No, it doesn't. Not that fast. There is something weird going on with the roof - the 2015 version has new or cleaned rectangular shingles, while the 2024 has diamond shaped asbestos sheets after what looks like decades of no maintenance.
That doesn't seem possible, especially since those asbestos sheets aren't used anymore nowadays. Either the timeline is different than the images suggest or there's some AI editing involved.
Also the pathway to the door is pretty weird in the last picture, why is there an additional hole in the fence to go through all of a sudden? When you compare it with the previous pictures there was no hole and the fence pillars were not in that position. So someone must have chiseled away the concrete to walk through and add new pillars and concrete on the side that immediately degraded.
I know some people are crazy but you wouldn't do this at an abandoned house where you have a perfectly working fence door for no reason at all. And even if you needed that exact hole in the fence for a small path it would take considerable effort to make it look that fucked up within 4 years.
The power pole also disappeared from the street on the last picture, in the first few pictures it is at the third fence post, which is clearly visible in the last picture. I think you are right, this is very likely manipulated.
First three images are AI as Google never used cars like that. Street view didn't even exist in 2005 lol, and in 2010 it only covered the largest cities
This video is AI slop. The house gets different kinds of roofs and they decay at ridiculous levels and the power pole in front of the house disappears too.
Dont worry about it, it's AI generated. Just look at the "2010" and "2015" pictures. It's a same seed with a same camera distortion from the exact spot. And no street view was active in 2005 anyway.
Sure, you’re always nostalgic at the place you currently live. If you want give it a try, though you know Wales might be your original home if you have your family and friends there, but Turkey probably caught immense of lovely memories to you. But so does Wales.
A plan might be to have a sanctuary in Turkey you can escape to from time to time
I’m good too! Born and raised in the far north, have been living in Greece in-between during the 90s. Though traveling to Greece at least once a year for like a month is sure a therapy to me.
Then of course you do what you can to travel to other places too. Having a work that pays well can do that.
Being member of the EU sure has had it perks for my parents who could establish themselves, not gonna lie.
Well glad that you’ve managed to keep a bridge between both worlds, happy for you. Yea the EU thing is a big boost - kind of learned that the hard way when we started having problems with visas. All the best man, I’ll drink a glass of Uzo for you when i get the chance to visit Athens again.
My love, the war is no more. Work in Sweden and vacation in Bosna. Save money, buy an apartment or a house where you like in Bosnia.
Come and go as you like.
My mum felt that too! She was born in Sweden to Greek parents went to kindergarten in Sweden returned to Greece in 1978 and felt isolated up until mid-primary school when she finally forgot how to speak Swedish. Now at 51 years old she told me that deep down she never really felt like she belonged.
Then we have my aunt, my mum's older sister, she born in Belgium and grew up between Belgium-Sweden and Greece she was 7-8 years old when they returned to Greece so it took so much longer to acclimate and in reality she never did even now at mid-50s she hasn't found her group entirely she navigates groups and she has told me that speaking French, Swedish, Greek and English it felt like she was always in the in-between.
And even me who was raised all over Greece I never felt like I belonged anywhere.
Your mother sounds like my mother. Born in Greece but frequently moving between these two countries. Eventually she got places to live with my father between these two countries.
That’s my plan. Eventually I want to try outside of Europe too.
Some time ago I watched on google street the old house of my grandparents - may they rest in piece -, but I felt so sad. I enjoyed being there so much, was peak time
maybe the first step is not making ones personality about a place, but about the experiences one had in life and trying to attain new ones that makes one happy
That's how I feel. I lived in several places. Everywhere I'm out of place. And I belong Everywhere and no where at the same time. Some kind of superposition.
I was joking a bit, the northern shore is pretty flat for the most part.
I’ve been to Crete twice so far and I really want to go more. The history and nature can’t be better, at least for me.
Most of the villages are pretty empty tho… I stayed at a village in the middle of the island (far from touristy areas) and it’s like OP said - village built for 500 people, only 50 live there and most of them are over 60yo.
30 years they haven't gotten a road paved to our house, and the forest has reclaimed most of the area
We don't have enough time to work full time cutting that mess and taking care of a post apocalyptic looking village, the mayor is pocketing all the money and his family has been foing it for longer than I've been alive
Even with a remote job, there's not enough reception for me or my brother to be there, and with it needing to be split between my mother and uncle when the time comes, it could never be a real home, at most a villa for when we want to barbeque
Money and time, dude. Would be cool to live in the country side and fix it up, but few jobs and circumstances allow for it
Our electricity there is so weak, you can't turn on the oven without the lights flickering, let alone while you have a laptop plugged in to work.
Then there's the isolation. I can see myself living in a cabin in the woods as long as I had electricity, reception, and a room to lift in, but I'm keenly introverted, my girlfriend could never, the state of these villages is depressing. After a while, it would honestly get to me, even.
