Suzanne
06-05-07, 03:06 PM
If one visits the museum in the village of Momchilovtsi, Rhodope Mountains, southern Bulgaria, will be really surprised. The notable shepherds who lived in the region turn out to have worked as fishermen in the winter when they took the herds down to the Aegean Sea's warmer coastal plains. The shepherds would "change skin" and go fishing, not as apprentices to the local Greek fishermen but as owners of pound nets, drag-nets, etc. The museum exhibits not only photos and pictures from the time before the Treaty of Neuilly (end of World War I) when Bulgaria had to cede these territories, but also ownership certificates for industrial fishing equipment, dating back to the Ottoman times.
The pelagic fish (open water) like mackerel, scad, belted bonito, blue fish leave the Black Sea in the end of November and settle in the warmer Aegean for the winter. At the same time the pastures near Momchilovtsi and Smolyan were covered with two to three metres of snow and shepherds took their enormous herds to the lowlands near the Aegean. Instead of simply sitting in the sheds they learnt the art of fishing. The profit they made from fishing and exporting to Thessalonica, Constantinople and the Rhodopes was at times more than from sheep breeding.
www.standartnews.bg
The pelagic fish (open water) like mackerel, scad, belted bonito, blue fish leave the Black Sea in the end of November and settle in the warmer Aegean for the winter. At the same time the pastures near Momchilovtsi and Smolyan were covered with two to three metres of snow and shepherds took their enormous herds to the lowlands near the Aegean. Instead of simply sitting in the sheds they learnt the art of fishing. The profit they made from fishing and exporting to Thessalonica, Constantinople and the Rhodopes was at times more than from sheep breeding.
www.standartnews.bg