Transylvanian horseman

Introduction and postscript

This blog catalogues the final two years of my life in Transylvania and the immediate aftermath. It is a curious complex tale and best read as a whole. Some posts are joyful, many informative, a number reflective, several cynical or even angry. Most of the latter occur towards the end. But, as you will read, I have moved on from the disappointments that caused these few.

My time in Romania included eight years running a riding holiday centre, living in a remote village, getting hay and firewood with horses, travelling through high mountains and deep forests, an exploration of the culture and heritage of that land, marriage and divorce, struggling with bureaucracy and the facinating process of watching a country in metamorphosis.

 
I had been searching for an idyll. Such a place was a source of childhood imagination. I dreamt of an idyll during early years in a dull urban job. Then I sought an idyll in Transylvania and initially found what I thought to be one.

I was looking for something tranquil, beautiful, simple and, the realist will point out, fundamentally unsustainable. Perhaps I sought a lifestyle more akin to Tolkien’s fictitious world - the Hobbits' Shire for instance - that that which reality offered? Stepping well back in time it was understandable to desire an idyllic childhood (though I hadn't read Tolkien back then) not least when growing up in the banality of a 1970s suburb. As a young adult I lived in some ugly places, the broken society of a cheap part of northwest London being the worst. No wonder I sought an escape. From beneath the dark cloak of depression I looked out desiring light and beauty which seemed frustratingly unattainable. Then I experienced Transylvania.

In 1990 I was supposed to be visiting to help alleviate poverty. However what I saw in rural areas was scenic beauty and a simple way of life that appealed deeply to me. Poverty existed of course but was neatly boxed in discrete distant towns. People in villages were not well off financially however they had the land and expertise to grow food and raise livestock. I loved driving through that countryside and longed to dwell there. In the meantime I moved from London to a small town in the countryside just beyond. However my move involved an expensive rented apartment (for the town was a desirable place to live) and a surprisingly time consuming journey to work too. It began as an idyll in a small town surrounded by hills and woods but soon became a prison tying me to a long commute, costly living and smug church congregations. From there I moved to rural Oxfordshire as a precursor to exile in Transylvania.

 
In the interim I had made a two month journey across Romania on horseback and crossed the country from corner to corner by bicycle. I had seen the country in detail before moving there - or rather scraped a great deal of its surface and imagined that I knew and understood the place and its people.

My Transylvanian idyll was not based upon idleness. Indeed I assumed that hard work would be needed and planned, through running a tourist business, to share my discovery. It was personal, then, but not selfish. I built a business, planned riding trails and took guests out to experience the scenic beauty and archaic nature of the Romanian Carpathian mountains.

 
The vision came to be shattered as such inventions are wont to be. There had been chips taken out of the enamelled picture, of course. Rubbish-choked rivers, occasional thefts, hillsides denuded of trees and incidents of corruption all spoiled the image. However it was the hidden history of Romania that shattered my dream. The doings of history are lodged in the past however in the national unconscious they live on. The Romanian collective unconscious strove to blot out misdeeds large and small. Genocide of the Jews, persecution of the Gypsies, collusion in Communist repression and killing, the recent razing of their own historic towns and endemic corruption over centuries were all whitewashed. Guilt and shame were nearly absent. Educated people denied what had happened and the peasants simply did not know. But were it not for the collective unconscious of that nation I might have stayed. That unconscious warped the national psyche, introduced neuroses and sustained pathological behaviour. When exposed to the collective unconscious the Romanian character mixed pride with self loathing. Too often one could not tell the closed mind of an ‘educated’ Romanian what to think. They resented deeply the implication that they may be wrong. However the same person unashamedly would tell the most deprecating jokes about Romanians in general.

 
My peasant neighbours exhibited few of these neuroses and pathologies. Indeed they could be stubborn and viewed this as a virtue. Some were coarse in word and deed, a proportion was prone to steal, and rarely were the implications of their actions carefully considered. But very many of the rural people with whom I rubbed shoulders were hospitable and most were surprisingly tolerant of a foreigner living in their midst, indeed ready to forgive occasional indiscretions and ignorance from one new to their society. They were simple people unburdened by too much knowledge. There was a fundamental hard-working decency about the mountain peasants. They possessed a strength and versatility which had long ensured their survival. I had a lot of fun living and working amongst them. But modernisation and EU accession thrust urban mentality and officials into our unwilling faces.

 
There is much that I miss. I worked with some good people in a beautiful place. We made some wonderful journeys through wild places. The opportunity to work with draught horses was unforgettable and deeply satisfying. I experienced a vanishing lifestyle about which there was much good. Challenges sometimes brought out the best in me. And there I met my wife who is still with me.

Now I have gone full circle in my thinking. Or rather, like a bird soaring in a thermal current, I've described a circle and risen higher in the process. So I look back fondly upon the good memories of which I have many. As to the blows I can look upon them philosophically. What does not kill makes one stronger. Indeed I have emerged tougher and wiser, more ready to understand and forgive.....and no longer believing in idylls.

Final analysis

Three years has given me plenty of time to think. Here is a little analysis.....perhaps my final analysis given that I wish to move on. It's a collection of thoughts, not a judgement. Those who read to the end will see that. I lived amongst normal people in Romania. However that country brought certain traits to the fore, the better for me to see them. I'm not in a better place now, just one blander and more restrained. Human nature is universal after all.

