An "interesting" day

Today (Wednesday) I took Ion, a local Roma who supplies my winter wood, his wife, Ionella, and her two sisters to Medias so they could visit the girls' mother who is in hospital recovering from stomach surgery. In exchange Ion will help me move my pile of logs down the garden and he and Ionella will dig my garden for me next month when the weather has warmed up a bit and the ground is no longer frozen.

The day started with a minor problem. Ionella spotted that the right rear tyre on my car was soft, the same tyre which was supposed to have had a slow puncture repaired last Friday! So that's a trip to Sighisoara tomorrow to complain and get it fixed again. After Ion and I had changed the wheel, we set off for Medias. With my limited Romanian and their complete lack of English, our conversation was rather brief although I know enough Romanian to get the general idea of what they were asking me or telling me.

First stop in Medias was for the family to get some documents they needed, probably connected to social payments for the hospital treatment although I'm not 100% sure. After waiting with Ionella in the car for half an hour, listening to K.T. Tunstall interspersed with more snippets of brief conversation, one of her sisters returned and said there was a very long queue (I could understand that much!) and suggested we go for a coffee to warm us up. For coffee we went to a tiny smoke filled bar and cafe just round the corner where I was welcomed with "Engleesh, yes?" from some people who turned out to be related to Ionella. The bar owner spoke a little English and I think he was quite pleased to have an Englishman in his bar - I might even have been the first one!

Once warmed up again Ionella and I returned to the car while her sister went back to join Ion and sister number two again queuing for the documents. Back in the car, Ionella started saying something about the shopping I said I wanted to do as it could be another hour before the documents were obtained. I guessed that Ionella was suggesting we go shopping together and so I phoned a friend to confirm that I had understood correctly. I guess this is the best way to learn Romanian by immersing myself in the language with the locals!

We drove to the Kaufland store on the Sibiu road out of Medias and Ionella was quite helpful in locating the things I wanted. As we walked around the store together I couldn't help wondering how many people looked at us and wondered what this 64 year old man, obviously not a Romanian, was doing in the company of a young Roma woman - Ionella is a rather pretty 22 year old!

As we approached the hospital, Ion was waiting at the gate, having got his documents and walked the few hundred metres to the hospital with Ionella's two sisters. I parked in the hospital car park (free, unlike the UK), arranged to be back at 2pm and while the family visited their mother, I walked the short distance to Medias's historic centre. This is quite compact, being the area originally within the city walls of which only about half survive, and it is now mostly pedestrianised. There are many old buildings including the Evangelical Church of St Margaret with its slightly leaning 74 metre tall tower/spire. I think I've read somewhere that it's about 1.5 metres off vertical at the top (see photos taken from two angles).

As well as medieval, there are 17th/18th century buildings around the main square, Piata Regele Ferdinand (King Ferdinand Square) and one in particular attracted my attention with its prominent sign proclaiming "Sex Shop" and a fairly steady stream of men and women, young and old, heading towards the entrance and joining a small queue! On closer inspection, the queue was in fact customers of the small kiosk supplying photocopying and key-cutting services. Also sharing the building was a local government department, a public notary and an insurance agency! I have to admit I couldn't resist joining the queue to see if I could get a key cut for my car as the spare supplied with it is the wrong one. The kiosk owner was very helpful and said that I could get one complete with the electronic bit that operates the central locking/immobiliser at his other shop near the Billa supermarket in the main shopping street - and "very cheap". Unfortunately he wouldn't be there until 2:30pm so I said I would have to come another day as I would be heading back home by that time.

Back at the hospital just before 2pm, Ion, Ionella and her two sisters were already waiting for me and had met another Roandola resident also visiting his relative in hospital. Would I have room to give him a lift back as well? Fortunately for him my car is a seven seater so with a little bit of rearranging of my shopping, the rearmost row of seats was unfolded and everybody piled in. One thing I will say about my Dacia Logan MCV is that whether I'm on my own or with a full load it takes everything in its stride admirably - probably down to the good torque produced by its turbodiesel engine and suspension designed to cope with Romanian roads and carry a load up to 750kgs.

