HERE WE GO INTO 2013

So now 2013 is finally here, what will it bring for us and what do we have planned?
Well our first and most important task is to try and tell everyone out there who will listen about the work we do with orphaned, disadvantaged and special needs children through Volunteer Romania.
It is the real reason we are here after all.
So follow us on Twitter @Vol_Romania or on Facebook and help us by letting more people know!
We had some wonderful people join us on the programme last year and it would be great to have many many more wonderful people join us this year. Meeting, and making friends with new people from all over the world when they come and visit is a real pleasure, and the money they provide by coming allows us to do lots of wonderful things with the children and we are planning many many new things for the years to come.
All of our volunteers and visitors  live with us at our home when they are here, so the second major task is to make sure that our house is ready for them when they arrive.ough after a 
It's a slightly bigger job this year though after having a couple of disasters over winter.
The first was finding that we had two burst pipes under the concrete floor. That meant digging them up to find the exact points of the leaks. It only took three holes though, so we were lucky. However, in doing so we also found a leak in our main water supply pipe too.
Eventually, after some searching, digging, and a lot of DIY plumbing the leaks have been repaired, and those areas have been left for now to dry out before we cover them back up again. They are well hidden away though, so they don't stop anyone living here very comfortably.
It was after fixing the leaks and getting our central heating up and running again that our second little disaster occurred. After filling the system and re-pressurising it, our old central heating pump finally gave up the ghost and stopped working!
So, at the moment, and until we have the funds to replace it with a new pump, we have no central heating.
Thank goodness that, so far at least, it has been a relatively mild winter.
We have a wood-fired stove in our kitchen though, and that does a good job of warming us as well as getting a little warmth into the whole house.
The open fire in the lounge also helps, although it isn't all that efficient, so we only light it when we really need it and when we are willing to put up with the odd puff of smoke coming back into the house (as our last two volunteers of last year discovered at the beginning of December!)
If the worst comes to the worst we also have the dogs to cuddle up to, and they seem to have no problem keeping warm!
There are a few other jobs we would like to do before new visitors arrive, just to make everyone that little bit more comfortable than they already are, but we will have to see how, time, weather and money go before we can decide on which ones.

Thank you to orkneyflowers.blogspot.ro for this fantastic example
of what we have in mind. Ours will be about twice the size of this,
but you can see that it is a wonderful example of true recycling and
doesn't look bad at all!

We do have some great plans for projects when the good weather starts to arrive though. 



The first is to build a greenhouse!
We know exactly where it will go, in the old pig sty along the back of our garage wall where it will get sun all day long. We also know exactly how we are going to build it, as a lean-to re-using the old wooden windows from our house in a simple timber frame.


The greenhouse will help us to start the crops for our kitchen garden earlier, and make an even better job of growing food for ourselves than we did last year, and we didn't do badly at all!

This is the sort of facility we want to provide for our hens, but ours 
will have to be much bigger. Our hens will have to be permanent
residents because of our dogs and other pests we have around here. 
Thank you to keepingchickenswithduke.com 

The other job is to build an enclosed run and a hen house so that we can keep chickens!
It is another job that is all fully planned out in my head, and will take us that little step closer to self-sufficiency. We eat a lot of eggs, so it will be easy to recoup the costs of doing it once our hens start laying. 
Along with ensuring that we have our woodshed fully enclosed before next winter and at the same time provide a nice cool enclosure for the dogs it means that we are going to be busy.
It is all so worthwhile though.
Each one of these tasks not only brings the house closer to our ideal, it also make sour lives a little easier, and a little warmer!
I have also noticed that our visitors seem to appreciate the things that we do when we explain them, and it is wonderful to see them so relaxed and smiling when they are here.
I'm really looking forward to getting on with things.
Don't forget though that we can't do it without our volunteers, so take a look at the website at www.volunteerromania.co.uk and even if you aren't interested in coming to Romania yourself, you can still help enormously by sharing it with friends and family, after all, it might just be the life-changing experience one of them is looking for!

Steve
Volunteer Romania

SO? HOW DID OUR CHRISTMAS GO?

So now it's those few days after Christmas, when all that is left to do is clear up, take down the decorations and eat all of the the left-overs.
Well, for those of us lucky enough not to have to work these horrible days between the two festivities that's all there is to do anyway. I used to hate being in the office over this period when I was in the corporate world, it just seemed so pointless.

Our Christmas dinner was delicious. perfectly cooked Turkey, wonderful roast potatoes, gorgeous fresh Brussels sprouts, carrots, and parsnips (served both roasted separately and boiled and mashed together), homemade sage and onion bread stuffing balls, pork stuffing loaf, cranberry sauce, homemade gravy AND the most spectacular homemade Yorkshire puddings that were so light and fluffy they grew like Dr Who monsters in the oven!!!





