The British do have a predilection for buying property abroad, for holidays, retirement, or even to pursue that magical dream of teleworking from a beautiful (and cheap) place. A new member of Europe, Romania has swung into the sights of the buyers, speculators, and estate agents. Would-be investors are being sold a vision of utopia where property is cheap (but set to rocket in price), life is cheap and easy, wages (if one wants to employ the locals) are minimal, where happiness, wealth and leisure beckon.
Now, apart from the obvious contradiction in property prices rising with local wages staying low, and the fact barely touched upon that Romanians speak Romanian (and only rarely English), this is still a difficult country in which to get rich. The old nomenclatura have pretty well cornered industry and commerce. Romania is a great place to live well, if one is wealthy or works intelligently and hard. I love it here. However I have never worked harder.
There is the matter of living isolated in a strange country. (I assume that no sensible expatriate would choose to live in ugly, crowded, concrete Bucuresti, the only place where appreciable numbers of non-Romanians live.) I enjoy living in a village, interacting with peasants, speaking only Romanian much of the time. Life here is so real, dealing with questions of animals and agriculture, my feet on the paths and fields of a working rural community. I've always enjoyed isolation, and am quite happy being alone. That gives me the peace to think, to contemplate, to be myself.
But what of these incomers, fresh from a busy technological country where everyone speaks their language? How will they communicate? How will they form support networks? What will happen when there is a problem? Will they accept and understand village life, with its slow speed and deep, varied cunning?
I suppose that dreams to come true, it just depends on the nature of the dream. Of all the things in my life – my riding centre, my home, this village, the landscape here – Danielle is the dream come true. With someone so wonderful by my side, location is less important. To some degree, I fell into running my own business because I wasn't happy confined within a bureaucracy. It was a welcome surprise that I liked it, despite the responsibility. I chose a village, being fed up with cities. I chose Romania because I couldn't see a way to pursue this line of business in Britain, and I knew of no other place where I could do this (or no other place where I had the courage to try). This is a safe country to work in, even though there is little safety net. Simply, there are fewer mortal threats to a business, especially in an unusual line of business where there is little competition.
Now we have a large and well developed riding centre. We also have some debts, from borrowing to make it all happen. We have a business plan, and everything seems to stack up, so there is room to be optimistic. It's a dream that is being made to happen. There is beauty in a dream, and there is long and hard work to make it happen. There is satisfaction, and there is risk. Few gifts fall into one's lap, and rare are the free bonuses. However it is a dream, and perhaps special rules apply to dreams? Sweat and toil seem as benefits, hard-earned successes as gifts, praise as surprises for we are modest.
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