Passing through Laslea, I was requested to stop at the Primaria (Town Hall) where Ion collected some social security money then at the small supermarket for the money to be spent on food. While I was waiting outside, my new German friend Gerhardt, another Roandola resident, came to say "Hello" and I was just wondering how I could fit him in for a lift as well when he said that he had come to Laslea with his horse and cart. Phew! Life is certainly not dull in Romania!

Advertising, new German friends and weather watching

Shortly after getting back from my three week Christmas break with family in the UK, I contacted the publisher of a Christian Holidays brochure. Although the website invited me to advertise in their 2011 brochure, I was doubtful that this could still be correct. I phoned the advertising manager who turned out to be someone I had spoken to a few times before when I was the Vale Elim Church representative for a monthly magazine published by the same company. Of course he didn't know I was living in Romania so a rather lengthy catch-up chat ensued in which I explained the reasons for my decision to leave the UK and brought him up to date with my progress. When we did get round to discussing my advertising campaign for Casa Cristina Roandola, he apologised for the website being out of date and suggested that I could put a lineage advert in three of their monthly publications for a twelve month period at a reduced rate. This sounded like a good idea so after writing and rewriting the advert, it was emailed to him the next day and will appear in the March issues of Direction magazine, Re. magazine and New Life outreach newspaper, all published in the next week or so.

Whilst in an advertising frame of mind, I also added my details to a Romanian accommodation website
http://accommodation-romania.co/accommodation/transylvania
and Casa Cristina is the top entry on the Transylvania page!

A couple of Mondays ago I had a surprise visit from Elly who, along with her husband Gerhardt, also runs a B&B in Roandola. I had met them briefly at a BBQ last September given by another English Laurence who owns a house near the end of the village, kept solely as a summer retreat. We had a good chat and a few days later Elly rang and invited me to visit them on Saturday evening. They live in a house very similar to mine and have an organic farm, starting work at 6am and finishing around 6pm all year round. They have cows and chickens, grow corn and vegetables plus alfalfa for animal feed. All the work is done manually or with horse drawn implements and their guests, mostly German, come for the experience of working on a traditional farm with basic facilities - no running water, outside loo, clothes washing by hand.... Our two B&B's cater for different markets so we will not be competing for guests and in fact we can support each other in various ways. They will sell me eggs, milk, cheese and vegetables and take my guests on horse-drawn cart trips into the hills following tracks impassable to cars. Since they have no motorised transport, I can provide their guests with sightseeing trips further afield or journeys to/from railway and bus stations. Elly gave me some of their homemade cream cheese and a wedge of smoked cheese, both absolutely delicious!

On my second Sunday back in Roandola, about 12cms of snow had fallen overnight and, as it was still falling steadily, I decided not to go to church in Sighisoara since I was unsure whether I would be able to get back to the village four hours later! Three weeks on and most of the snow that fell that Sunday is still on the ground and the rooftops. There have been a couple of slight overnight snow showers but the snow has stayed around because the temperature has only been above freezing on two of the last 27 days. I know this because while in England I treated myself to a wireless weather station and have started taking readings of the weather conditions every few hours from 8am to about 11pm. The coldest reading so far is -15C at 8am last Monday which was also the minimum overnight temperature. Although the weather station came with a rain gauge, I have of course had to measure the depth of snow with a ruler and because the rain gauge must be protected from freezing, it will stay indoors until things are considerably warmer! There is also an anemometer which could not be properly tested because there has been absolutely no wind since I set it up. A couple of days ago I did finally see it revolving and it managed to record a brief puff of wind at 3kph! No doubt the lack of any wind is why it doesn't feel so cold outside, even when the weather station is showing -3C at 2pm. On clear days I have worked outside in the sunshine chainsawing more wood for the stove - and very pleasant it has been too.

Earlier this week I had another cartload of wood delivered and my local Roma supplier is bringing another load tomorrow (Saturday) in exchange for a new 250W bulb for his outside light and 20kgs of potatoes which are in the kitchen ready to hand over when the wood has been unloaded.