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.

On Romanian immigration to Britain

I've written a short piece reflecting upon what passes for debate in Britain concerning the impending free movement of Romanians and Bulgarians in the EU. I hope that the article is fair and reasonable - I have no axe to grind beyond trying to reflect what I see as the truth. I'm interested in intelligent comments - so please no ad hominem attacks, rants and anything else offensive. 

The British media is awash with comment upon the free movement of Romanian and Bulgarian nationals. The conclusion, supported by some reactionary politicians, is that economic migration is a bad thing. Nigel Farage would prefer to admit Syrian refugees over Romanians. This ‘debate’ is a sorry affair, ignorance mixed with prejudice, whilst the real issues affecting Britain are brushed over.

So why should I be any more qualified to comment? My involvement with Romania goes back twenty-four years. I lived there for eight years, becoming a moderately fluent Romanian speaker. I have read around the history and culture of Romania, and I have met Romanians from politicians to peasants. As manager of a tourist business, I welcomed people from fifty nations to Romania. And beyond pure academic knowledge and a tourist’s viewpoint, I have discovered just how hard it can be to run a business and make a decent living in Romania.

But let’s wind the clock back to 1989, to the events that thrust Romania in the British consciousness. Some of us visited Romania to provide ‘aid’, and many more generously donated money. We travelled across Europe in vehicles laden with food, clothes and consumer goods, creating the impression that we came from a land of plenty. Those of us who brought Romanians to Britain promptly took our guests to visit massive supermarkets, smiling at their wide eyes and tears. And now we’re surprised that Romanians want to live and work in Britain?

Living in a rural community in Romania, I soon realised that my neighbours were far too busy trying to make a living to pay much attention to their leaders. After centuries of being invaded and dominated, Romanians have learned to make the best of whatever happens. The concept that citizens can change the course of their nation, and the growth of a system that admitted the possibility, took centuries to develop in Britain. But we expect Romanians to engage with their government, root out corruption and become ‘like us’.

Isn’t that what the ‘aid industry’ was about – making Romanians ‘like us’? I know that some people took out food and painted walls out of the goodness of our hearts. And others of us went there to ‘build churches’, creating more cloned neo-Protestant ‘believers’ just like us. How long did it take for denominationally-affiliated schools, bakeries and pharmacies to appear? Of course you can have bread or medicine, we said, so long as you become a Baptist.

Another piece of reality: life in a Romanian village made it clear just what a narrow sliver of the nation we saw when delivering 'aid' back in the early '90s. How little we saw of the real Romania. And what a poor impression of the country our fundraising must have given to our British supporters. 

Soon the EU came upon the scene, offering generous benefits if only Romania would transform itself into the image of a modern European nation. Yes, let’s talk about reducing corruption, close some orphanages and enact some laws that mention ‘equality’. Let’s privatise some companies and repair some roads. Of course we shall send some soldiers to Iraq to risk death in place of yours. Just like we Romanians pretended to join your chosen sect, we’ll happily give the impression of fitting in to your political union.

As for the leaders of Romania, I believe that they expected three things from joining the EU. Money, of course, and those in power personally benefited mightily from this. Of course an exodus of skilled people would occur, but all that European money could pay for private health care for the ruling class. And the ‘undesirables’ would leave – with Roma at the top of the list - to become someone else’s problem. But I know enough about Romania not to blame its citizens for their leaders. The EU failed the taxpayers who funded expansion and the citizens of the new member states. 

The EU doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to the internal Romanian situation. Did they really grasp what was going on? I don’t remember a visible Roma presence in 1990. But I do recall the lines of peasants queuing two years later to register the land expropriated by the communist regime. Of course it was right to return stolen land to farming families, stolen houses to their former owners. But what would those do whose ancestors possessed neither land nor property? What about people thrown out of work when inefficient state industries imploded? That kind of shock therapy – unequal, arbitrary and sometimes plain discriminatory – will produce a result. The Romanian people are consummate survivors. Let’s give them credit for this. As a national group they survived centuries of oppressive Ottoman and Habsburg domination, two world wars and several decades of brutal state socialism, emerging as hospitable hosts ready to kindly welcome visitors. After 1990 each group did what it needed to in order to survive. At risk of generalising, former communist officials took what they could. Skilled workers emigrated. Farmers worked the land and cut timber. Roma collected scrap metal, begged and stole. I know that the full picture is more complex. But the point is clear: each did what he or she needed to survive, based on personal circumstances. And these behaviours do not accord with the British way. How could they? We haven’t experienced history as the Romanians have.  But this is all rather complicated. The leaders and organs of the EU don’t seem to have taken the time to try and understand the Romanian psyche. They certainly didn’t understand established members – otherwise why would Greece have got into such a mess, catching out the EU in the process?

