Germans get back to basics in village

A self-described shaman who discovered the healing powers of herbs while seeing visions on his sickbed, a former IBM consultant who ditched PowerPoint presentations to drive across Africa and an artist-plumber from Luxembourg.

They are among a group of 22 people newly settled in the crumbling village of Odrintsi in southeastern Bulgaria where they live with 230 goats, but without electricity.

They traveled in May to one of scores of villages in the Balkan country left empty as many Bulgarians migrate to richer parts of Europe. Before their arrival, Odrintsi, in the Rhodope mountains near the Greek border, had a population of five.