Whitewashed houses of stone and clay brick, with bay windows and heavy roofs of crooked tiles or even stone slabs: this is what Bulgarian traditional villages and towns look like.

Bardarski Geran is a striking exception. It looks like an Austro-Hungarian village, from the days when the Habsburg Empire was a major European power and not a lesson in the history books. The houses here have steep roofs, decorative gables and walls painted in bright colours – pink, ochre and orange. In the square, St Joseph's Church has a neo-Gothic appearance, as does the Church of the Virgin Mary down the street. St Joseph's is well kept. Until recently, St Mary's was abandoned – weeds sprouting, stained glass windows broken, pigeons flying in and out. Reconstruction is now under way.

The monument by St Joseph Church is dedicated to local men who perished in the wars Bulgaria fought in 1912-1918. Their families reflect the diverse past of the people of Bardarski Geran

In the centre of the village is a relic from later times – a grounded Soviet jet fighter, next to a propeller-shaped monument with an inscription telling of seven Soviet pilots who crashed near Bardarski Geran in October 1944 "in the line of duty". The villagers buried them in the local cemetery, but when the monument was completed, they reburied the remains at its base. Like many other Communist-era monuments across Bulgaria, the story of the Russians is actually quite different. They got inebriated on local home-made liquor, got into a car and crashed to their deaths – "in the line of duty", so to speak.

Opposite the monument, in the courtyard of St Joseph, there is another memorial dedicated to local men who died in the two Balkan wars and the First World War. Some of the names are in German. Strange, isn't it?

Bardarski Geran is the only German village in Bulgaria. The abandoned church is known as the German Church.

Inside The Virgin of the Holy Hope, the former German Catholic church

How did it happen that a German village appeared in one of the least inspiring parts of Bulgaria?

The Swabians arrived here in 1893, lured by the promise of newly independent Bulgaria's vast uncultivated lands and labour shortage, hoping to buy cheap farms. This was not their first attempt at emigration. Their ancestors had left Germany in the 17th century and settled along the Danube in the Banat, an area of present-day Hungary, Romania and Serbia, to escape the Thirty Years' War.

Soon Bardarski Geran had almost 100 German families, who found Bulgaria a land of opportunity.

The German immigrants in Bardarski Geran formed a close-knit community with an active cultural and spiritual life. They had a brass band, and in 1933 they opened the Church of the Virgin Mary and their own school. The village even had its own hospital, run by Benedictine nuns.

But Bardarski Geran was actually founded by other immigrants. The village was founded by Bulgarian Catholics from the Banat who returned to their former homeland under a law that gave free land to people of Bulgarian descent.

The local community carefully preserves its architectural traditions

The Bulgarians and the Germans living in Bardarski Geran were friendly enough to use the chapel alternately before each group built its own church, but they lived in separate neighbourhoods, rarely intermarried, and eventually began a long and complicated "internecine war" over the Swabians' desire to turn the Church of the Virgin Mary into a separate parish.

Things changed in 1943. Hitler lured Germans living outside Germany to return to the vaterland. The Swabians of Bardarski Geran heeded the call to return to the Reich, and left the village on 9 May 1943. Most of the men were immediately sent to the Eastern Front. Few returned. When the war ended and the Communists came to power in Bulgaria, the abandoned Swabian houses were taken over by the Banat Bulgarians. The Church of the Virgin Mary began to crumble, a poignant reminder of a small community swept away by a war that changed the world.

The village still preserves some Central European traditions, such as making large, puffy duvets from goose feathers

But the Banat Bulgarians remain here. They still preserve their specific culture, heavily influenced by their time in the Austro-Hungarian Empire – including costumes, dances and household items such as thick, fluffy goose-down duvets, as well as the local cuisine. Their most impressive festival is the Faršangji. Its name derives from the Hungarian Farsang and the German Fasching, both of which mean "carnival." Heavily influenced by German and Hungarian traditions, the three-day carnival in Bardarski Geran takes place before Lent. In appearance and mood, it has nothing to do with the kukeri that dance in the streets of the rest of Bulgaria between Christmas and Shrovetide, hidden behind macabre animal masks and decorated with bells. Faršangji is clearly a Central European carnival – men dress as women, women dress as men, social roles are reversed and masked people roam the streets laughing, singing, dancing and drinking.

MiG-17 fighter aircraft in the centre of Bardarski Geran

The people of Bardarski Geran also use the holiday as an opportunity to meet other Banat Bulgarians, as the village is one of the few places in Bulgaria where they live. The carnival was banned during the Communist era, but was revived in the 2000s and has gradually become an event attended by people from all over the country.