I left Romania hating the place. I fled afraid that someone would try to stop me. Back in the West I kept out of sight though America is big and far away. I knew that mendacious individuals had filed false accusations in their feeble attempts to extort money, imagining that I would return to Romania and fall into the trap. But I did not return, and perhaps I will never be able to return. In the back of my mind lingered a fear that someone would try to reach out to finger me for whatever false accusation seemed most likely to stick.

For a time all conversation about that country referred to the omnipresent corruption, frequent theft, rivers choked with refuse, over-priced services and the whole gamut of ills that I had faced. I painted a bleak picture of a land with which I had been involved for nearly two decades. I denigrated the place where willingly I had entered exile eight years previously. It was an unhealthy condition, a black cloud hovering above me excluding the light. As time passed the unsustainability of my position became clear. Did I want to live my life harbouring a grudge that could not be fulfilled by punishing Romania? A crack appeared in the wall when I began again to attend an Orthodox congregation. A few Romanians, students at a university theological institute, were members. Here was a possibility to meet open-minded educated Romanians representing another face of the country. They were a reminder that I had indeed known such people during my exile. However few such intellectuals resided near my mountain village and at that distance I socialised little in the towns and cities. It was time to reappraise my relationship with Romanians, treating the people as individuals rather than avatars for the ills of their homeland. In an open discussion the priest counselled patience noting that I was making progress. I reached the point of no longer feeling hostility well up on hearing the Romanian language spoken. Indeed I began to review in my mind those parts of the country that I missed. The high mountains remain in my soul. I remember certain people with fondness: indeed these outnumber the individuals whose conduct repelled me. I miss the churches and monasteries where I was welcomed. I began to hope that the country would resolve its ills rather than hoping that the ground would swallow it up.

The realisation came that just as I left Britain having failed to prosper out of a sense of not belonging, thus also Romania was not thriving in Europe in part through having been thrust into an unnatural environment. The country would better belong within a hypothetical ‘Levantine Union’ encompassing the Balkans, Turkey and perhaps Greece and the more moderate Middle Eastern nations too. The European Union with all of its rules and expectations for ‘civilised’ behaviour is alien territory for a country much of whose history lay under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire or within its shadow. Is what we Westerners call corruption any more than a key element of a survival mechanism which has ensured the continuity of the Romanian people (or, for that matter, Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians or Albanians) for many centuries? What is this mechanism? Chiefly the ability to acquiesce with more powerful neighbours based on the realistic assumption that a weaker people cannot change the status quo. However acquiescence can become an active process when the overlord has time to concentrate on the underling. Gifts of gold and livestock were welcomed. The underling’s leader, dependent on support from above, owed his survival to a stream of bribes transmitted and to ‘making himself useful’. Likewise underlings earned success through the ability to generate a satisfactory stream of gold, goods and favours at the expense of those below. Being ‘useful’ includes doing the dirty work of those more powerful. The needs of others lose importance alongside the imperative of one’s own survival.

The mechanism worked in full through Ottoman domination between the sixteenth century and the late nineteenth and has done so in part ever since then. Indeed it has been highly effective when compared, say, to the destructive impact of the Mongol Horde. The old Romanian Regat survived vassaldom to the Ottomans intact and on surprisingly good terms with its former oppressor. It ensured that Romanians fared far better than Poles during the Nazi era. Adoption of a harder line even than Moscow for years kept Soviet troops out of Romania. From a narrow ethnic viewpoint this survival strategy might be judged a qualified success. Of course inequality within the population is a problem: the poorest of the rich are far better off materially than the richest of the poor. That’s no surprise: bribery removes money that might be invested in means of production. It secures the positions of those who possess more power than entrepreneurial talent. Besides, a poorly rewarded mass does not make an efficient workforce. There are more problems. People are denied healthcare because they cannot afford to bribe a doctor. Monsters have been created: Antonescu, Ceasusescu and even the playboy King Carol II stand out. But the Romanians are still there as a people, so are the Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians: unlike Cumans, Pechenegs or Saxon Transylvanians who fell by the wayside over the centuries. Unlike the Jews who, above all others, stand out as the victim of Romanian collective psychosis: their greatest example of doing an oppressor’s dirty work for him. Unlike, too, that swathe of the population possessed of land, education or faith persecuted to death or brutal submission through the early years of state socialism. Those two skeletons continue to inhabit the Romanian cupboard of shadows: two groups alien to the lowest common denominator of the masses destroyed for the pleasure of oppressors. But truly there are not two skeletons: there stand a pair of huge ossuaries each containing the bones of a several hundred thousand victims. Then the Romanians bulldozed their historic towns to construct monstrosities in their place at the behest of a megalomaniac cobbler. They blame him, but they operated the machines. It’s always the fault of someone else: that is another part of the survival mechanism, indeed the trait that enables the mechanism itself to perpetuate. Otherwise self-loathing would cause the mechanism to be rejected. Then they deny personal involvement. ‘Someone else’ did it. That was the excuse when I caught employees with items stolen from my tack room. But if they were there during fascism or communism what would they have done? The same deeds would have been perpetrated. A people has broken the mirror in which it might review itself, blamed someone use for the damage then used the situation to avoid cleaning itself up. Full exposure would beg the Romanians to examine what their nation stands for. That would rob them of their historic survival mechanism. The question is: could a modern reinvented Romania gain new strengths that would ensure its development into a better nation? I hope so. Now after much reflection I wish the Romanians well.

