Izvoarele, Tulcea

 village, interesting place

Izvoarele (historically Alibeichioi and then Regele Ferdinand; called Filimon Sîrbu from 1948 to 1964, Izvoarele since 1965; Turkish: Alibeköy) is a commune in Tulcea County, Northern Dobruja, Romania. It is composed of three villages: Alba, Iulia and Izvoarele.
At the 2011 census, of the residents for whom data were available, 54.4% were Romanians and 45.3% Greeks.
Initially, Izvoarele was a purely Greek village. Izvoarele was founded during the Greek Revolution, specifically in 1828. At that time, the Roman residents of three villages in Eastern Thrace settled here in order to escape the reprisals and massacres of the Turks, with the intention of settling in Russian-occupied Bessarabia. However, they stopped here temporily, they ended up settling permanently in this fertile place.
In Izvoarele there are two Orthodox churches. The Holy Trinity, which follows the old calendar and holiday calendar, and Saint Demetrius, which follows the new one. Ecclesiastically they belong to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania. The biggest celebration of the village is that of Agios Dimitrios, before the heavy cold of winter begins.
Every year, in the first week of October, the "Festival of Hellenism" of Romania is organized here. The Greek Community of Izvoarele is often involved in cultural activities, such as the "Dimitra" Dance Club.
In the last three decades, about a thousand Greeks from the village immigrated abroad and to Greece. What remained were the elderly, who are mainly engaged in agriculture.. The residents have excellent relations with the Romanians, Bulgarians and the other ethnic groups of Dobruja and strongly maintain their Greek identity and their relations with Greece, even though they are a small, isolated "island" of Hellenism in the north-eastern Balkans.