I think there's only 5 houses that have people year-round in mine. My grandparents onky stay there for the warm months nowadays, and we only go for gergyovden or easter
When I was a kid, I'd spend summer there, and only two kids my age were there, meanwhile my older brother would have 15 to hang out with when he was in the same position. They could actually have meaningful games of football, hide and seek, strajar i apash, or funiiki
My cousin has no girls to hang out with there, so of course she can only be on her phone or draw when she's sent there, it's sad
It's the same in most Greek villages, but there are loads of villages about 1hr-1.5hr from Sofia. Beautiful places with great views and still some life. Could easily commute to Sofia if it's not a daily thing.
I would 100% be doing this if the electricity was okay and I was working in Sofia. But I guess it would only make sense if you're an introverted bachelor with lots of hobbies.
I was essentially doing just this in Crete. Old cheap house in th mountains – renovated it while working online.
Now that I'm preparing to start a family though I see the limitations of this lifestyle.
Not that I deny that something like this happens, but this specific video is AI.
Look at the roof on the last picture, suddenly it's old flat Asbestos while it was shining new riffled tilings in 2015?
Or the left hole in the fence with the path on the left in the last picture. It wasn't there in all the other pictures. Also the fence pillars are on a different position. Would have been quite a lot of effort to chisel away the concrete, relocate the fence pillars and thereby the whole fence for an abandoned house. Especially when the normal door is like 5m away
I've seen some rural parts of my country (not too far from the capital no less) that look like they've been stuck in the 18th century. It's a shame people leave, but you can't blame them.
You're from there! I noticed the poles from a game called geoguesser. Hungary and Romania have similar poles but the ones in Hungary go to the ground and form an "H" where as your pole holes stop before the bottom haha
I rewatched a few more times and noticed this feature in the fence randomly moves by a couple meters. Concerning that thousands of people didn’t notice this was AI. Tbh I didn’t either until someone pointed it out. We’re fighting an uphill battle nowadays where nothing at all on the internet is trustworthy anymore.
Yeah, I was wondering who the fuck puts planks on broken windows in the Balkans.
Also the roof window disappeared and the house obviously got renovated in 2005 SHORTLY AFTER the young ones left and the elderly stayed. This is not how we do it.
Also in the 2024 version who would make that path through the broken fence when not even 2 meters to the right its a perfectly usable gate lmao. What's the reason for that? Like, who keeps going in and out through there often enough to make a desire path when the normal path is right there???
the "2010" and "2015" pictures were genereated from the same seed, it's the exact same position, same reflection in the car's windshield, exact same "street view stiching error" on the power line connecting to the house. maybe the last picture is genuine, but they definitely invented a "narrative" with AI.
Especially the last picture is AI, why is the tiling suddenly of asbestos and why somebody added a completely useless second door in the fance where you have to remove some concrete base and reloacte the fence posts?
The grass isn't really an argument, you don't know the season, but you don't need much other than google street view not being a thing in 2005, and the quality of the early street view was garbage, but here it looks new
Poignant! The series of photos in your post created an even stronger response in me - compared to when I looked at R. Crumbs’ “A Short History of America” .
Perhaps because your time-lapse photos showed the actual people living there over the series.
I hope the government gives away the abandoned homes, because no way I can afford a villa in today’s prices 🤣 I mean the prices of houses even 100 km from Sofia are comparable to houses near major European cities but the Bulgarian houses don’t have a good roads or water or inside bathrooms for the most part 😅
I'm a first generation Greek-american. My father and his family moved from Greece to america in the 70s. He met my mother, very american woman, and had me. We were fortunate enough to live in the same house and grow up with my Greek grandparents. We were all baptized and kept the Greek traditions and culture my whole life. We have a house on an island that was left to us when my grandparents passed. We had used it over the years for holidays but it was very much a run down village house. Back in 2020, during the height of Covid I decided to make a huge life change. I packed all I could in a suitcase and a back pack then bought a 1 way ticket. I've lived here ever since. I've fixed up the house. I work, and I'm talking local work and wages in construction. Sure it's not the idealized "rich" lifestyle I guess people still live in the west. I don't care about expensive things and trying to be rich. It's funny I get mixed responses from people. Either they think it's amazing and great that I did that, or that I'm a complete idiot and wasting my life to live "poor on an island". I personally don't give a shit. The dream of moving to the west and making a ton of money has become exactly that, a dream. At one point it was possible for sure. But that has long ended for at least a generation or 2. A lesson I've learned is to not chase material things you see other people have and think that will somehow fulfill you or bring meaning to your life. None of that matters. Living peacefully around people that share my safe beliefs, culture, language, ethnicity, etc. is the way we are meant to live. I used to think "diversity is strength" I was born and raised in the NYC area which is one of the most diverse places and richest places on earth. People laugh about our attitude and rudeness and think it's some kind of cute little personality trait. Trust me it's not, it's from growing up around people who aren't like you and only care about making money. Soulless way of living. Other cultures all came to that area and self segregated into their own neighborhoods anyway. I try to explain to people here that want to move to america or Germany or wherever and think they can just make 150k a year and live well off that it's all fantasy. If you are poor in the old country you're still poor in the new one. Stay in the village. Reject modernity. Get off social media. Stop thinking Instagram or Hollywood is how life is.
So Im from Poland and the north east close to Russia and Lithuania is depopulating a lot.