I was an apologist for Romanian history. In truth I did not know that history well for the whole carefully selected and well prepared nationalist meal had been fed to me. Deepening knowledge of the ‘true truth’ led me to despise the lies. However Romanian history embodies goodness and heroism as well as evil and ignominy. I moved from one pole of perspective to its opposite. Now I am finding the middle ground. I will neither apologise for wrongdoing nor denigrate that which is commendable.

There is more: for years I failed to see the country for what it is. Hence unwittingly I stoked the engine of greed. Our taking ‘aid’ after the so-called revolution of 1989 created dependency amongst the recipients. Or was it symbiosis? Some people rewarded us by demonstrations of religious conformity, gratifying our spirits until their need for us evaporated. Others lied so convincingly about their ‘needs’ that we gave far more than we should. We felt good giving to people in a poor yet scenically beautiful country. They felt good taking from us. When we questioned what they needed and why, indiscretions were blamed upon ‘communism’ and Ceausescu. In reality the apology should have been: ‘our forebears learned to live this way during four centuries of Ottoman domination and we’re not convinced that another way is better’.

Then finally I wonder whether jealousy has played a part in my attitude. I shied away from corruption. But corruption covers a multitude of sins. Overt bribery for favours lies at one extreme. But more acceptable are the ‘alliances’, the working in partnership with a ‘patron’ who smoothes out obstacles in return for a cut of the profits and favours such as laundering a bit of money here and there. My wife had contacts but lacked the courage to use recommend them. What might have happened if we had been brasher in forging connections? Would the moral cost have exceeded the financial gains? Not all well connected people stank of corruption: the genial mayor of our village did well by Romanian standards yet seemed to keep his hands clean. The country was more spiritual than my former home. A higher proportion of the population attended religious services. A voice inside me whispers that I failed to prosper thanks to a puritanical attitude abetted by a stubborn desire to work alone.

A more ruthless attitude would have removed unproductive horses hence reduced running costs. Alliance with the mayor or a forestry baron could have given me use of premises better suited to my needs. I would not have needed to construct a guesthouse at crippling cost. European Union grants would have become accessible. I’d have earned no less, and perhaps more, whilst spending far less. It’s an intriguing image. Would I have spiralled downward morally? Perhaps I would, but not any more than people whom one saw at church every Sunday. Might I have become mired in illegal activities tying me to a ‘patron’? Probably my financial affairs would have been murky. How long would I have survived? Most likely I’d have lasted for as long as I could control lower back pain through medication and physiotherapy. What would I have become? I can envisage a provincial hick obviously cut off from cultural enlightenment, avoiding torment from coscience by recourse to palinca, physically crippled from sheer distance on the trail and longing for true meaningful friendship. It’s not a pretty picture.

In the end the future of their nation is up to the Romanians. Their historical survival mechanism may not sit naturally within a European context. The country has handicapped itself. Romanians committed genocide amongst the Jews who had operated much of their commerce. Guided by imported ideology Romanians destroyed both aristocracy and intelligentsia leaving a vacuum now unsuitably filled by mafia, former secret policemen and ex-commissars. Communism and its aftermath caused the Saxons, who might have revitalised Romanian industry, to flee. That is for the Romanian nation to face up to.  I shall do myself no good becoming an armchair critic of a problem that neither I own nor hold the key to solving.

A friend and I talked about Miklos Banffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy, a novel recommended by an enthusiast. A lengthy but fascinating work, it has been compared to War and Peace and Anna Karenina rolled into one. I’d passed the now-ruined castles described by Banffy. I’d travelled the roads along which his hero and cast travelled in their horse-drawn coaches. Even the bare-crested hills where those characters rode and hunted I’d crossed on horseback entranced by the beauty of that spare landscape. But the whole class described, the aristocratic families in their rambling estates, had been exterminated. They had their faults, squabbling and gambling away the land of their heritage. But they too were victims of war and ideology. Conversation moved to my experiences: corruption and ignorance set against a startling beautiful backdrop. Then a vivid realisation illuminated my mind. Romania showed me the human condition in unusually stark terms. It was not a reservation where especial evil had been preserved. No, the place was simply like a curved mirror that magnified certain human faults. There were many flaws, of course, at such a meeting point between Europe and the Levant.

But in the West, in powerful America, in complacent Britain and elsewhere these ills exist too. Simply we have checks and balances that prevent certain evils from breaking out in epidemic. There is smaller scope for others in a more affluent society. Here blatant bribery is considered unacceptable by many though subtler corruption may be widespread. Most often the law is moderately effective in keeping a lid on theft. But materialism is rampant. In Britain alcohol abuse is endemic. We haven’t butchered our Jews or aristocrats however very effectively (and socially quite acceptably) we’ve marginalised an underclass comprising the work-shy and most of the unemployable. These are our gypsies, despised and kept at heel. Greed, hatred and stupidity thrive. People cheered as house prices rose without pausing to consider the economic impact. In the travel business I witnessed a new self-importance amongst travellers - especially the British. I saw how people satiated with the hedonism of multiple foreign holidays each year could no longer be fulfilled through the joy of exploration. Romania showed me a depth of the awfulness of the human condition - but that awfulness transcends nationality and geography. It is the evil of humanity and does not belong to any nation. I cannot change human nature. But I can learn to be happy despite it all for that emotion comes from within. That is the goal of personal development: to grow a core of confident happiness.

Occasional update

It's rare for me to update this site, for one reason or another. However it's time to answer the odd question.