With Christmas Crackers, silly hats, stupid jokes and tokens and a fantastic Romanian light red wine to wash it all down it was a fantastic meal for this most special day of the year.
Our long and arduous planning and preparation for Christmas served us well, and was all very worthwhile.
Our Boxing Day meal was the one we promised ourselves of cold turkey, cold ham, mashed potatoes and pickles, and ooooh those pickles, they are absolutely delicious. The chutney is sweet and sour and perfectly balanced, the onions crisp and tangy, and the picallili is perfect. I will never ever buy another jar of shop bought pickles again, they were perfect, and making them wasn't that difficult at all!
They were also perfect with our tangy blue cheese, cheddar and crackers that we can now source locally (and thank you Romfoody for reminding me that they were there!)
We have even given a couple of jars to Romanian friends and neighbour's  who have become real fans of this mustardy tangy treat filled with crispy vegetables and they love it with their Mici in place of the usual sweet American style mustard.

With the left overs we have made a wonderful turkey soup as well as a turkey, ham and stuffing pie, and both are deliciously different from the meals that gave them reason for their existence.
Accompanied by the bell from the church on the hill, constantly hearing 'Craciun Fericit' from all the other villagers when we saw them in the street, and with some snow remaining on the ground, it really did make it the perfect Christmas.
Who needs all of the gifts, the expense and the total chaos of the Christmas 'festivities' we had back in the UK? Certainly not us.
A couple of trips down to the local bar to be with our friends helped a lot too, except I forgot my resolve not to mix Ţuică with beer!........always a mistake.
Looking back at my blogs I have realised how much I have written about food and booze recently. Suppose it shows what I consider to be important, and one look at my figure would confirm the same! 
I should really get back to writing some more informative ones though and continuing to try and spread the message about this beautiful country and the wonderful people and children we work with at Volunteer Romania.

Actually we are working hard now, trying to use the best of social media just to spread the word about what Volunteer Romania do and to attract the volunteers the children so badly need here.
Looking forward to the New Year now too, and the promise of better things that 2013 will bring, including all the wonderful new people that we will meet, and who will leave their mark on our hand print wall too, as well as the old friends who we know are coming back.



Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk
www.holiday-romania.co.uk

CREATING THE PERFECT ENGLISH CHRISTMAS IN ROMANIA 1

We have set about creating the perfect English Christmas for ourselves.
Living in Romania, it isn't always easy to find those 'little' things that you can miss when you are having a special occasion like Christmas lunch.
There is actually very little that we really do miss from the UK on a day to day basis, but definitely good tea bags top that list! (see http://steveromaniablog.blogspot.ro/2012/11/tea-so-close-to-british-expats-heart.html for my ravings on that subject!).
We did look online at some online Expat supermarkets, but by the time everything is shipped to us it works out to be so expensive! Certainly more than we can afford at the moment.
However, Christmas is a special time and we are all used to the way we have celebrated it for so many years with our families back in the UK, and naturally, we would like to do our best to create it.
Last year, without even really trying, we did a pretty good job of it, even if it was only by buying the very last and tiniest Turkey you have ever seen from our local supermarket, because our kitten ate the big one we bought!
So, this year we have decided to prepare for it.
In my family, Christmas dinner consists of turkey, roast potatoes, brussels sprouts, chipolata sausages for pigs in blankets, cabbage or peas, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, sage and onion stuffing, chestnut stuffing, and Cranberry sauce.....I think that's it!
Turkey, we have arranged to buy one freshly killed from a neighbour, but this is Romania, and it may not arrive two days before Christmas as has been arranged, so we have bought a 4kg frozen one, just in case! Not enormous I know, but it's enough for us, and will give us some left overs for the dogs, who we mustn't forget! After all it is their Christmas too!
That's tucked away sleeping in in the freezer in readiness to come out and defrost a couple of days before the big day. If the fresh one does arrive, that will be plucked, cleaned, trimmed and frozen to wait for Easter.
Potatoes, obviously no problem, but substitute pig fat instead of duck or goose fat which we can't get.
Brussels Sprouts, peas, cabbage...got them or can get them when we need them.
Yorkshire pudding...the other 'alf makes a beautiful light Yorkshire pudding from scratch so no problem.
We also have a safe brand new jar of Cranberry sauce which we saved from last year, still 'in date' and stored in a nice cool place in readiness.
That leaves chipolatas (English style mini sausages) for the pigs in blankets. Bacon we can get, even if it is a bit thin (so two rashers around each to make sure), but the sausages, ah now there is another problem. Last year we used Bavarian Beer sausages. They are very nice eaten cold with a beer or three, but they aren't quite English Christmas lunch fare. So, this year we have the meat grinder, sausage attachment, pork shoulder, sage and onion, as well as Leek for a little variety, to make the perfect 'English' sausages.
Sage and onion and chestnut stuffing is also not a problem. We made stuffing last year but without a mincer it was a little coarse. This year though we have the right tools for the job so I am confident that we will make an even better job of our stuffings this time.
We even have a Christmas pudding in the pantry which was a 'spare' from last year. We can also make a really good custard from scratch if we want to, but also by buying a local pudding mix and making it a little thinner than instructed. I know it sounds odd, but it works well.
Cream, we can't get, but we won't miss it, and as for brandy butter, well I've never really been a fan anyway.
So that's Christmas Day sorted out without too much hassle (as long as I can actually make the sausages that is! I will report back later on that endeavour)
So, now for Boxing Day. The Boxing Day meal has always been my favourite Christmas meal, since I was a child. In  my family it means the cold turkey left over from the day before, with some slices of good ham, served with mashed potatoes and cold pickles with bread and butter.
Meat, potatoes, bread, butter........all no problem, but pickles, ah pickles, there is another question.
I know that in so many parts of the world 'pickles' just means large green pickled Dills , but English pickles come in so many varieties and with so many different subtle flavours. These are the highlight of the proper English Boxing Day meal, and we can't buy them here in Romania. So? We're going to make them! From scratch!
We have already made some very good chutneys, which are just waiting in their jars to be opened when we need them, but we still need pickled onions, and of course Picalilli!
No Boxing Day meal is complete without the colour, flavour and crispiness of a good Picalilli!
For the uninitiated reader, Picalilli is a preserve with a variety of almost raw fresh vegetables pickled in a mixture of mustard and vinegar.
May not sound good, but believe me it tastes delicious!
So that has been today's task. Making Picalilli so that it has exactly four weeks to mature in the jars before we open at Christmas, and have some for afterwards too.
First, find your recipe.

