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we did get round to discussing my advertising campaign for Casa Cristina Roandola, he apologised for the website being out of date and suggested that I could put a lineage advert in three of their monthly publications for a twelve month period at a reduced rate.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.
No comments:
Post a Comment