A few people have asked where to ride in Romania. Well, I'd recommend Kalnoky or Daksa. The former is more sophisticated, the latter wllder and somehow more unique. The former has seven of my best horses, the latter is operated by perhaps the best equestrian guide in Romania.

Some wonder where I am. Far from Romania, distant too from where I stopped two years ago. Separated from my former home by the mountain and the plain and the sundering ocean. If anyone wants to speak to me then do post a comment.

Why the secrecy? Well I am fed up with the idiotic posted abuse of certain small-minded Romanians too lazy to leave their festering land yet too jealous to forget me, and with the tedious scrounging of those who have travelled far around the globe yet cannot shed ingrained ways. Just remember: I worked long and hard to publicise your nation, whilst you trashed your homeland and bit the hand that fed you. Enough! I am beyond your reach.

Now I am a railroad engineer again, and I love my old job - if serving a different road in a remoter place. The iron road is my home, my fellow engineers are my family and friends. The lonesome whistle, the rumble of a long freight train across the plain, the roar of a fast passenger express, these are my music. That and the neigh of a horse and the sound of him eating good hay. This is not a bad life now that I live amongst the honest and the hardworking.

I am Orthodox still, and now have the opportunity to attend an English-speaking congregation. For this I am very grateful. For a while there were a few Romanian members, however their leaders back home ordered them to leave their fellow Orthodox - Russian, Greek, Serbian, American, etc - and form a tight nationalistic cell where they could ignore both history and modern thought.

Deeply do I miss the high mountains, and the horses that I rode and led there. I miss Cornel with whom I worked so closely. Yet I left with relief - a strange duality indeed. I carry that which was good in my heart still, and the rest I try to forgive.

Requiem

Today I announce a requiem for Gelu, Tudor, Olga and Luciana - four good horses who tragically have secumbed to the carelessness and imorality of others.

Readers will remember that I sold these four, plus Luciana's foal Luke, when I left Transylvania. I thought that I had sold them to a good home - to an Anglo-Romanian "charitable foundation", the British wife of whose director professed to love horses - where they would be safe and happy for the rest of their lives. It was the least that I could do for them after years of good service. Especially good old Gelu, a sweet and loveable gelding who had been with me for almost  decade. But it was not to be.

I have just heard that all four were stolen "by the gyspies" two nights ago. By now they will have been slaughtered for meat or perhaps sold - either as cheap expendable labour for a peasant who knows that he has bought stolen horses or for export to be slaughtered abroad. The news left me shocked. I had hoped for so much better for these horses.

I remember happy rides with these horses over the years. Gelu I rode more than the others, a generous and loveable fellow, now approaching old age. It fills me with numbness and despair to imagine them in the hands of the dregs of Romanian society, cruel gypsies who live by stealing horses for the slaughter trade.

From shortly after I sold the horses, I had my concerns. I do still have several independent pairs of eyes and ears looking out for me in Transylvania, and the new owners have contacted me a few times too.

First there was the attempt to drive down the price after the deal was done and the horses delivered, based on some spurious bull***t that the horses were "not worth" the agreed price. (As if a safe, reliable riding horse somehow is not worth much more than the slaughter value. I sold those horses inexpensively so that people could readily buy them whom I thought would take proper care of them. Oh, and a deal is a deal amongst decent people.)

Then there were the requests for the most basic information - where to find a vet and so on. I gave contact details for two good English-speaking vets who, so far as I know, were never contacted. I gave details for the best farrier in the region, yet hooves were allowed to grow long and ragged. I know that another foreigner was also asked for basic information - where to get wormers - as if the owners were quite helpless and clueless. Yet they had money, friends, a well-staffed office, a car and driver - all that was needed to obtain information, supplies and help.

I have been told that the five horses received, shall we say, unreliable care. Last summer they were allowed to become seriously dehydrated for want of a thoughtful, sober groom. Last winter, I gather, they were not ridden because it was "too cold" - though of course the locals would have been out daily with their horses and carts. Their feet were neglected. Despite promises, a proper stable was not provided for the winter. The expertise of a willing American volunteer living nearby was spurned.

And now, after all that, I am told that "police raids have been organised on the places where gypsies hide stolen horses." So why exactly were the horses left outside unattended all night in a society where every peasant locks his horses in a barn during the hours of darkness? In eight years, I never lost a horse, and nor did a single one of my neighbours. I guarded these horses.

I am told that "a helicopter might be used to search for them." Really, after those attempts to screw me out of the last few hundred euros of the selling price? After no-one could be bothered to call the farrier?

I wish that I had euthanased those good, faithful horses rather than leave them to a fate that culminated, most likely, in painful confused final hours followed by a brutal death. Or that somehow I had managed to borrow the substantial sum needed to ship them to Britain and then given them to caring new homes.

As a local informant commented, "now the owners won't have to pay for them." Followed by the opinion that, if a peasant bought them, at least they will be shod and perhaps the vet called if they get sick. Well, knowing how careless some peasants can be, that is an optimistic statement. But there are good people amongst them, perhaps many good people, even if they work their animals hard.

In the unlikely event that the (now ex-)owners of those fine horses are reading this: do not bother to comment or email me in connection with this post. No, I will not take down this post - not unless, by some miracle, you manage to save all four horses from whatever fate awaits then and promise in future to take far better care of them. I trusted you to take care of those noble, kind, gentle animals, and you failed them. You had the resources to provide a good, safe home for those horses, but you were not prepared to make the effort. Now, thanks to your errors and omissions, they have most likely come to a grisly end that no horse deserves.