I love the worldwide interweb.......here's the recipe, thank you to The Cottage Smallholder http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/christmas-piccalilli-recipe-5658/

OK so that's it is it? You find a recipe, follow it, and tell us how wonderful you are? 
Well yes, I am wonderful, and I also know that my best feature is my modesty, but it is never just a simple matter of 'following the recipe' here in Romania. You have to adapt to use the ingredients that you can get instead of the ones that you can't.

Recipe ingredients;

50g of calabrese florets (broccoli)
250g of green tomatoes (or hard red ones) chopped
300g of cucumbers sliced lengthwise and then sliced into half centimetre half moons
250g of French beans topped and tailed and chopped in half (if you are making this in summer – use your own fresh runner beans)
225g of courgettes chopped
1500g of cauliflower florets
320g of carrots chopped
1 head of celery (destring and slice)
2 red Romano peppers (deseed and chop into 3 cm lengths)
300g of small pickling or baby onions or shallots (skinned and cut in half if they are chunky
100g of salt

Of these we had to use slightly soft large red tomatoes, so they weren't blanched, only chopped and added to the final hot mixture before bottling.
No courgettes either so we used a 'local' alternative called 'Dovleci', (but they are still small white marrows)

The vegetables, all chopped, and soaked in salt water
overnight

No fresh Runner Beans, so we added in frozen Green Beans.
The vegetables were all chopped, (which only took and hour and a half, this is not a 'quick' job!) and then left overnight in salted water.

This morning the real task started. 

Those same vegetables after blanching for two minutes
and draining

The vegetables had to be drained and rinsed and then blanched for two minutes in boiling water, before being immediately rinsed in cold water to stop them going soft. As I had to do this in very small batches in a sieve it seemed to take ages but when I had finished, all of the fresh vegetables in the strainer looked delicious.



Next the pickling mixture. The recipe asks for;

375g of light soft brown sugar
1.5 litres of cider vinegar
80g of mustard powder
1 tsp of celery salt
2 teaspoons of mustard seeds
3 tablespoons of turmeric powder
120g of plain flour

The initial 'dry' paste mix

We had the forethought to bring many Indian spices with us when we moved here from England, as we do love our Curries made from scratch, so Turmeric we have.
Last year, all we could get was mustard powder, this year we couldn't see any! So, thinks, what can we use?

The final 'smooth' paste mix before adding to the
vinegar and sugar mix

There, amongst, the many different mustards they had on the shelves was a special offer on French Whole Grain Mustard in jars, as well as a special offer on good old fashioned strong English Mustard during a special 'English Food' promotion at another supermarket. That'll do! We decided and bought two jars of each (We like English Mustard anyway in ham sandwiches)
Celery salt? Huh! Ask a Romanian shopkeeper if they have Celery Salt....
"You mean salt?......made from celery?.......Mad English people.....go away!!!) 
OK, we can do without, we decided retreating sheepishly.