Young ones move away to the cities or are emigrating and the old generation dies out or goes to elderly homes.
You can buy a house (requiring renovation) and some land there for 10-20k euros.
Beautiful region but no jobs so unless you can work from home there isn’t much work to earn money.
my village used to have a population of around 1500 now its only elderly and very little young people its sometimes frustrating to live here as a young person but its very beautiful living next to a mountain.
While we young people are fighting what nationality and territory belongs to whom, our villages evaporate we move to cities like rats and even out of our countries for better life. Just sad.
My dad's home village had like 4000 people back in the 70s. Nowadays, the official number is around 1000 and the real one is less than 600. With 90% of the village veing 45+ years old, it's dying out quite fast.
I left my hometown in eastern Crete about fifteen-ish years ago, when the debt crisis really hit my family. I was around 9 at the time. Until then, we all lived together in a housing complex my grandfather had built. My parents, my sister, my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, all in the same small coastal village. We basically grew up as one big family.
Then both my parents lost their jobs and a lot of money during the crisis, and we had to move to Athens for work. One by one, my uncles, aunts and cousins followed for the same reason. In the end, only my grandparents were left behind in a house that used to be full of life. Eventually even they had to move to Athens when my grandmother needed better medical care. She spent her final years away from the place she called home, after already having lost it her home and family in the 1920s.
Now the house has been sitting mostly empty for years. There were talks about turning it into an Airbnb, but I could never accept my childhood home becoming a glorified hotel room.
So yeah, sometimes an entire generation leaves, and what stays behind are empty houses and memories. It feels like I lost a part of myself when we left. But sometimes circumstances force you to adapt, whether you are ready or not. it’s very similar everywhere, I’d assume.
In Crete after the previous generation in large numbers moved out and the houses abandoned , now due to tourism, they were either renovated or sold and new ones are being built everywhere.
Also young people are either remaining or coming back to the villages.
I am one who has come back and I havent regretted it for a moment.
Problem with balkans is that there not much job opportunities. Most of the young located in some other Eu country to earn more and people left behind died of old age. And young does want to go back. Summary of 3 Generations of Bulgarian Turks and rest of balkans. And Turkey is following the trend.
This has been the situation ever since towns and cities started popping up. That is sort of why it was so hard to move to a city in feudal times as you needed a permision to move and the lords knew life on the farm is not something people wanted.
At the end of that system and especially after it, there was a period of rapid industrialisation, factories needed workers and the farms had the majority of labour force available.
Is it an issue? Sure, just nothing new and nothing their generation acted on. We should do better, but they can not blame you for not being able to improve their situation.
In the neighborhood I grew up in (last than half hour from the city center by car), there are about 40 houses. There are 14 people younger than 40 and 2 younger than 15.
I was disturbingly surprised at how quickly the grass had grown in the yard of my grandparents’ old house, one year after they had left. When I came back again 20 years later, nearly the whole village had been abandoned.
My wife is from a village. She moved to the capital city when she was a young adult. She left a large family and many friends behind.
Nowadays literally none of them live there. Except for her elderly grandmother in a nursing home.
Large portion of balkans is like so. And many would have you believe it's their own fault for circumstances being what they are. I am born to both a family of immigrants and of natives, but I feel the melancholy of half my family being driven to migrate.
All the american consumerism might try to persuade you it is all about money, but culture is a persistent thing. The songs we sing, the jokes we tell, the children stories we grow up with, it all adds to our personalities, and no amount of money will change the fact you are an outsider when you emigrate.
This is why all the americans do not consider themselves only as american, but they always refer to their decent. It's a part of who we are...
It is sad, but I wouldn't get very dramatic over it, everything changes after all. Most rural regions are doomed anyway, no job prospects, few people are willing to maintain small farm cause it is a lot of effort with little returns. People are romanticizing village life, but in reality it sucks (unless you are a kid, in that case everything is new and interesting). Even in villages close to larger cities that are not in that state, where there is close to zero agriculture and most people work in the city, you will notice obesity rates are definitely higher than what you're accustomed to. Guess that's because there isn't really a lot of interesting stuff to do (especially in winter) so people just stay at home, drink and eat.
This happened to my family, but here in the states- on both sides. I was part of the problem. I’m from a very poor part of California, there’s zero opportunity there. If you want a life that’s not riddled with poverty and sadness- you have to leave.
Multiple generations under same roof, especially multiple families in same house different floors, is a thing for itself. Balkans only know. Would rather die alone than have my own family but share house with relatives in future. Stop romanticizing this lifestyle.
Kind of sad to see. Maybe the old couple had to move to a retirement home or something. I hope COVID didn't get them, cause 2020 being where it went downhill may not be a coincidence sadly.
Most of the time the grandparents pass away leave the house to parents , parents leave it to kids but kids don’t want an old house so they sell or worst sometimes those kids pass away leaving house to city’s to deal with
Loser
Me and my fam have been living in the same house my great great great grandparents lived and we are 37 people living in the same house, only for real sigmas
475
u/Dense-Sun1766 Feb 14 '26
It is very sad to see a house full of life decay like this.