Numbed by the news, mechanically I have gone to work and returned home. I have travelled out to the stable, troubled by sadness transmitted from afar, to see almost the sole survivor of my horses who is not lost to my sight - the big brave strong roan stallion, Doru. The great horse thrust his elegant head out above the stable door and neighed, reaching out to be petted and receive a crisp apple. He and Pintea, at least, have been rescued to live out their days in security and happiness.

Goodbye to you all - Gelu, Tudor, Olga and Luciana - who have passed beyond my sight and perhaps beyond this world. You served me faithfully, and I did not intentionally fail you. May you all live happily in green pastures where pain or suffering are unknown.

Laura too reports this sad, pointless news from a more local perspective - see her post here.

Update nr 1

I've just been out for a pleasant walk with my Transylvanian dog Mina, through the woods and along a pleasant grassy trail in the golden slanting evening light when shadows are long.

I have also, again, had to delete comments by another bigotted Romanian troll. Apparently I have disappointed the Roms. I did not do enough for them. I wonder which of the following was insufficient?

Bringing over a million euro ($1.5m) into their rural economy, a lot of money when a family income of 200 euro a month is normal?

Departing because it became patently obvious that a tourism business just wasn't viable thanks to high prices for services, poor quality of just about everything, and foreign tourists simply not wanting to see trash in the rivers and mountains clear-felled of their trees?

Employing half a dozen people on fair wages for the best part of a decade?

Creating a great deal of positive publicity and bringing visitors from forty countries to see Romania?

Tolerating being followed by the secret police and having my phone tapped as if these were normal occurences?

Forgiving certain of my neighbours numerous times for stealing from me, for gossip, for slander?

Before that, helping run an aid organisation that brought a considerable amount of food and medicine into Romania immediately after the fall of communism?

Perhaps I failed because I wasn't a magician? I couldn't suspend the laws of economics. Nor could I put a spell on hoteliers to serve food on time and hot. I was not able to blind tourists to the trash that was thrown down everywhere. Neither could I bewitch anyone with a work ethic.

But, believe me, I worked so hard and creatively that, had I been in any other European country - a nice civilised places like Austria, for instance; even former communist states such Hungary or Poland - my business would have flourished and local people with me.

A note to the minority of troublemaker: I will delete defamatory, libellous or otherwise offensive comments. My life and happiness are no longer predicated by a whining minority driven by envy and prejudice. I am beyond your clutches.

I did enjoy my walk. I appreciated the tranquility, the pleasure of walking along trails not lined with discarded trash, the sight of green hills not disfigured by ugly weekend villas, the wind whistling through wodds not hacked to pieces by indiscriminate logging, the knowledge that I live in a place where people care about their environment.

The new beginning.....a year on

One grey morning I woke up to a quiet farm. The cats and dogs had gone, so had all but two of the horses. Danielle and I packed our few remaining belongings into the back of our truck, hitched up our trailer, and loaded the last two horses: Doru and Pintea. We said goodbye to the few people who knew or seemed to care about our departure. Finally, mid-morning, we set off down the muddy village street, bumping along past grubby yards and houses that needed painting, crawling along below the cold umber hills.

A few miles later, I realised that a box had been forgotten in my old tack room, and turned back. Three horse carts stood in our yard as neighbours and former employees took whatever could be carried out of the house and workshop, which was not a great deal. Little furniture remained, though the blacksmithing gear that I could not carry was both valuable and useful. I retrieved the box and set off for the last time.

Long hours later, after a slow four hundred kilometres on crumbling roads, we crossed into Hungary. Suddenly the roads became smooth, the towns and villages well cared for, the people Western. I had arranged a stop at a village guesthouse on the Great Plain, and we were welcomed kindly, the two horses finding comfortable boxes on a nearby farm.

The journey went on, slowly towing a rather poorly balanced trailer. Another night was spent in Hungary, then a night in Austria. A strange feeling overcame me: the realisation that I had been a complete fraud selling holidays in Romania. Not in a premeditated sense, since I had travelled so little that the contrast between Romania and neighbouring countries to the West had escaped me. But I had become an apologist for an ill-run and corrupt nation whose very own population, for all their faux-patriotism, cared neither for their heritage or their environment.

A year later I am sitting in a hotel room whilst away on a training course for my work and have a few moments to type a final post on this blog. My new life is a complete contrast to the old. I may work in an office again, however my employer gives me interesting and indeed challenging work, trusts me, equips me with the tools that I need, and pays me well. I have good, competent colleagues in whom I trust. This work brings out the best in me, and I am very happy with it.

I have a horse to ride in my spare time. Indeed, after twenty thousand miles in the saddle, riding as and when I choose is a welcome change. My back is well again - finding a chiropractor was nearly my first action when I stopped in the West.

Danielle and I are married now, and we have a modest but pleasant home. We can begin to lead normal lives after the many problems that Romania through at us. We can get on with life without being asked to pay bribes, without our every effort being sabotaged by the jealous and the ignorant, without our neighbours stealing from us.

Given the changes that took place in the world economy, we did not move a moment too soon. The tourist industry in Romania has slumped, and former colleagues report that the going is tough. Several no longer work in Romania at all. I feel sorry for the remainder, struggling on in a fragment of the Third World jostling like flotsam at the edge of Europe.