Starting to add the vegetables to the
pickling mixture

So here we go with the pickling mixture.
In went the flour, mustard seeds, turmeric, a teaspoon of ordinary salt, followed by the contents of one jar of whole-grain mustard. The mustard that comes in the jars is already a paste so it was easy to start mixing the ingredients in to a dry paste, by adding the second jar this became a nice smooth paste and two dinner spoons full of English mustard finished it perfectly, as well as adding a little 'tartness' to the flavour, without the need for adding vinegar. 

The finished mix of all of the vegetables and the pickling
mixture, hot and ready for bottling

When  I gradually mixed it with the hot vinegar and sugar mixture, it went in so smoothly, no lumps at all, a bit of a dream for an amateur like me.
I then had a wonderfully smooth pickling mixture to add the vegetables to, and as I did so, Picalilli appeared, almost as if it was by magic.
The jars and lids went into the dishwasher for that last clean and final sterilisation and then we spooned the hot mixture into the jars, but not before tasting it!
We have it!
Great Picalilli!

 I know that it will be perfect in four weeks and will be just right with our cold meats, mash and pickles.
We finished by sitting all of the the jars in our jam maker/preserver in a bath of hot water to give them that final finish and also to ensure that the lids seal as they cool slowly.
As you can see from the variety of shapes and sizes we also believe in recycling!
Can't wait to open the first one on Boxing Day.

If I can make Picalilli.....anyone can!

Now for pickled onions!!!

First step towards our perfect expat Christmas!

Steve

www.holiday-romania.co.uk
www.volunteerromania.eu

HELPING A FRIEND WITH ENGLISH GRAMMAR

I have a real task on my hands at the moment, and it's one that I took on willingly and enthusiastically.
I'm really enjoying it, because it's something a little different from my normal days of working on the house or chopping wood and keeping us warm, or even just blogging and tweeting to get the word out there about our work with the children..

I am helping a good friend, John Pirva, to translate his book into English.
As well as being an author, John is also an artist, photographer, film maker, and also just happens to be the owner of our favourite bar in Deva.
It's a fascinating book about his young life as a student in Romania during communist times, and his personal drive to escape, however he could, at great personal risk to himself from the Militia and Secret Police.
It gives a genuine first-hand insight into what life was really like for a spirited young man in an oppressive communist state in  the late 1970's and early 1980's.

The book was first published last year, in Romanian as 'The Memoirs of a Frontiersman'

Now, please understand, that I am not actually translating it, my Romanian is still virtually non-existent, I am ashamed to say, and John speaks English extremely well, so he is doing the 'base' translation for himself.
My task is to take John's own translation and correct the grammar and also the 'flow' of the words so that the story is easily read and easily understood. Occasionally, I also make suggestions to John about adding in little things so that international readers who have no experience of Romania have more of an insight into the country, as it was then.
It's not an entirely simple task, but it's one that I am really getting in to, and when I start a session of reading the manuscript to begin to correct it, I really do have trouble putting it down again.
I find the story so fascinating. 
When I was young I heard so many stories about what life was like behind the 'Iron Curtain'. The propaganda I heard informed me that behind it there were millions of oppressed people whose governments wanted nothing more than to destroy our Western way of life. In some ways John's story confirms a few of the things that I heard, particularly how he was treated by the authorities, but it also tells another story of people who were just going about their daily lives as well as they could. Those people were doing nothing more than trying to do the best they could for themselves and their families, just as we were doing in the West (albeit with far greater restrictions placed upon them). The last thing on those individuals minds on a day to day basis was any hatred for 'The West' or what western ideals were, as opposed to their own governments ideals.
A number of them actually admired the perceived freedom and 'magic' of the  the West, and like John, they wanted nothing more than to escape to it.
It really is a fascinating insight into the truth of the matter for someone who was bought up in a forces family during the Cold War.
John's spoken English is perfect, he and I have many conversations, sometimes about nothing in particular, but he is great to talk to.
His writing style is simple and relaxed, and his book reads as if he is actually sitting next to me telling me the story over a beer. I am very aware of how relaxed his manner is in the book and I am trying to do everything I can in helping with the grammar to maintain that style and the easy flow of the words.
John perfected his English whilst living in America, so there are times when I come up against 'American' rather than 'English'. I say 'come up against', because I am quite passionate about English as I know it and how I have grown with it. It is, or rather, it can be, a beautiful language, full of subtle nuance and with so much variation. That is, apparently, what makes it such a  difficult language to learn, but it can also be spoiled by the use of 'movie' words as if they are correct grammar, which very often they're not.
I want to help John's book to be read and understood wherever the English language is spoken, in all it's various forms and dialects, and in my view, the best way to do that is to try my best to make sure that the grammar is correct, and English.
It is also giving me an insight into Romanian, which is helping me a great deal on my journey to discover the language better.
Romanian is a common sense language where the prime object of a phrase comes first, with anything that is descriptive following. So, for example, where we say 'red car', in English, in  Romanian you would say 'car red'.
In reading John's own translation, before I do my best to correct it, I have found this type of phraseology in his script. Often it comes over a little like 'Yoda speak' from Star Wars, but it has helped my understanding of how Romanian is structured.
So, as well as being fascinating, giving me an insight into life in Romania in communist times and telling me more about a good friends life as a young man, the task has also been educational for me, no wonder I have been enjoying it so much.

