in the USA.

There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians. There's no colored bathrooms and stuff like that.

They have all the legal right as any citizen to own propert, start companies, hire others, etc. Further more there a lot of positive discrimination by guaranteeing them seats in Universities, etc.

> There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians.

According to Wikipedia[1] (as I have no other sources at hand) gypsies have been slaves in Romania for most of the period since the Romanian Principalities' inception in the 13th, 14th century until 1864. I think 400+ years of indentured servitude and slavery paints Romania as quite barbaric. You should probably reconsider your biases.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Romania

> There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians. There's no colored bathrooms and stuff like that.

At least in America now there are laws specifically disallowing discrimination against blacks and minorities. But it appears in Romania and the rest of Eastern Europe there is still widespread discrimination against the Roma. Looks pretty barbaric to me!

> > There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians. There's no colored bathrooms and stuff like that.

> At least in America now there are laws specifically disallowing discrimination against blacks and minorities. But it appears in Romania and the rest of Eastern Europe there is still widespread discrimination against the Roma. Looks pretty barbaric to me!

You are comparing laws on the books on one place with practice in another.

There is widespread discrimination against blacks in the US, despite the existence of laws prohibiting it. To the point that white supremacists have expressed confidence that local police throughout the country will stand aside for them to commit murder against blacks and/or people seeking accountability for crimes against blacks without any need for direct coordination or specific inside coconspirators, and those sentiments have been validated.

Plus, GP didn't offer a comparison to current treatment of blacks in America, but basically to treatment before the mid-20th century civil rights movement, when there were not such laws. When someone does that to reject that their treatment of someone else is barbaric, you don't need to shift the ground and try to do an apples to oranges comparison to something else, you can just say that the bar they have set is too low to reject the characterization of barbarism even if taken as true.

Yeah, sure, other countries don't have such laws. And your laws are clearly working very well considering the events this year.

> There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians.

They've literally been genocided with few Europeans actually caring at the end of the day (the holocaust killed almost a third of them). They're arguably treated worse than blacks in America.

The way Roma are and have been treated is pretty much definition barbaric.

Was there some war going on when you had legalized racial segregation? Some foreign troops on US soil I don't know about?

I hired three of them to build me a fence last year - following an online ad that they had, we talked on the phone and settled for the next day. Good for me that I have cameras in my yard because they jumped me to pay double at the end of the job quoting some bs numbers that we didn't discuss. 4 of them getting in my face at night. I already knew how it is going to go down from the moment I saw that the car of workers is made entirely of gypsies so I had someone recording and ready to call the cops. Nice tango there. I hope you don't get to dance it. As I said, it's easy to speak from the side when you don't know the situation - everyone seems to have an opinion but completely disregards what an entire nation thinks.

As a fellow Bulgarian here, I think that you're wasting your time trying to explain the situation to people from distant countries who haven't experienced the same first hand. It's always cute to see and read how from their high horse, westeners point fingers at us for being racist and what not when they have no idea what it is like to live near or have to deal with gipsies for all kinds of matters.

In the village where I live, we have neighbors from the UK, Germany, France and even the US. When they moved here at first, they were being exactly the same as the poster that you're replying to. Criticizing the locals for being racist and not giving poor gipsies a chance to prove their virtues to society. Well, guess what, a couple of years later, those foreigners that had moved here from the West now behave in more racist ways that us mere locals. I guess the minority in question has succeeded beautifully to prove their "virtues" to the naive people from the West. ;)

Almost as if it's much easier to be 'pc' about someone else's problems that are conveniently distant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Saying they "they steal or avoid work whenever possible" is that demonstrably a (racist) lie?

When so many people have the "belief" that Gypsy/Roma steal because that's just what they do, it's nice to see in reality this is simply not true. Counterpoint provided by EVN, the Austrian electrical company who provides services to Stolipinovo:

"As a result of the project, the average monthly payment rate for (Stolipinovo) electricity customers rose from 3% to 85%. At the same time, network losses from the low voltage power grid were reduced from 40% to 5%."

