Meadows in the Mountains

Meadows in the Mountains was a techno camp on a meadow in the Rhodope mountains, by the village of Polkovnik Serafimovo, in Bulgaria. Vizh, in May 2023, places the clearing at about 1,000 metres and about 30 kilometres from the Greek border. The company is Meadows in the Mountains Limited, with a base that the work listing puts in Smolyan. The brothers Benjamin and Damien Sasse co-founded it. The mail the page still publishes is info@meadowsinthemountains.com. People slept on the meadow itself. The village sits below. The last stretch, in the guide written by people who climbed then, is on foot.

The gathering with dates already lived is 1 to 5 June 2023. The local press calls it the 11th. A note from that 1 June says the run lasts four days and, at the same time, writes it as 1 to 5. There were stages with DJs, exhibitions, wellness classes and workshops on a lighter way of living on the mountain. The principle that text repeats is to leave no trace. In the recent years it talks about, about 30 percent of the crowd was Bulgarian, and the rest came from abroad. The article says the event had started looking mainly at the foreign visitor, in a little-known corner of the country, and that the village community took part in the build. That May text also says they offer a promotional visit to anyone with a Bulgarian document, and that they put Bulgarian artists and traders on the bill and at the stalls. Vizh describes the clearing as sitting in the mist of the Rhodopes, between the mountain and the sky. The parents' house was the first room.

A visitor guide from that period tells the climb this way: check-in is at a headquarters in the middle of the village. From there a shuttle leaves, on a wristband, and it gets you as far as the track will hold. The last slope is walked, with whatever each person can carry. The same guide speaks of a festival coach from Sofia or Plovdiv airports, and of a local coach from Sofia to Smolyan for anyone who then finds the village on their own. It also mentions a hire car at the airport. The figure of about 2,000 people is that guide's for a summer before 2018, not a turnstile from June 2023. They publish no bus that reaches the clearing.

DJ Mag dates the founding to 2011. Vizh tells the first days in 2012: the brothers were at their parents' house, the parents having gone to live on the mountain, and they invited about twenty friends from the United Kingdom, among them DJs, producers and musicians. It was three days, stopping only to recharge the generator. June 2023, for the Bulgarian press, is already the 11th. DJ Mag calls the 12th the date they announced in March 2024 as moved out of 2024 and into 2025. Both counts are in print. This text does not invent the year that would be needed to make them match.

That 12th did not open. The team's letter, posted after an Instagram notice on 25 April 2025 and carried by DJ Mag on the 28th, says that 2025 will not be held and that they are preparing bankruptcy. The accumulated debt they write is over 400,000 euros. From 2023 they count more than 150,000 unpaid to crew and suppliers. The letter ties that hole to having carried on when part of the production left, after personal allegations which, as they tell it, nobody followed up. In 2024, European Union elections and Bulgarian elections fell on the permit dates, and the permit was withdrawn. The investors who were going to cover 2025 pulled out in January. The last funding application was rejected in March. Tickets for 2025, set for August, sit in escrow and the refund goes out on its own through the platform. Anyone who moved a 2024 ticket into 2025, and anyone who asked for a 2024 refund, sits inside the proceedings. The letter says there is no cash now for those payments.

The last clearing with open gates is 1 to 5 June 2023. August 2025 never opened. The letter is still on the page and speaks of other gatherings on the mountain, still without a lived date. The mail is still the same one. The bed, once the meadow no longer opens, is in Smolyan, in Plovdiv or in Sofia, at the end of a mountain road and a last stretch on foot.