Lets hope that one day I can help him to get his book published in English, so  that you can see for yourselves what I mean. If that happens I will shout out about it!

Steve

www.holidayromania.co.uk
www.volunteerromania.co.uk

SO? WHAT IS SO GOOD ABOUT ROMANIA???

So?
What is so good about Romania?

This is a question we are often asked. Why do three Brits want to come from the land of 'milk and honey' that Britain is perceived to be and come to a country like Romania?
How can we be that crazy?

The really sad thing is that the people who most ask us this question are Romanians themselves.

I don't think I will be able to explain it fully in words, it is a country that needs to be experienced by others from these more 'affluent' countries for it to be fully understood. It really is more about one's own feelings more than it is about simple logic, and maybe, not everyone will appreciate it. However most of the visitors we have had from all of these 'more developed' countries, including the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and the Philippines have seen what we have seen, and they have felt what we feel. 

In our words they have gone home from Romania, with a Romania shaped hole in their heart's that can only be filled by returning one day.

I can also say, without a shadow of a doubt that what follows is not true of all Romanians. We have a number of Romanian friends who have returned home from other countries to settle back here with their families, and they are more appreciative now of the real truth of Romania by their own direct comparison, and they are very proud Romanian's.
There are also a small number of younger Romanian's who are also steadfastly proud of their country and demonstrate it by doing the simple things, like driving Aro's and older Dacia's, being satisfied with and proud of these older Romanian models rather than hungering for the BMW's and Mercedes that so many yearn for.

A lot of the younger Romanians we meet though express a wish to do nothing more with their lives than escape the country to the 'riches' of the West.
I have even heard one on Twitter recently who said they 'hated' this country.
Well we don't hate it, we love it, so when asked we give a simple answer, life here, at least in the place we live is 'Real'.

I honestly don't know what it is that young Romanians dislike so much about their own country, to me it is so sad, and it is as much a mystery as it is a mystery to them that we actually WANT to be here. 
I honestly can't explain why those Romanians show such a callous disregard for their country, particularly in the way a number of them are prepared to leave litter and spoil beauty spots here without worrying about what others coming along behind them will find. I am dismayed by those peoples lack of respect for their own country. I really don't understand it.
Maybe it's the lack of development, maybe it's the lack of decent roads, maybe it's the perceived corruption, maybe it's just the 'maybes' of a 'grass is always greener on the other side' way of thinking. 
Maybe it's as simple as the glamour and the lies of Hollywood movies that they have seen and believed in as they have grown up.
I simply don't know.
It may also be that these people believe what they hear from others who have returned after short stays in western countries with stories of the fortunes that they have earned. Stories that are quite simply lies, designed purely to make those people out as some sort of hero for going away and coming back 'rich'. Lies because in our experience many of them seldom do come back richer, they return to the same lives they had before they left, perhaps even worse off, living in homes that their families have fully owned for centuries, houses that their families actually built for themselves, and going back to scratching a living out of whatever they grow and can sell.
Any who do bring money back seem to use it up very quickly and go back to wishing to return to make more.

I honestly don't understand why these people can't just stand back and look at their country and see it for the beautiful place it is, so full of promise, with so much potential, and stay here and help to build it, not just for themselves but for future generations.
In our little way, I hope that we ARE doing it, I hope that we are helping to get the message out about how beautiful and how wonderful a country Romania is, particularly by comparison with the 'more developed' countries.

True, we also know a few who have actually returned with enough money to start their own businesses or to build themselves new homes, but they are very rare and only a very few.

When we are told by young Romanians what they hear from other young Romanians about what they have 'achieved' while they are away, we usually just smile and shrug our shoulders. We have learned though bitter experience that to try and refute these claims or explain the realities of this 'other' life is futile. Our words often fall on deaf ears simply because our audience doesn't want to hear the truth, they don't want to believe that there isn't something 'better' out there for them to go to. So, in a very Romanian way we often just shrug our shoulders and leave them to it.