I suppose that the village did not seem so bad a decade ago. It was still then a fragment of an older world, where there existed memories of honour, where people still knew how to work after a fashion. But they were dragged down by their corrupt urban compatriots and became simple uncultured materialists. What a sad end for a people and a country that seemed to have such hope! It seems that nothing which I did made the blindest bit of difference to anyone whom I employed or worked with. I am sad for that. I miss the mountains and forests, the expansive views from the lofty ridges, however one can neither eat the view nor pay the bills with it, or even sell it profitably to tourists when almost each Romanian blindly trashed his backyard.

I do not need to say where we live or where we work. Suffice it to say that we moved on from the first place where we stopped. I did take down this blog for several months in response to abusive and libelous comments posted by certain corrupt Romanians. I suppose that these people regret that the opportunity to solicit bribes has passed. No, it did not prove possible to close down my affairs out there as I would have wished, however that is thanks to corrupt lawyers and real estate agents who obstructed me in the hope of largesse that I was not willing to offer.

Suffice it to say that Danielle and I now live in a better place amongst better people.

A friend visited the village recently. My former neighbours were drunk, Cornel's new employer hadn't paid him for several months and his wife begged for money, my looted former home is empty and ruined. (I had found Cornel a well paid job working with horses for an English employer, however his wife had incited him to leave that job because it involved lodging away from home on weekdays. So now they are nearly destitute. Again he is a sad alcoholic man with no prospects.) Of all the people whom I left behind, I feel regret for Cornel's fate alone, perhaps because I spent the most time with him and perhaps because (usually and at least when sober) he tried to be a good employee. But the place and the people dragged him down, who might have prospered in better surroundings.

Nearly ten years of my life vanished into that place. Almost a decade, all my savings, and more besides. Long years of stress and struggle for what precisely? Well, they made me stronger and more resillient, they gave me a better perspective on life, they cured what tendency I had towards depression. So I did not emerge destitute of hope or options.

Yes, Danielle and I live in a better neighbourhood now.

Sunday evening reflections

The aftermath of our old life in Romania lingers like a bad smell.

As a good friend, who runs a travel agency specialising in Eastern Europe, commented: if I told the following story about any European country other than Romania, people would question whether I was reporting a real situation.

It goes rather like this. Before I left Romania, I sold seven horses to an Anglo-Romanian foundation that aims (we are told) to preserve culture, encourage civic values, and build a hotel that will offer riding and other attractions. The price for each horse was agreed with the director (let's call him Mr A), however (what a surprise) he delayed and the money wasn't transfered into my account before I left Romania. Now Mr A has called me and says that he wants to renegotiate the prices. He intends (he says) to bring a veterinarian in his pay to "value" the horses. Of course the vet will say what he is expected to say, since naturally enough he wishes to work for Mr A again in the future. The fact that vets are responsible for treating sick animals, not assessing the financial value of healthy animals, seems irrelevant when there is money to be grasped.

Meanwhile, the formal legal closure of my old company is in the hands of a lawyer, whom I shall call Mr B. Now, Mr B is a friend of Mr A. Guess what, as soon as the issue of payment for the horses surfaced, Mr B stopped answering my phone calls (my name appears on his phone display when I ring) and no longer replies to emails. Meanwhile, Mr A has asked me "to put a financial value" on his requesting Mr B to continue to represent me. Mr B has all the documents from my old company, and knows that it will be very difficult to engage another lawyer from Britain. Especially when Romanian lawyers are a cozy clique to begin with. Meanwhile, as closure is delayed, tax bills mount.

Both these men are well known figures in Transylvania, yet neither feels the need to behave ethically. Until these problems occured, they were all charm and helpfulness. Mr A's wife (who is English) is looking after the horses, so I hope that they will be well cared for. [Later: sadly, this proved to be a vain hope!] However, Mr A was slow to give his wife money to buy corn, and then claimed that "the horses were thin" (they certainly weren't thin when I delivered them!), so I wonder just what has happened. (Unless, of course, they are being compared to images of fat English show horses!)

Regrettably it seems impossible to transact any sort of business in Romania without the stench of dishonesty.

This is all very sad after spending nine years living and working in Romania. I had a lot of fun riding through the mountains, enjoyed keeping horses and running the riding centre, and most of the time enjoyed working with my employees. Unfailingly I showed the best parts of Romania to guests from forty countries. I did my best to integrate myself into Romanian society. My business supported local farmers, and helped several accommodations as they started up. We supported musicians and craftspeople. I practically contorted myself trying to explain away the at times glaring failings of the system in general and the tourism industry in particular. I forgave a good many foolish and dishonest acts. So most probably it was a mistake to expect to be able to leave without being ripped off.

It was a common trait amongst foreigners working in Romanian tourism to believe that "things will improve shortly". Next year will be better was the motto. Of course tax hikes, government own-goals, burgeoning bureaucracy, above inflation price rises by suppliers and the shaky economy meant that "next year" rarely was better. We tried to trust anyone who appeared trustworthy, as a reaction against so many who manifestly were not trustworthy. Some Romanians were indeed trustworthy, and I could name Cornel (my old horseman) despite one or two lapses, Sorin (the guide in Suceava), Mugur (who has horses near Cluj, and is keeping my dogs until October), Ovidiu (who runs a riding operation near Targu Mures, where the mare Kaluga retired to) and his colleagues, Irina and Daniel in Bucuresti (who helped so many of our guests), Andrei and the staff at Pantravel in Cluj, and Cristi (the vet who helped us so much). Others not mentioned should forgive my memory. However I strain to think of any other neighbours, colleagues or suppliers whom I felt able to trust. Now, again, I have treated someone as trustworthy because I hoped that he would prove trustworthy. Again, my fingers have been burnt.

