I had always heard about a place called Crna Trava in the South od Serbia and its famous construction workers which built the most significant buildings of the SFRJ. When last summer I visited Crna Trava I found a sleepy but interesting settlement in a beatuiful landscape worth sharing a couple of pictures!
The main square
Crna Trava (Црна Трава) a village in southeast of Serbia lays in a beautiful plateau of theVlasina region (the mountainous region near the border to Bulgaria) . Thebeautiful setting along the Vlasina river (which starts 10km before at Vlasinsko Lake (Власинско језеро) and the surrounding mountains makes it a picturesque settlement.
Nonetheless in the statistics it’s one of the poorest municipalityof Serbia.
From a population of 13,748 in 1953 the number ofinhabitants dropped to just 2'563 in 2002 and goes along with the heavydepopulation (mainly for economic reasons) of the entire Vlasina region.
the hotel
the school
Since back to roman times, people of Crna Trava werefreedom lovers, and fighted against ocupation of Turks, Bulgarian and Fascism.Also a lot of fugitives from regions like Kosovo, Raška, Metohija, Kopaonik andMakedonia, who escaped from Turkish ocupation 400 years found in hiddenmountainous places like Crna Trava a new home.
Life was hard in those places but at least peopledidn’t have to addapt to the Tursk.
People from Crna Trava were the most wellknown migrantworkers (печалбари) of the former Yugolsavian territory. They were known asgood construction workers. So the male population was always on the road tolook for work and an big part of the great building projects of the communisttime in Belgrade, Skopje and other cities of SFRY were made bythose migrant workers.
The female population looked after the house, fields, animalsand relatives alone waiting fort he husbands to return (in the good cases withthe money they made on building sites).
Today in Crna Trava there are no migrant workersanymore, maybe still some older guys still singing migrantworkers-songs andremembering the old times.
There is still a big Construction-School (with campus)
Crnat Trava has evrything a little city needs: a health center, a town house, a police station, taverns, markets, a kindergarten,elementary and secondary schools, a students dorm, a library, a hotel, a squarewith a monument to the fallen soldiers ... but no people.
The Crna Trava area is in need of a longtermstrategy to promote the region. The beautiful setting, an already existing infrastructure and a healthy environment should be a good potential to attract investors for construction related business or for health food development.
More about Crna Trava:
Webpage of Crna Trava (srb)
Tourist attractions in Crna Trava on National Tourism Organization of Serbia (eng)
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