The Balkan Peninsula - Bán đảo Ban-căng

Exploring the Natural World of the Balkan Peninsula






The Balkan Mountains range is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea. The highest peaks of the Stara planina are in central Bulgaria. The highest peak is Botev (2,376 m), located in the Central Balkan National Park (established 1991). The mountain gives the name of the Balkan Peninsula. Stara Planina played an enormous role in the History of Bulgaria and the development of the Bulgarian nation and people.





The ancient Greek name for the Balkan Peninsula is the Peninsula of Haemus. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains which run through the centre of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia.

The region takes its name from the "Balkan" mountain range in Bulgaria (from the Turkish balkan meaning "a chain of wooded mountains").
The name is still preserved in Central Asia where there exist the Balkan Mountains and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. On a larger scale, one long continuous chain of mountains crosses the region in the form of a reversed letter S, from the Carpathians south to the Balkan range proper, before it marches away east into Anatolian Turkey. On the west coast, an offshoot of the Dinaric Alps follows the coast south through Dalmatia and Albania, crosses Greece and continues into the sea in the form of various islands. The word was based on Turkish balakan 'stone, cliff', which confirms the pure 'technical' meaning of the term. The mountain range that runs across Bulgaria from west to east (Stara Planina) is still commonly known as the Balkan Mountains.

The first time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter by Buonaccorsi Callimarco, an Italian humanist, writer and diplomat in 1490. An English traveler, John Morritt, introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th century, and other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. The concept of the "Balkan peninsula" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808.

I decided to create this video as a journey inside the rich historical, cultural and traditional values that every person who came from this area conserve in their souls in a line where Westen and Orientalism waves form a melting point, gifting us a deep great treasures that all the world envy (who badly talks about us) and admire (who really appreciate this magic lands).
Althought greeks, serbians, bosnians, turks, albanians, macedonians, bulgarians, rumanians are divided for some politcal reasons. The culture, the tradition, the habits, the dishes unite us.