Snow and Christmas Markets

Christmas in Romania is usually "white" and last year the Sibiu and Sighisoara webcams showed snow most of the time, at least on the rooftops. This year however, the forecast, for the next two weeks anyway, is mostly mild with a mix of sunny days and rain showers. Any snow showers in the forecast are at night and will probably turn to rain by morning. From the BBC weather forecasts I have seen over the last couple of days it looks like most parts of the UK will have snow this year before Romania. Nevertheless I bought a set of snow chains for my car today as they are compulsory for driving in heavy snow and the police can prevent you going any further if you do not have them. Also purchased today was the snow clearing device shown in the photo. Both will be in the car when I drive to the UK in just over three weeks time as it looks like I might need them to get from the Eurotunnel terminal to Hindhead, Newbury and Grove to visit family and friends!

Last year I watched the Christmas Markets in Sibiu and Sighisoara on live streaming webcams. This year I shall actually be visiting both of them! Sibiu's Market is a huge event, open daily 10am to 9pm from this coming Saturday (27th) through to Sunday 2nd January 2011. It has only been going since 2007 and the first one was held in Piata Mica (The Small Square) with 38 stalls but it proved such a success with public and traders alike that from 2008 it has been held in Piata Mare (The Large Square). This year there will be 65 stalls, an ice rink and a funfair, catering mainly for children who are very much the centre of Romanian family life. The stalls will offer, according to the website, such things as traditional sweets, hot tea, mulled wine, handmade Christmas decorations, candles, toys, clothing and much more. I'm hoping to find some Christmas presents for family and friends in the UK. I will be going to the market with some friends who live in Sibiu and one of them has kindly offered me a bed for the night. Apart from not having to drive home in the dark, it also means I can sample the mulled wine! Romanian drink/drive law has a "zero alcohol" limit and the police operate random traffic stops (I've been pulled over twice in six months) to check vehicle and identity documents so it's soft drinks only when I'm driving anywhere.

The Christmas Market in Sighisoara's Piata Cetatii is a smaller affair with around 20 stalls and to date I haven't been able to find out when it starts! All I know is that as yet there are no signs of the stalls being brought into the square. Last year the first indication was some blocks of polystyrene foam appearing outside the antiques shop opposite the webcam location. The blocks lay on the ground for two or three days and were then assembled into a five metre high snowman so I'm checking the webcam daily and hoping the same happens this year.

The most important news since my last post is completion of the registration process for my company, Casa Cristina Roandola S.R.L. Hooray! As well as the colourful Registration Certificate for the primary activity of providing rooms for guests, I have a closely typed three page document listing all the secondary activities I am allowed to carry on. My lawyer, Ramona, spent quite a long time going through the list with me a few months ago and we ticked anything and everything relating to living in a rural environment and running a B&B so I can keep animals, grow vegetables, make furniture, do metalwork, repair cars, use my car to transport guests, hire out mountain bikes etc etc. There were very few boxes we didn't tick such as dealing in arms and ammunition, processing chemicals and refining petroleum products! However, I can repair aircraft and spacecraft - yes, really! I will probably never do 75% of the activities but it was easier to be registered now rather than go through another lengthy registration procedure if I suddenly decided to weave my own cloth or keep buffalo and produce mozarella cheese!

Is it summer, autumn or winter?

Yes, that's right 34C in the direct sun (21C in the shade) at end of garden today - 15th November! I've been told that it's the warmest November since the early 1970's but how much longer will it last? Next two weeks looking fairly mild according to Accuweather and mainly sunny with the odd shower, generally at night. However, I am preparing for winter with a second load of wood which was delivered by horse and cart. Some local men were recruited to carry the wood up the garden as my caravan prevented the horse and cart getting beyond the end of the courtyard. There was a bonus "delivery" left by the horse! I have also been informed that Romania is expecting the coldest winter for nearly 50 years so the extra wood may well have been a good decision. I thought I probably had enough wood already but when a local Roma came knocking on the door offering a cartload for 70 lei, 30 lei less than I paid for each of the first two cartloads, I said "Yes please". After all, if I don't use it this winter, it will be there for the next. Incidentally, I heard again yesterday that we can expect a very cold winter. It had somehow become the coldest in 1000 years but I don't think records go back that far!