We have tried, so many times, to explain that the greater amounts of money that these people believe they can make in 'more developed' countries also gets eaten up in higher costs for the ordinary things. How the costs of coffee, beer, cigarettes, food, rents, etc, etc are all so much higher and take a much greater lump out of the money you receive than they do here in Romania.
We know that salaries in Romania aren't very high, an average of 350 Euros per month for a teacher or a doctor for example. We also know that costs of living here are rising, but not as fast as in other parts of Europe or the UK. By comparison though, the basics of living here are still also much cheaper than other countries.
The net national debt is also much lower in Romania than in many many other countries and it wasn't all that many years ago that this country owed nothing internationally.

However all of this talk about financial comparison isn't answering my own question, it is merely arguing what I see as a mistaken point of view that so many young Romanians have.

So many of our friends and the volunteers who have been
here want to record their stay in this way, with their
handprint on the end wall of our garage.

Life here is 'Real'.

What does that mean exactly?

We live in a village, but we are close to a city, Deva. Most of the people of this village still live life from what they can grow and breed to eat, making money occasionally out of the surplus that they grow and by bartering with their neighbour's. We are beginning to do the same, we have fenced off an area of our large garden so that we can plant our own crops and this year it bore fruit, literally. We succeeded in growing 3 months worth of potatoes, a chest freezer full of cherries, onions we are still eating, our own garlic, and so many apples that once we had bottled about a ton, the only thing we could think to do with it was make cider! (not that I have any objection to that!). Next year we will start earlier, do even better and grow more, we may even get our own chickens for eggs. 
We might stop short of keeping our own pigs though, and yes we do sometimes hear a pig being slaughtered for meat in the village, but that is what 'life being real' is all about.
We also have neighbours, real neighbours. 
In the UK we had people who lived next door, but they weren't neighbours. They cared nothing for us or our welfare, they cared only about themselves, and yes, we did try to befriend them and show that we cared, but to no avail. When we did try we were greeted by an attitude that we were freaks and in one case outright antagonism, so like everyone in the UK does, we gave up, and lived our lives entirely separately from people who were only living a few feet away.
Families too in the UK aren't the close-knit groups they once were, family 'ties' are getting weaker as sons and daughters move on, move further afield. Divorce and family separation are also contributing greatly to this. I'm sure that all of this is as true in other 'Western' countries as it is in the UK, but it isn't so true here in Romania.
If we stay home for a few days and our neighbours don't see us, they call on us to see if we are OK, or they tell us off for not coming out when they do see us.
I know that if we needed help, we could go to our neighbours and get it. We wouldn't have doors shut in our faces and not everybody requires some sort of payment, they would do it because they are our neighbours and because they are our real friends.
It's also true of our friends who live in the city, if they don't see us they call us to see if we are OK, if they think we need help they offer it without being prompted in any way.
We get those offers from so many here, so many more than who would have genuinely meant it in the UK.
As a result we are prepared to do the same for them, whenever, and however we can.
Family ties are also much stronger here. At particular times of the year, particularly Easter and Christmas, sons, daughters, cousins, aunts and uncles gather from wherever they are in the world to be together at the family home. A phone call on the day doesn't suffice here, not on it's own anyway.
So, in a nutshell, that's what we mean about life being 'real', genuine mutual respect, genuine sharing, genuine neighbourliness (probably not a real word but it says what I mean), genuine unconditional friendship, genuine love.

Not a lot else I can say.
Anything that you would like to say?

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk
www.holiday-romania.co.uk

FACE PAINTING - THE HIDDEN DANGERS

When we are with the children on the programme with Volunteer Romania, one of the things they love most is Face Painting
It doesn't matter where we are, or which group we are working with, if we open the back of the car and the children see face paints amongst the goodies we have with us on the day, that's it, they will nag forever for us to start painting faces, and usually, at some point during the day, we give in.
Now, before  I came to Romania to work with the children I had never painted a face in my life. Being the father of two daughters it may be a sad and guilty omission on my part, but if they were somewhere that they could get their faces painted, I left it to others far more expert than me to do a good job of it.
I also think that this is a task for women, not men. Now calm down all of you, it's not that I am sexist or anything, I am just a realist. From an early age onward's, women are looking at themselves in mirrors and painting their faces in some way.
I can hear the howls of derision out there in the ether already from thousands of enraged ladies who don't spend too much time doing this, so I will admit that some spend more time than others and some have more success in doing this than others. However, the basic fact still exists that, in general, women will have had more practice than men at painting their faces, so they are better suited than men to this task with children.
So, imagine how I felt when on one of these occasions when we had about a dozen children all  screaming at us that they wanted to have their faces painted and Alison pushed a face paint set into my hand and sat a child down in front of me.

I looked at the child, fresh faced, healthy pink skin, and an enormous grin in anticipation of the masterpiece that I was about to produce upon her already very pretty face. I smiled back, trying to project an air of confidence and some optimism that I might be able to achieve something worthwhile and that wouldn't scare her too much when she looked in the mirror. She had come to me an Esmeralda, I didn't want her to leave as a Quasimodo.
I gulped, held my breath, smiled again and asked;

"So? What would you like to be?