Opportunity to further oneself is limited in Romania, and little trickles down to benefit the majority. No wonder ambitious people want to leave! I believe that Romanians are unusually well adapted for emigration. As I see it, the essence of Romanian national identity is based upon language and myth - in the ethnographic sense of the word - which a person can carry in his or her head. It’s not rooted within historic places and celebrated landscapes like our traditional British identity. The castles and historic towns in Romania were, for the most part, built by invaders and immigrants. Greater Romania only came into existence after the First World War. Until then most Romanians were second-class citizens within someone else’s empire - and communism was no better. So it’s easier to leave, carrying national identity within, than we British might think. It’s possible to thrive secure in that rich and conveniently mobile identity. And if Romanians are sensitive to being treated as a barely-tolerated minority, history explains why.

I’ve touched upon Ottoman and Habsburg domination of the land that is now Romania. A sizeable German population also lived in Romania, and smaller groups of Czechs, Poles and others still live there. As a British national I was welcomed into Romania. I might, had I been more cunning – or, perhaps, ruthless - have prospered. The point is that Romanians see nothing strange in a foreign person working successfully in a host nation. Based upon historic experience, those immigrants have done well.

Anyway there’s good economic sense in immigration. I work in Britain’s engineering industry, where we’re desperately short of skilled people. My colleagues come from a plethora of lands on five continents, including at least one Romanian and a Bulgarian. Not only do we gain from the skills these people bring – and their desire to succeed – we are depriving their homelands of IT specialists, engineers and doctors. But of course we don’t worry about that so long as we can fill that post and deliver that contract on time.

But let’s look for some similarities. Few British or Romanians want Roma as neighbours. In my experience Romanians perceive Roma as an alien group, differing in language, history and culture. And the two groups are different, socially and ethnically - it is quite wrong to characterise ethnic Romanians according to the Roma stereotype. The British don’t want Roma - or anyone 'undeserving' - to receive money from the social security system funded by our taxes. However in Britain we don’t want to say this. For that matter, we don’t want to be heard saying that we feel 'threatened' by Muslims, another group readily and regularly stereotyped. So we project our feelings onto a ‘safe’ target – white Caucasians ‘like us’ generally disinclined to steal or support terrorism. Perhaps Romanians will simply feel offended and move elsewhere? That’s a vestige of empire – we British are used to ‘foreigners’ harrumphing at our prejudice.

A little introspection is needed. In the new global economy, a more ‘efficient’ Britain offers few employment opportunities to an unskilled underclass of millions. Nowadays finance, technology and IT are our strengths – not agriculture, coal mining or building ships. Even call centre jobs have been exported. In our society several million people are simply superfluous. If there weren’t half a million Poles at work in Britain the underclass would be no better off. A vicious combination of poor skills and costly housing would keep them captive, dependant on social security. If that’s the case, what is the problem with relatively skilled people coming here ready and willing to work? Nothing, actually: but it’s easier to rail against economic migrants than to admit that the living standards of the majority depend upon the inequality inherent in a broken society?

So, let’s accept that Romanians will come to live and work in Britain. Let’s take the opportunity to work together: Romanians contributing to the British economy whilst Britain – consciously and deliberately – helps Romania to strengthen its society and public institutions. Let’s become friends, building upon the goodwill that began one December twenty-four years ago.

Friends tell the truth. They offer criticism as well as support. Friends develop the maturity to stick together. They learn about what makes the other tick. Friends give as much as they take, or even more. They grow in partnership. Friends can be different in character, age and experience, but they share mutual respect. They learn from one-another.  Friendship could be good for both Britain and Romania. 

On memory and shadow

I've just finished reading Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March.