Last week I painted the ceiling and upper walls of the en-suite and fitted the glass into the door so it is definitely finished now (see video). Cole has also constructed a new partition wall between the entrance steps and the kitchen which will go a long way to keeping the warmth in. The kitchen is the only unheated area in the house, unless the gas cooker is in use, and the main entrance is a pair of glazed double doors with a large fanlight above which resulted in rapid heat loss once the sun had gone down. Although the temperature in the kitchen area has, so far, not gone below 11C it always feels colder in the morning when I come out of my bedroom which is heated in the evening by one of three wood-fired stoves. Even though the house is 90 years old, the Saxon German builders knew a thing or two about thermal insulation and built the house with 500mm thick exterior walls, 300mm interior walls, wood floors, double (inner and outer) windows and ceilings consisting of 20-25mm of lime plaster, reinforced with reeds, applied to 25mm thick boards. It doesn't end there either - the roof space floor is more 25mm boards covered with a 25mm thick layer of lime mortar! Once the sun has gone down it gets cold very quickly outside and most mornings there has been a light to moderate frost on my car. If I light the tiled stoves in the evening and fill them up so they will keep burning for an hour or so after I've gone to bed, the room temperature by late evening is usually 21-23C. Because the tiled stoves act like night storage heaters and continue to give off heat long after the fire has gone out, the rooms will still be at least 17C next morning, even with night time temperatures falling to minus 8C as they did a couple of weeks ago. When this incredibly warm spell has ended no doubt the stoves may have to be kept "ticking over" all day and room temperatures built up to 25 or 26C in the evening but with my winter fuel stock now nearly 50% more than it was last week, I am confident that my 270 lei (£55) worth will keep me warm!



P.S. How do I get rid of the unwanted "suggestions" at the end of the Youtube video?

Fire and water

The "Family Room" is nearly ready! Once the building debris had been cleared, I fitted the new stove bought in September. I had already laid a tile base for it to stand on some time ago but the arrival of Cole and his team forced a halt for me while they constructed the en-suite bathroom. Now the work inside the house is finished, I will need to get the paint roller and brushes out.

The new stove can burn coal or wood, as in my case, and was fired up for the first time yesterday morning. It proved very easy to light and easy to control the rate of burning. Within half an hour it was providing plenty of heat and although the instruction booklet warned of a smell the first time it was used, this was not very evident. After adding more logs I let it burn for a couple of hours before allowing it to die down. Very satisfied with this new stove - German design, manufactured in Hungary. I may get another one for the back room as the ceramic tiled stove in that room has a few faults and is proving to be a so-and-so to light. As these tiled stoves are built in situ, it would probably be difficult to replace the broken bricks in the combustion chamber and make the warped metal stoke-hole door fit properly. I have tried to fill the cracks with fireproof filler but the gap is too large for effective sealing. Obviously a metal stove does not provide much heat once it has gone out, unlike the tiled stoves, in effect wood-fired storage heaters which continue to radiate heat for many hours after the last log has burnt out. However, ease of lighting and much more controllable heat output wins the day for me! The large tiled stove in the "Breakfast Room" will be retained as it is not only fairly easy to light and burns well but will also provide a feature for the room and a talking point for guests who have not seen such things before.

After Cole and team finished the en-suite I added a few fittings - towel rack, holders for toothbrush and paste, floor standing toilet roll holder with loo brush and a small pedal bin. I had to wait a day for the silicone sealant around the shower tray to harden before I could use the shower but at last I could have a shower. Unfortunately it was only a slightly warm one as there appears to be a problem with the instant heater. This is possibly due to the relatively high water pressure from the pump in my cellar pushing the water through the heater too quickly. The heater itself may be faulty of course and I will get Viorel the plumber to check it again when he comes to complete the septic tank installation. In the meantime I will just have a quick shower when necessary!

The washer/dryer is working superbly and has been well used in the first few days as I had collected quite a lot of dirty washing. Hand washing only really worked for lightly soiled small items up to T-shirt size. Although I had managed to wash some towels and jeans during the summer months when it could be done in the warm sunshine, rinsing out the soap suds usually required three lots of clean water and wringing out by hand was hard work! I really sympathize with people in Roandola and Laslea who have to do their washing either in the river or at one of the village wells because they do not have their own water supply.