She half leaped out of her chair, bouncing with excitement as she shouted;

"A tiger!!!"

My first thoughts were 'Oh no, I'm leaving'.
I looked at her oh so pretty face, I looked down at the face paints in my hand, and I had absolutely no idea how I could blend both to achieve anything that looked even remotely like a tiger.
I looked around me, towards three volunteers who were already busily applying paint to little faces (and who were all female, I might add!), then towards Alison who was doing the same, all with a lot of chatter and giggling, and all well advanced with the task in hand.
Briefly, Alison glanced in my direction, and she must have immediately recognised the chagrin in my face, the pleading in my eyes, the silent 'HELP ME!'.
With a slight sigh, and that little knowing smile she has when she can see that I am just a mere man and I need help, she placed her paints on the table next to her, excused herself for a moment from the child she was with, stood up and walked over the few paces towards me.

"What's wrong?", she asked, still with that patient, virtuous smile.

"This one wants to be a Tiger!", I whispered, hiding my words behind the cardboard packaging containing the face paints. Alison knew straight away from my tone of voice, and the look of panic in my eyes that this meant that I had no idea of where to begin, so she took the packaging from my hand and turned it around slowly so that I could see the printing on the front.
There, in glorious technicolour, and perfectly clear, was an illustration of a child's face painted to look like a tiger, using the colour's that came in the pallet in the box, and all I had to do was copy it.
She looked at me again, with that slight, patient, knowing smile. You know, that smile that only a woman can use, that smile that says more than a thousand words, and on this occasion meant things like;
'Don't you think I've got enough to do!'
'Use your brains Douglas!'
'Come on! You're supposed to be Arty'
'Typical man, never reads the instructions!'
etc, etc, etc, .....sure you get the point.

Sheepishly, I studied the illustration and made a plan from it as to how I might create something that came within a million miles of it, and started to apply orange paint to the child's face.

By the time I had finished, about twenty minutes later (all of the others were managing a rate of about one child in five minutes!) I thought that I had achieved something that looked like a cross between a manic marmalade tabby cat and road kill, but when I showed the little girl the end result in the mirror, she seemed happy enough, and didn't run away from me screaming in anguish and terror. As she left, I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short lived as a little boy leapt into the chair in front of me and shouted;

"Spiderman!!!"

This time I thought to look at the box, and sure enough, there was Spiderman, just like a tiger............... only with a spiders web instead of stripes.
Now, it is fair to say that some of the volunteers achieve better results than others, as can be seen from the pictures here, and I have actually learned that sometimes the best results are achieved when you give the children the face paints and let them paint each other. Your simple task then is just to be on hand and watch to make sure that the paints don't end up everywhere!
I learned this one through painful experience, when after applying this strategy to an afternoon's face painting, I got the job of cleaning up afterwards. It only took me an hour!
There is one warning though that should be given, and that is about allowing the children to paint your face!
There are no 'mixed' results here, there is just a mess. Yes, one child asks if they can do it, and being a nice person, you say "Of course" and sit back in the chair ready for another masterpiece to be created upon your visage. (In my case you might call it an 'Old Master')
At that point a riot begins, as you end up with about ten children all trying to paint your face at the same time, brushes poking into your eyes and disappearing up your nostrils, your mouth filling with paint, your hair ending up a sticky mess, and the results can be seen here. 
My face is never a pretty sight at the best of times, but when 'enhanced' in this way it becomes the thing of nightmares, or of horror movies (but maybe I could get a job as a Glam Rock star!). All of that paint also took about a week to wash off!

So, please if you are an expert at face painting, or even just a woman, wouldn't you like to come and make the children happy in this way?


Wouldn't you like to come and just make me happy by taking the task away from me?
Save me! PLEASE????????????? (After all, I am only a man!)

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk

A GREAT CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA FROM VOLUNTEER ROMANIA!

Volunteer Romania have now added Gift Vouchers on their site!
Such a fantastic idea for a present from a caring person to give to a someone who also cares!

Voucher prices range from £10 to £1000 and can be redeemed (only by the named recipient) in return for the cost of participation (in part or in full) in this great programme working with orphaned, under-privileged and special needs children in here in Romania.

A really special  and thoughtful gift.

See them here http://www.volunteerromania.eu/New---Gift-Vouchers.php

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk
www.holiday-romania.co.uk

CHANGING ROMANIA, A REAL DILEMMA

When we drive along the main roads now there are obvious signs of how quickly Romania is changing and moving into the 21st Century.
Not just with the roads themselves, or the new motorways, or the number of cars, or the new building developments that are occurring everywhere, but also with what is happening on the land on either side of those roads.
Farming methods are changing, and they are changing perhaps more rapidly than anything else in this beautiful country.
For me, and many like me, who love this country for it's beauty and it's tradition, it is a real dilemma.