In the years before the Great War, at the time the events chronicled in these pages took place, it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When someone was expunged from the lists of the living, someone else did not immediately step up to take his place, but a gap was left to show where he had been and those who knew the man who had died or disappeared, well or even less well, fell silent when they saw the gap. When a fire happened to consume a particular dwelling in a row of dwellings, the site of the conflagration remained for a long time afterwards. For masons and bricklayers worked slowly and thoughtfully, and when they walked past the ruins, neighbours and passers-by alike recalled the form and the walls of the house that had once stood there. That's how it was then! Everything that grew took long to grow; and everything that ended took a long time to be forgotten. Everything that existed left behind traces of itself, and people then lived by their memories, just as we nowadays live by our capacity to forget, quickly and comprehensively. For a long time afterwards, the feelings of the officers and men of the dragoon regiment, and of the civilian inhabitants of the small town, were shaken and troubled by the deaths of the regimental doctor and Count Tattenbach.

Those words especially stuck in my mind. I am conscious of the past, of the things that are no more and the people who have disappeared. Indeed more so than ever now, with a growing awareness of a vanished birth mother who may be dead of alive, and living here or there if indeed she still lives. Suddenly a fresh mystery has come upon my life, and a new tension.

But, before that, I wandered my Transylvania of exile deeply aware of those who had gone before me: travellers, shepherds, soldiers, aristocrats, traders, invaders, bureaucrats and bandits. Their debris lay all about: old roads, crosses, battlefields, ruined castles, manor houses derelict or converted to state institutions, old border posts, multi-lingual place names and railways heading in peculiar directions. I noticed things that few of the inhabitants seemed aware of. Perhaps I could, who had not lived through communism, whose family had not bloodied its hands, directly or through association, during the fascist era. It was my freedom to see beyond the veils that clouded my neighbours' vision, and my choice to keep quiet or to speak.

Now here in my homeland, or what I suppose it to be, I am aware of the past. I feel the past and the footsteps of those who trod, rode and trudged ways now more or less busy. The main road is busy and clogged with vehicles, whilst the former Roman road sees an occasional pedestrian. I feel the gaps where once the farmer went with his horses, the train once crossed the bare hills, the cavalry exercised, labourers worked, and villagers went about their business. That is all gone, and we have forgotten them all. As Roth said, everything that existed left behind traces of itself. It still does. But when I walked around T E Lawrence's cottage yesterday the press of people caused memory to flee and hide. Tourists sought some glimpse of Lawrence the celebrity, but it was others that rendered him thus, and that reclusive man hated it. Of the private Lawrence, complex and requiring wisdom to understand, subject of an excellent biography by a psychiatrist (A Prince of Our Disorder by Professor John Mack), there was no trace. The guides did not know of Mack's book, and nothing was said to hint at Lawrence being anything other than a slightly eccentric hero who liked to relax in a quiet cottage.

Roth showed me another thing too: which I knew, of course, but had not articulated so clearly. In the final stages of The Radetzky March, as the First World War breaks out on the Eastern Front, the Habsburg regime went about a rather arbitrary selection and execution of "traitors". The retreating army left behind many corpses swinging from trees, whose only "crime" was belonging to the wrong ethnic group or religion. So, every regime has its dark side - a shadow and skeletons in the cupboard - however kindly the old emperor might appear. Every country and each corporation, and some religions too. I left exile sickened by the inescapable darkness of the nationality whose country I shared. But here in Britain there is a shadow too, even as we remove those skeletons. Where I work there is a shadow.

I spent a good few years talking up the positive side of Romania, where I lived, and making excuses for the faults. It was the Holocaust that stopped me, for I could not excuse the deeds of my neighbours' parents and grandparents let alone whitewash them when children and grandchildren neither cared nor repented.

Now I am finding a way to get on with life, aware of the national shadow back here in Britain, unable to do much about it, and a little constrained myself by the dark side. It's all about living with duality, I suppose. As well as those internal tensions between opposites, there is a great big duality beyond: fairness versus guarded privilege; civic values pitched against hubris; responsibility opposing unsustainability. Like Roth's characters we are caught up on a runaway train. Unlike those characters we may be able to adapt. The hardest part is to living hopefully. No, I shall not be making excuses for any shadow.