Old vines and dying leaves

Over the last few days I have harvested white and black grapes from six of the nine vines in my courtyard and garden. This years yield looks pretty good to me and the grapes have also had a few frosts on them which I am told improves the quality of the juice whether it is subsequently fermented or not. Unfortunately one vine, which grows around the outside loo at the end of the garden, ripened in late August and most of the grapes succumbed to birds and the myriad of flying insects around at that time. Of the remaining eight vines, five bear white grapes and the other three, black. I have no idea what varieties they are but the three whites I have harvested so far are smaller than the black varieties which are large and juicy - and good for eating too!

The three white varieties yielded a total of 70kgs of grapes and the three black varieties, from smaller vines, totalled 43kgs. After crushing and pressing, the juice from both white and black grapes is stored in a collection of 5, 6 and 10 litre plastic bottles which originally held my drinking water. Once the remaining two vines have been harvested, I will spend a day crushing and pressing the grapes and then the process of turning most of the juice into wine will begin. Some unfermented juice will be set aside for soft drinks for younger visitors. One thing I have noticed is that the juice from the white grapes is more "rose" in colour, as was the bottle of "Roandola 2009" I was given earlier this year by the previous owner of No 130 and which I had thought at the time was a mixture of white and black grapes.

In reality making my own wine doesn't make sense economically as the crusher and press cost over £195 yet I can buy a 5 litre flagon of palatable Italian red or white wine for just over £4. So the money I spent on equipment would buy me over 230 litres of wine! However, there is a certain satisfaction in making your own wine from produce you have grown, whether grapes or any other fruit or even flowers! And of course the equipment is there for next years crop - and the next and the next.....

Autumn has sort of arrived. We are still enjoying clear skies most days and the night time temperature is dropping below freezing. Most mornings there is a heavy frost on everything until about 9:30am. However, once the sun gets over the hill behind my house, the temperature rises quickly to the high teens and even low twenties - warm enough for me to work outside in shorts and T-shirt again!

Most of the trees in the valley and on the hills are deciduous and the colours in the bright sunlight are quite stunning. I have taken some photos, one of which is reproduced here, but the camera doesn't do justice to the brilliance of the yellows, oranges, coppers, reds, browns and silvers of the dying leaves. There is very little wind in the valley and the leaves have mostly stayed on the trees, only falling off one or two species such as the pear trees which line the road through the village.

Looking forward to having a shower!

Work on the en-suite shower/toilet in what will be the "Family Guestroom" has progressed well. The walls were constructed and plastered and septic tanks lowered into a 3x2x2 metre hole by October 2nd. Then I had a couple of days respite from all the mud and dust until Viorel the plumber arrived to install water supply and drain pipes and connect up to the septic tanks. Viorel is also an electrician so after going to fetch some more drainpipes last Thursday afternoon, he came back with two mates and we went through the whole house noting my requirements so they could give me a quote. They left at 6pm and half an hour later Cole, who has been co-ordinating everything for me, rang to say the materials would be 1000 lei and the labour 900 lei. If this price was OK they would come and do the job on Saturday. This equates to £395 so of course I said "Yes, please carry on" straight away! Included in the quote was changing the rather thin wires supplying the house so they won't get fried when the 5kW instant electric shower is used. I might, on the other hand, make the lights in the rest of the village go dim if shower and kitchen water heater are in use at same time!

At lunchtime on Friday, Viorel finished his plumbing work for the time being and arrived with his two mates at 9am on Saturday wearing his electricians hat. They worked through the house room by room and only briefly interrupted the supply three of four times. Amazingly some switches, sockets and light fittings were connected while circuits were "live" but of course an electrician knows to only work on one wire at a time and uses insulated tools. All the cables for the instant shower heater and en-suite lights were channelled into the wall, new power sockets fitted in all rooms and new lighting fitted in kitchen to replace the non-functioning light which had forced me to cook by the light of a plug-in desklamp for the last few months! Power outlets were all replaced and most now have UK 13 amp double sockets I brought with me from England fitted alongside the Romanian type (see photo). This allows me to plug in my UK electrical items without an adaptor or having to change the plug and will also benefit any guests who arrive with a plethora of phone/iPod chargers, shavers, laptops and hair straighteners/curling tongs but only one Continental adaptor between them! To cope with all this new wiring, the main supply to the house was upgraded and as one of the electricians works for the electricity supply company, he had the equipment and skills to go up the pole (see photo) and carry out the work without me having to apply to the electricity company and then wait two or three weeks! The ancient screw-in ceramic fuse holders have been replaced with a master trip outside the house in a new meter box and five circuit breakers inside the house. They finished the installation around 6:15pm but then found that the new spotlights and power sockets in the kitchen were not working so they spent the next hour tracking down and rectifying the problem. When they left at 7:30pm, clutching their well-earned 1900 lei, I cooked my dinner by the light of four spotlamps instead of one desklamp! Oh joy! And the cooker hood I had installed myself was plugged in and working!

