{"id":1287,"date":"2019-05-11T19:27:11","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T16:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/survakari.com\/en\/?p=1287"},"modified":"2019-05-12T12:04:21","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T09:04:21","slug":"cherna-gora-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/survakari.com\/en\/2019\/05\/11\/cherna-gora-village\/","title":{"rendered":"Cherna gora Village"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The village of Cherna Gora is situated\nin the territory of the town Batanovtsi, only a few kilometers away from\nPernik. There, people have been celebrating Surva for as far back as people can\nremember and the village attracts a lot of interest with its beauty and\ntraditions. For few decades, one man from Pernik has made the masquerade his\nown biggest holiday. Every\n13th<\/sup> and 14th<\/sup> of January he celebrates it in Cherna Gora.\nThis is his story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\ndon\u2019t have a birth village. I am from the town of Pernik. My grand-grandparents\nare from Pernik. I was young when, because of something else, I found myself\nwith my relatives in Cherna Gora the days before Surva. They opened the door of\none basement for me and I stopped breathing \u2013 never before I was so impressed\nto see such beauties, collected in one place. There were so many bells on the\nwalls, so many bells. And there were around 10 masks on the shelves. Maybe 7 or\neven 8 people put masks on Surva from this house: the house owner, his\ndaughter, son, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and his grandchildren\u2026 The basement\nwas full of masks, bells, belts, horns, leather skins\u2026 \u201cAmazing! Can I touch\nthem?\u201d I asked. We ringed the bells, they were maybe a hundred or two hundred\u2026\nI will never forget this experience\u2026 Then my mother and I spent several nights\nsewing a costume and my relatives gave me a mask and a full set of bells. So, I\nprepared to walk all night with their group. I became a part of the group and\nnow I am always with them. Ever since, I haven\u2019t missed a single year – not a\nsingle one! My son has been with me since he was 6 years old. Once, when I was\ngoing to Cherna Gora for \u201cSurva\u201d, he started to cry because he wanted to come\nwith me. I made him a mask, gave him the smaller bells and took him with me. It\nwas cold and it was snowing\u2026 He walked wet, freezing and hungry with us all\nday. The evening he fell asleep in the car but he woke up and shouted: \u201cAre we\ngoing one more time?\u201d Than, as a student he came with me to Cherna Gora for \u201cSurva\u201d.\nAnd now he still attends annually.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One\nyear we went with our group around the village and suddenly two big cars came.\nFew people got out of them and said we shouldn\u2019t walk around on the 14th<\/sup>\nof January, because the new church calendar said that New year and \u201cSurva\u201d were\non the 1st<\/sup> of January. However, we decided that since we were doing\nit on the 14th<\/sup> for such a long time, we would continue doing it on the\n14th<\/sup>. Other villages have made the same decision. That\u2019s why we all\nmask ourselves and play with the masks according to the old church calendar and\nnot to the new one. And we play! For good health and wealth \u2013 we play…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s\nme. I am \u201cSurvakar\u201d (man who participates in the masquerade) without a village,\nbut a real one, one that\u2019s in love with mask games. Cherna Gora made me fall in\nlove with them\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare a lot of children in the group of Cherna Gora nowadays. Older people slowly\nstarted to give up, but the children didn\u2019t. They made their own group, chose\ntheir leader, dressed up one bride and one groom, one of the children dressed\nup like a little priest and they made their own \u201cbear and bear-leader\u201d –\neverything was like the older peoples\u2019 group. They continued \u201cSurva\u201d on their\nown. They taught us a good lesson and now we are back together. Some time ago,\nmasks were made of feathers and wings, and now they are made entirely of\nleather. Everyone independently makes their own mask, and that\u2019s why they are\nso beautiful and different. All people enjoy seeing them and they invite us in the\ntown of Batanovtsi, and in the villages of Kopanitsa and Svetlya. They also\ncome to visit us in Cherna Gora. I don\u2019t know if somewhere else, in other\ncultures, people have such holidays, but our \u201cSurva\u201d is unique.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Private archive<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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