A large part of the beauty of the country comes from it's unspoilt nature. For hundreds of years farming has always been done on a small scale. Even the farming co-operatives of communist times were relatively small, and consisted mainly of individual family plots that were worked in unison, not enormous fields.
Individual families have used small plots of land to grow what they needed for themselves to eat, and then to sell any surplus at the daily markets in the towns. This is the way it has been literally forever, and it has greatly affected the way the countryside looks, because it hasn't been spoiled. Largely it is the land that is available that has been worked, not land cleared for the purpose. So, there are small triangles bounded by trees, streams and roads that are cultivated, and narrow strips of land that are planted, clear areas between hills and mountains and hillsides themselves. Land is used for what it is most suitable for as well, it isn't changed to make it suitable for another need. 

We are surrounded by such families. Our neighbour's in our village largely live this way

People who farm like this also want 'progress', I know. They want to make their very busy working days easier, just as anyone would do, so when new innovation becomes available, and they have the money for it, they use it.
That is why there are large numbers of ancient small tractors used by these 'family' farmers, and they trudge and trundle out  to the fields morning and night, towing their trailers, or with homemade implements for ploughing, raking, clearing, or seeding, hanging precariously from the back.


However, there are also still a large number of families who rely on their horses to do the same, and horses towing carts can still be seen in their hundreds on the roads around the villages, as well as in the main towns. They are one of 'the' sites of Romania, and at this time of year, Autumn, the horses are looking fat and well fed in readiness for the coming winter. Once they arrive at the fields those same horses will be hitched up to whatever is needed that day, to plough, or clear or carry, or pick produce from the fields. 


Horses are utilized here in just the same way as they have been for thousands of years, as man's partner. producing vital food.

Farming is almost entirely organic too, as everything that is used comes from what you can make yourself. Fertilizer's for example come from the animals that are also kept to feed families with eggs, milk, cheese and meat. There is very little money for shop bought insecticides or fertilizers so every family uses their own home-made recipes when they need pest control.

But, those enormous fields are arriving, with their enormous tractors and farm implements, and their 'more modern' way of doing things, but also employing less people because of greater, more 'efficient' mechanisation.
This only adds to the dilemma of people like me, who love to see the countryside for what it is now,and to see the small scale traditional farming methods that are used. 
Why is it a dilemma? Because we know that producing sufficient food for all of the people on this small planet is becoming a more and more difficult thing to do. Also the knowledge that Romania is a very fertile country, with enormous plains between the mountains and going down towards the Danube, and that with large scale 21st Century intensive farming methods, Romania may just be able to feed the whole of Europe. To achieve it though, Romania has to pay the heavy price of possibly destroying much of what gives it it's beauty, and changing a way of life that has succeeded in this country for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

It is also true to say that a number of the young people of Romania don't want to live life in the way their families have done for so many years before. They are being lured by the 'riches' and 'glamour' of the West. This is a subject worthy of a book on it's own, not just a simple Blog like mine. 
However, there are also a significant number of younger people who remain, who are staying at their family homes, moving into the villages, and who are maintaining this way of life. Hopefully, they are enough.
'Progress' has to come, but surely we have learned from other places all over the world that progress mustn't come at the expense of what is already here and working. Surely we have to realize that 'traditional' isn't a bad word, particularly when that tradition works on a family by family basis, and those traditions have to be protected, they have to be encouraged to remain.
The rewards for 'progress' are potentially enormous, but the cost of seeing these traditions whither and die because of this 'progress' may be too high, and may just destroy the Romania that we know and love, and destroy a way of life that has existed for thousands of years.

There is one thing that I can watch and count that will tell me exactly what is happening, and this was shown to me by a good Romanian friend. It is the traditional haystack. These are simple affairs created by a long pole standing vertically, supported by smaller poles, tripod fashion. Grass and weeds that are cut from the fields by hand are then stacked carefully up around the poles to dry and mature, ready to be used as winter feed. Once stacked they form a distinctive, elegant shape, a shape that is recognisably 'Romania'. 















These traditional hay stacks are my measure, as they disappear, I will know that a way of life that has succeeded for so long is dying with them. 

They are already being replaced by the enormous, ugly, plastic wrapped rolls of hay and straw that we see in the West, which can only be moved by even more large machinery.
At the moment there are only a few of the enormous barren fields here, like those that are seen in the 'more developed' parts of the West, and they have only arrived over the last few years, but they are arriving, and they are arriving rapidly.
This is a country that needs to be seen as it is now, and the traditional way of life needs to be maintained, encouraged to thrive, if Romania is not to be lost forever.

Steve

www.holiday-romania.co.uk
www.volunteerromania.co.uk