Padina (photo/video story)

Located in north part of Serbia (Vojvodina, South Banat). It is populated mostly by Slovaks, it is most Slovak place in Serbia and most probably most Slovak place in the world outside of Slovakia (it was around 96% Slovaks not sure what it is now).

Padina was founded 1806 by Slovak immigrants. The settlement was initiated by Archduke Ludwig to strengthen the Military Border between Austrian and Ottoman Empires. History shows that there was settlement here before but no one wanted to stay here because there was no water. To get to the water you needed to dig over 40m and the soil is a lot of sand. Nearest water source was 30km away and that is not a great thing in year 1806. They were promised wells, but we see that governments don't change, and for that promise they waited for 11 years (until 1817).

This is the first well build in Padina.

Inside of the well. Left on the photo you can see bit of the well. It was more than 40m deep. They lowered big buckets connected to chain. On the photo you can see the mechanism for lowering and pooling the buckets out. That big barrel up was used so 40m of chain could wrap around, and it was turned by two horses (it could have been Conan but history is not mentioning him so it probably was not)

Padina is located on the end of Deliblato sands (it could be that it was a desert or just the nice part of pannonian sea). It is located at 110 meters above sea level. Translated Padina means slope or downhill, now you can imagine how flat everything around it is when something at 110m is called a downhill.

Overall a nice place, a bit quiet, 60 km from Belgrade (capital of Serbia). Mostly agricultural, at least 10 tractors passed by my house while i was writing this.

Main problem currently is emigration (could it be called emigration if they are going home?) as fair amount of people are moving back to Slovakia. Better economy, easier to get a job and not that hard to get papers to move there. More or less you just need to prove that you had a slovak distant relative.