Really, it would have been better if we foreigners had put our collective foot down in 1990. When we gave out aid to very poor people and orphans, and they went straight to the market to swap the aid for cigarettes, we should have seen the light and walked away. But we hoped that things would get better. We should have seen it as a sign of what was to come. But we were blinded by our egotistical desire to "do good", and now we have paid the price. So have more deserving people whom we might have helped instead.

Still, I have emerged wiser and with new skills. My wife and I met in Romania, and our paths most likely would not have crossed any other way. We have had interesting experiences and good times as well as bad. Those nine years brought blessings and, as for the bad things, some would say that I escaped relatively lightly.

The end.....heralding a new beginning

This may be my last post from Transylvania. After nine years, I shall be leaving, hopefully crossing the border next Friday. It has been an often interesting and sometimes rewarding time, however I am glad to be moving on.

The equestrian business is a hard way to make money. My health has suffered during the past few years, including chronic lower back pain. I haven't slept a full night in the past couple of years, in a country where there isn't a single registered chiropractor. The best that the Romanian health service can do is prescribe opium and ketamin-based medications, which are potentially addictive and compromise one's balance and alertness. Meanwhile, I have been working 8am to 10pm virtually every day, with all the stress of running a business, whilst making about as much money as someone on welfare in Britain.

It is also desperately difficult to sell holidays in a country that shoots itself in the foot again and again. A deeply corrupt government craves industrialisation, announcing that "the only tourist zones" are the polluted mafia-owned Danube Delta, the low-class ski resort of Poiana Brasov (also mafia-owned)  and the chaotically developed Bucovina region (whose only real attraction is several Painted Monasteries).

I cannot sell a destination that looks like Europe's garbage dump. Almost every river in Romania looks like this, and so do many roadsides and railway linesides. It wasn't like this when I came here.

I cannot sell a country where the "tourist facilities" so often are a complete mess, like the "picnic site and mineral water spring" shown here. The bushes on the right are the "public lavatory" too.

I cannot sell trips in the mountains when the forests are becoming ravaged by an excessive volume of logging and where logging tractors churn the trails into knee-deep muddy swamps. This log pile has just appeared, so a hill somewhere has been clear felled.

I cannot sell a nation whose government, aided and abetted by most of the urban population, is set on destroying sustainable rural life. All the activities shown in the picture are now illegal, despite the rather obvious lack of traffic (and the frequent clusters of pot-holes that keep the limited traffic going slow). Hardly anyone stands up for family farmers, not even the so-called ecotourism industry.

Then there are the ugly new houses that litter the landscape. Where else in Europe will monolithic pink and bright blue villas appear scattered across a National Park (facilitated by some well directed bribes) or climbing a once beautiful hillside? Pictured are some of the smaller new houses in my relatively less affluent village. In what lurid shade will they be painted? These people are building more square feet per occupant even that well off families would expect in the West. And it is heated by wood, meaning even more forest cut.

It is difficult and costly to run a business when the basic infrastructure is run-down and broken, despite the vast sums that the EU is pouring into Romania (largely, it seems, to benefit the capital city Bucuresti - now rated as "Europe's most polluted city" - and provide new villas and cars for the ruling elite). The picture shows the "main road" to my village and its neighbour, the only road linking some eight thousand people to the outside world. The concrete mining structure has stood derelict for nearly two decades, and will probably remain there until it falls into the road.

I could mention too the supposedly good restaurants where "hot" meals arrive cold more often than not, and where a simple order can take an hour to arrive. I could ask why an average hotel offering indifferent service in an ugly communist-era district of Bucuresti costs appreciably more than a pleasant friendly hotel in a leafy street in Budapest, Hungary? I could complain about the slow, dirty, ill maintained trains with third-world lavatories. Then there are the omnipresent beggars, who are becoming more assertive as poverty bites. I might note that, within 24 hours of announcing my departure, a group of gypsies drove into my yard with a truck and tried to steal several agricultural implements for scrap metal. I feel as if I live in a country where hardly anyone seems to care about anything other than their immediate gratification.

Meanwhile, heritage is going to wrack and ruin. Did I mention that the state railway is trying to auction off its preserved steam locomotives to raise money because it can't afford to pay the electricity bill for its electrified main lines? Meanwhile, this old narrow gauge steam train has stood derelict on the edge of Cluj-Napoca for many years.

There are still some wonderfully beautiful areas within Transylvania, such as the Szekelyfold where part of Romania's extensive Hungarian minority lives. They have more pride, work harder, and have a relatively Western outlook. The Hungarian minority generally are proud of their traditions. It is there, to Count Kalnoky's Estate, where many of my horses are going. Count Kalnoky will be taking over my trail riding business and website, with the first trail ride starting on 11 May 2008. He has an excellent, well respected tourist business (patronised by HRH Prince Charles, amongst others), and I am sure that he will offer some excellent trail rides in his enclave.

My Hutul horses are going to a Hungarian breeder near Lake Balaton. Isn't it curious how it is left to Hungarian enthusiasts to keep alive a Romanian breed whilst over here the stud books aren't even maintained up to date? The old mare Kaluga has gained a little extra strength and is retired to a farm near Targu Mures, where a horse-loving travel agent is allowing her to live her last months in peace. Luciana and colt Luke are going with Tudor and Gelu to the Ratiu Family Foundation's site near Turda, south of Cluj-Napoca, where Cornel will also be employed. Doru and Pintea will travel to Britain with Pintea and I.