Today (Monday) Cole the builder/project manager has been here with one young assistant backfilling the earth around the septic tanks and constructing a strong platform of oak boards over the top. This is so that the heavy layer of earth on top of the tanks does not bend the thin metal tops and crack the plastic tanks contained within the galvanized sheet and tube frames. It will also make access for any repairs easier and allow them to be dug up if and when Roandola is connected to mains drainage - supposed to happen within a couple of years but I'm not holding my breath!

Tomorrow the floor of the en-suite will be tiled by Cole (I'll leave this to him so they are level and flat!) and then I will follow up with doing the wall tiles, which is something I can do. Once that's done Viorel will return to install the shower, WC and wash basin, connect up the drains and complete the wiring to the shower heater and lights.

At last I shall be able to have a shower and do the washing in my new washer/dryer. And of course I shall no longer have to go down the garden to use the toilet (daytime) or use the Porta Potti (nighttime/wet weather) - or is that too much information!

First train to Agnita

We did it! At 6:30pm on Saturday 25th September the Sibiu Agnita Railway carriage I have been helping to restore was lowered onto the track by a large crane. At 6:45pm I was in a group of about 16 people who made the first journey since the closure of the railway as the carriage was propelled to Agnita station by 0-8-0T locomotive 764-243.

Earlier in the day, John and Margaret Willemsen had accompanied me to a well attended Transylvanian Brunch event held on Agnita station platform where we enjoyed traditional fresh food. I met quite a few British visitors who had made the trip for this special weekend which also marks the centenary of the opening of the Sibiu-Agnita-Sighisoara Railway. The 47kms section from Sighisoara to Agnita was closed in 1965 largely due to the cost and difficulties of operating over the severe gradients required to cross the hills straddling the Mures/Sibiu county border. The remaining 62kms to Sibiu continued until 2001, operated by steam and diesel locomotives.

The Willemsens left for Cluj around 12:45pm and I took a walk along part of the 2kms of track which had been cleared for the weekend celebrations and took photos and video of the steam loco hired for the event. Around 3pm the message came through that the crane had arrived at the builder's yard where the four carriages are stored and I drove the short distance to the yard, taking some other SAR volunteers with me. Lifting the carriage onto a flatbed articulated truck was eventually achieved but not without some anxious moments. Fortunately Bill Parker, who runs a steam locomotive repair and restoration workshop in the Forest of Dean and who is the driving force behind the SAR restoration, was on hand to provide expert advice as loading/unloading railway rolling stock is almost a weekly occurence for him. Once "our" carriage was lifted clear of the other three carriages, the flatbed trailer was carefully reversed underneath and the carriage was lowered onto timber packing. Straps and chains were used to secure the carriage and after three hours the short, and very slow, road journey began from the builder's yard to a specially prepared area about two kilometres away. As already mentioned, the carriage was then lowered onto the track, the steam loco coupled to it and I joined the group in the carriage for the short trip back into the station area. Everyone was very pleased with this successful conclusion which had attracted considerable attention with cars stopping on the adjacent road while their occupants watched proceedings. They sounded their horns in unison with the loco whistle as we set off for the first trip on what I hope will become a major tourist attraction for the area.

All the British visitors except Bill Parker had left earlier to return to the Apafi Manor in Malancrav so I gave Bill a lift back since the village is in the next valley, just a few kilometres away from my house in Roandola. Bill invited me in to have a look round the beautifully restored house. Already at the Manor was Andrew Scott, a director of the Science Museum in London and former director of the National Railway Museum in York, who I had met earlier in Agnita. I was also introduced to Jessica Douglas-Home, the founder and chairman of the trustees of Mihai Eminescu Trust whose patron is none other than HRH the Prince of Wales. Having been offered a drink, I was then invited to join them for a bowl of soup but Jessica became so interested in my story of how I came to be in Romania and in my plans for Casa Cristina Roandola, that I ended up having dinner with them at Apafi Manor! This was first class networking with the person at the top as MET is one of the organisations which will be very useful to my plans. I eventually got home at 9:30pm, tired but feeling very pleased with the evening's events.