Lieutenant Carl Joseph, Baron von Trotta and Sipolje, the main protagonist of Roth's novel, a soldier for most of his life, longed to be a peasant just like his great-grandfather. Just before war broke out he attained that aim, earning a few brief months of happiness. Then all was sundered by events far beyond his control. I sought to work with horses in a remote mountain village, and that was taken from me by events far less momentous than a war. Unlike Trotta. my life was preserved, and health too. I could have fared much worse. It's best not to hang onto a dream whose fulfilment depends upon good fortune and the favourable outcome of events beyond ones control.

As for being aware of the past, the people and things that have gone, that is a bonus to enrich life.

That leaves the puzzle of what to read after Miklos Banffy and Joseph Roth. Tolstoy, perhaps?

More cavalry

A little more research found this rare film showing Romanian cavalry. This is the kind of unit that my former neighbour belonged to. It's a pleasure to look at the riding and to appreciate the horsemanship. I'd like to be so agile that I could run alongside a horse on the lunge and simply spring aboard.

Occasionally I did come across that kind of lively spirit around horses, most often amongst young peasant men. Romania is not a country that I would associate with horsemanship. That is not to say that the farm horses were neglected - far from it - however for the most part they were equine tractors. I didn't come across many horse lovers, just a lot of men who could work a horse competently on a farm or in the forest.

I'd like to think that a couple of my staff were almost naturals with horses. They rode fluently despite little formal instruction. Theirs was a confidence that the horses seemed to recognise and respect. I loved going out riding in the mountains with Cornel. Most often he could be trusted. Provided that no drinking den detrained him, he would get to the other end in good order, his horse too. How I miss those rides.

Now in the busy technological West I struggle to find that old fluency. I'm nearest to it when hitching a trailer, loading my horse and going out to ride. Yes, cavalrymen made good mechanised soldiers through their dash and initiative. Having become a skilled trail rider did much the same for me, teaching me to treat life as a matter of finding a dynamic equilibrium across rough ground. Yet I feel as if I'm getting towards the end of those lessons, as if their range has been exhausted. Now the ground is too strange, not exactly rough but simply confusing. Sometimes pointless too. Well, I guess that most probably I've learned how to learn. That's the next trick to pull from my bag.

Here's a picture of a German cavalryman in Africa before the First World War. There's more good simple equipment, though that rifle must have got in the way. Like my neightbour, nice equipment, pity about the cause.

Horsemen of the Apocalypse

I found this picture whilst delving into history. Most particularly I was looking into a part of the history of Eastern Europe where I used to live. One superficial thing that struck me about this picture is the way in which folded blankets are used between horses and saddles, just as I did at my riding centre and still do today. There is a lot to be said for a good army blanket. But that is by far the least important thing to draw from the picture.

A former neighbour told me a little about cavalry engagements during the Second World War, in his case fighting with the Romanian army supporting the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union. The Eastern Front was a callous brutal business from which few men or horses returned. The Romanian army, so I was told, was so short of resources that the men of his unit needed to provide their own horses. My cavalry veteran informant got as far as the River Don by Summer 1942, over half way from his European home to the Caspian Sea deep in Asia. There at the Don Elbow he was injured sufficiently severely to be invalided out of the army. And that is why he lived. His fellows went on to Stalingrad, from which few returned.

Supposedly a book was written about the Romanian cavalry on the Eastern front, titled (I believe) Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I haven't succeeded in getting hold of a copy.

Most of my trail rides carried me across relics of that war. There were shell craters on the mountains, defensive trenches decaying on high ground, bunkers crumbling in the forest, and the wreckage of bridges blown up in 1944. There were more sights than memories, at least more physical remains than stories that anyone wanted to own up to. From 1945 to 1989 those stories were taboo, and by then much had been forgotten. But one thing was clear enough: there was no glory in any of it. There was none of the swank of Western peacetime cavalry in an aggressive invasion. The stories that I heard were, for the most part, the tales of men who rode out to settle scores both national and ethnic. The accounts of bored, frustrated men seeking adventure. In doing so they brought new defeat upon their people, though that wasn't the way their path seemed to lead in the beginning.

I am sorry for them, deluded as they were (and some still are, to judge by things that were said to me - which is one reason why for a while I fell a little out of sympathy with Romania). However I am more sorry for the horses that those men dragged into that bloody conflict. They at least were innocent.

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.