The three dogs will remain six months before they are allowed to enter Britain in October, along with the cats Tiger, Zgomotilla and Lucky. The remaining cats will find new homes with some of the horses at the Ratiu Family Foundation.

Yes, I expect that I shall raise a howl of protest from some Romanians. Perhaps I shall hear from the professor who harangued me a while ago, informing me that "there was no Jewish Holocaust"? Perhaps I shall hear from the lady who demanded an assurance that, when I return to Britain, I will tell everyone to go on holiday in Romania? Or maybe the Ministry of Tourism, which had my phone tapped a few years ago to find whether I was opposed to their awful Dracula Theme Park project, will attack me? After all, it is easier and less challenging to shoot the messenger than to deal with the problem.

Nevertheless, I have seen a potentially good country turn sour over the past few years, and I don't want to be corrupted with it. I cannot change a country for the better, nor seemingly even my neighbours. I am deeply sad about this. I have fought the long defeat, and now is time to escape whilst I can.

I have enjoyed the doings with horses and carts and peasant farming in this shrinking enclave. I am fortunate to have experienced a dying way of life whilst, superficially at least, it appeared vibrant. I have enjoyed the remote mountains in silence, and the wide open skies. Now, at least, I shall be spared the sight of this community in its death throes. My horses have good homes, the cats and dogs too. Doru and Pintea, good Transylvanian horses that they are, will accompany me on the next stage in the journey of my life with Danielle.

Anyway, soon we shall be living at the foot of the chalk downlands that sweep across Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, including the Vale of the White Horse. It is a scenic area with, by English standards, a lot of open space and many places to ride including the Ridgeway. There are lots of historical references, from the prehistoric through Alfred the Great. I used to live around there so, in a way, I am going back home. After these nine years here, I am going back considerably more capable than when I left. These long years have not been wasted.

I hope that I shall find a job as an engineer on the railway, even on the restarted Crossrail project that I helped design in the 1990's before it was shelved for a decade. I miss the railway, where at least four generation of my family worked.

I shall, of course, continue posting from Britain. There will be a gap of a few weeks until Danielle and I get established. However, there will be plenty to write about, with news about the horses, riding, and equestrian matters generally. It has been a pleasure writing for you, and receiving your comments. Please do keep on visiting my blog.

Market visit

On a rainy Monday morning, we visited the market in the next village, 10km (6 miles) away.

In the street, horse carts were variously in motion and parked. It really was a grey day, with sharp rain showers passing through every half hour or so. The concrete road was covered by a thin film of liquid mud, and everything on and around the road seemed to be more or less dirty.

In a yard off the village road, maize was being sold from the back of a truck. Whilst a rare hatless man covered his head with his coat in this land of hat wearers, someone else loaded a ubiquitous hand cart. A pair of horses stood patiently, rugged and warm.

Under the covered bridge opposite, the off-duty postman waited with his horse until a break in the weather. The main road through the village once was host to a succession of covered bridges, all of which had secumbed to the needs of large trucks by the 1970's.

This covered bridge is said to be around one hundred and twenty years old. It is rather beginning to sag in the middle. It has survived because it serves only a minor side road, and really is rather quaint and photogenic.

The old main timbers of the covered bridge are hand-hewn and obviously date from a past age before modern sawmills and chainsaws. Metal fittings were made by a blacksmith. There are still two covered bridges serving side roads, and one (which appears to have been relocated from the main road) crossing the river into a farmer's yard.

Going home in a rare brighter spell during the dull wet morning, a farmer was taking a cow and calf that he had bought. Both are well wrapped up against the rain. The calf is catching a ride in the cart. With this kind of load trailing, one has to remember not to trot the horses on.

Others had bought sheep as well. Viewed in the beginning of another rain deluge, these animals seem rather more waterproof. Their owners are in a nearby bar (inevitably, at the weekly market, when the men need to share news over a drink or several), and have only a couple of kilometers to get home. Even so, I expect that we, faraway dwellers, got home long before them on account of our lesser thirst.

Village excursion

Yesterday we made a trip around the village with two visitors from Ireland. I captured some pictures during the day.

Gelu and Tudor wait patiently with the carriage.

Neighbours pass with manure and new window frames.

A traveller and his horse climb past us with blocks of lime for sale, used to make whitewash.

We pass a cart of hay travelling in the other direction.

At the blacksmith's, we can choose between a stove and having a horse shod. The blacksmith is very versatile in the range of things that he can make, repair and do.

On the way back, we ford the stream rather than take the bridge so that the horses can drink.

Back at home, a very hairy and rather grubby Pintea is being used for a shoeing demonstration.

Natural Balance vs unnatural

The first photo shows Doru with his new Natural Balance shoes. They make quite a contrast to the raised draught horse shoes used so commonly out here. I am very pleased to see him nicely shod.

The second photo shows a shoe being fitted to a smallish draught horse by a blacksmith who works in this village. It isn't a form of shoeing that I endorse, however it works tolerably well on draught horses that only move slowly. Plus, the locals are extremely resistant to change.

This shoe conforms quite closely to local practice, which applies the biggest toe pieces and calkins possible. That way the shoe lasts longer on concrete roads.

The shoe also has an extra piece added to the middle of one branch "because the horse wears its shoes unevenly". The outside calkin is angular, whilst that on the inside is rounded to minimise the severity of brushing injuries. At least the farrier knows that long toes and dropped heels are a bad thing.