Today, Sunday, I was at the Sibiu-Agnita-Sighisoara Railway Centenary celebrations in Agnita where I met up again for further chats with the many British visitors. The celebration gala started with speeches from the Mayor of Agnita, Bill Parker, Jessica Douglas-Home, guest of honour Andrew Scott and two or three others representing railway preservation groups in England and Wales. We then had some lively traditional Saxon dances performed by three diffent groups of young people. The steam loco was providing rides hauling our partially restored carriage along the whole two kilometres of cleared track. These rides were proving very popular with the carriage packed each time and it was the third trip before I could get on board. As we steamed alongside the road, cars were sounding their horns and slowing down or stopping to watch. The people of Agnita hadn't seen a train on this track since closure in 2001 and we were attracting lots of interest!

Around 1:30pm a group of about 30 invited guests, including me, set off for a restaurant in Agnita where the Mayor had laid on lunch. More opportunity for networking! I had brought my laptop and was able to show people my video shot on Saturday and also provided copies on CD-ROM for Bill Parker, Jessica Douglas-Home and the Mayor of Agnita.

I eventually headed back to Roandola and, as had already been arranged, went to find Jessica Douglas-Home and Andrea Rost from MET who were in the village visiting the German couple next to the Lutheran church. Having located them outside the church, Jessica and Andrea came to have a brief look at my house and I think they were reasonably impressed with what I have done so far and with my future plans for conversion to a bed and breakfast. They also liked my grapes! Due to a need to get back to Sighisoara, they could only spend 10 minutes or so at 130 Roandola but I felt they went away with the right impression and I look forward to working with MET and being their eyes and ears in Roandola to help keep the village houses as traditional as possible.

What a fantastic weekend for me and tomorrow evening I shall be attending the 15th Birthday reception for Fundatia Veritas, Sighisoara for whom I have designed a new leaflet. This will no doubt present more networking opportunities so I must get on with printing some business cards in the morning.

Progress! Slow, but definitely progress.

Following my trip to Sibiu (see previous post) to obtain "Certificate of Registration" confirming my right to residency in Romania, I now have an appointment tomorrow (Friday 3rd) with a Notary Public who will, hopefully, complete the legal process for purchase of the land my house stands on. It is a quirk of current law here that any EU citizen can buy a house but only a Romanian national or Romanian registered company can buy land. This will change from January 2012 when Romania celebrates five years as an EU member and a few other laws will also change to be in line with EU legislation. However, it would be highly inconvenient for me to wait until then, hence the trip to Sibiu last week and tomorrow's visit to a Notary Public.

I had been in a bit of a "Catch 22" situation. Registration of my company, SC Casa Cristina SRL, had progressed as far as it could and to complete the process I had to own the land my house stood on. However, I couldn't own the land until either my company was registered or I had obtained a Residency Certificate. Now, providing all goes well tomorrow, I shall be able to supply the authorities with documentation confirming me as owner of the land which will be entered at the Land Registry in Medias. Once title to the land has been registered, all the documents completed so far for company registration can, at long last, be sent to Sibiu, the county town. In due course I will receive a nice Company Registration Certificate to display and a company number to use on invoices. I now have more official paperwork in my files after four months living in Romania than I acquired in sixteen years of self-employed trading back in the UK!

Progress on my kitchen has been somewhat quicker. On Monday I was able to pick up the final specially ordered 80cm base unit which was already assembled, not a flat-pack like the rest had been. Back at No. 130, it was unloaded, a hole cut in the side panel for gas pipe to go through and by evening it was in position and the worktop, which I already had, was fitted. Next day the wall tiles were done and yesterday and today said tiles were grouted thus completing my new kitchen. Total cost for all the units, stainless steel sink top, wall tiles, tile cement, grout and tools to do the tiling is 1530 lei (£306). The "white goods", fridge/freezer, gas cooker and oversink water heater, bought over a two month period, came to 2820 lei (£564), not much below West European prices. Still for a total of £870 and 3 or 4 days work I have a nice new kitchen. Video has been posted on YouTube - just ignore the related kitchen videos at the end. Hope you like the results of my hard work!