Source: https://www.evn.at/EVN-Group/Verantwortung/CSR-Strategie/Sta...

BTW, the best examples of Roma include Presidents of large populous countries.

also I feel that its worth noting that "avoiding work whenever possible" isn't something you can ascribe to just one group of people. Most people don't love working, which makes it easy to pin it on a specific type of people but you can see it in really anyone. And it can be caused by a lot of external factors, being tired because you don't go home to a place you can feel safe and rest, being consistently shit on because of your culture, not having a great upbringing, being sick, and sometimes some people just cant set their minds to a task the same as others. Things like this can be helped by having a stable job and being treated the same as other people around you.

> We are talking about a community of people that appears in Europe in the 9th century and they keep their cultural identity ever since

Well, let's not forget that gypsies have been slaves for most of their existence in Romania and it's been less than 200 years since slavery has been abolished and they've been freed. Most Romanians conveniently forget this part when justifying their racism.

You make 0 sense stop babling with your slavery "Wikipedia" quotes. Life is not Wikipedia - we don't have slaves here. We're in 2020 nobody here cares about what happened 100 years ago more than for historic reference. We also slaved for the Ottomans during the same periods that you're quoting but you don't see me going into their country to do what they do here, in Austria, Spain, Italy or somewhere else.

Leave Wikipedia alone, come visit Bucharest, sit at the central train station for an hour and I'll show you 9th century "cultural identity" my friend.

> We're in 2020 nobody here cares about what happened 100 years ago

correction: you don't care about what happened 100 years ago. You don't care because it doesn't affect you. 100 years ago isn't very long ago at all, and the economic consequences can still effect people. The difference for people who's grandparents or great grandparents were able to work normally and provide for their children and the people who's grandparents or great grandparents who were slaves.

Germany rebuilt itself 2 times from the ground up in the last 100 years. These ones can barely finish 4 years in school here and they receive special treatment for doing so anyways. Most of them are in there for the monthly help from the state. My parents were unable to provide me with anything and I still managed to finish my school. They provided education and that is enough sometimes. The right kind of education. These are not oppressed people that live in poor conditions:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BXrYLzPlSw

https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/social/ue-baga-degeaba-zeci-de... - social integration for gypsies paid by the European Union. The gypsies say that "honest work is hard and not very well paid" and they prefer to stay on welfare instead.

Last phrase says this: "France, Germany and Italy won't give up and continue to supply Romania with money in order to try harder to integrate gypsies and keep them HOME" - they had enough of them also.

We know better - I'm not one to discriminate but these are facts. I tried, we tried, you lot do whatever you can to keep them here, at home, in order to avoid having them in Paris, London or Frankfurt but...pointing please refrain from pointing fingers at us.

We haven't tried hard enough my dude. If you trust the Eastern European governments to do (or to have done) an honest attempt at integrating gypsies, I think you're very naive.

As a piece of anecdata that I have, a very close friend that was doing a master's degree at the Sociology University in Bucharest mentioned that the literacy in gypsy communities was raised in the early years of the 2000nds due to the "Cornul si Laptele" program. The program that most of the country derided. Poor families started to send their children to school instead of keeping them home because they received a modicum of food and lessened the burden on their parents.

I think you're making my point for me quite well, thank you. Don't forget the 4th grade rhyme: "cin' se scuza, se acuza".

I'm not a local, but wouldn't eat at a restaurant if it was staffed by people from that specific neighborhood documented in the submitted web page. That's regardless of their ethnic background: they could be milk-white Bulgarians.

I would expect them to show up in dirty clothes, and not having bathed in months, and neglect to follow basic hygiene like washing their hands. They would likely perpetrate actions like tasting food and putting the same utensil back into the pot, completely lacking the inhibition of refraining from doing whatever comes naturally.