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.

Comments

[Naomi Smith]

Sounds like a heavy burden has been lifted off your shoulders, mind, and heart. Good for you, may you have peace all the days of your life.

Enjoyed the read.

[richard siddons]

you sound just like my mum!she's lived in turkey for the last 15 years, now she's moved to spain. she's english and also hates britain. very interesting reading, i'm going to forward your site on to her, she'd like it not to feel like she's the only one with your kind of experience. bye for now. good luck, and hope your future involves horses!

[Walter Born]

Hi Julian,
we ocassionally met in the beginning of your venture and you didn´t like to keep in touch by then, partly obviously because of my inclination for offroading. Anyways, inspite of your mistrust, I kept your services always as one of the most important and valuable within the region and recomended you, whenever somebody showed real intereset in horsebackriding or country life firsthand experience.
Information came to me only within the last days when we wanted to visit your and showing your location to an american couple here for social investment. They would have gladly used your services.
Well, a to late now. We travelled to your place, it will remain your place all the time as you left a somewhat important imprint, not only materialistically spoken, but also spiritually spoken.
We got shocked arriving at Lunca seeing what is left, many of it halfway finished, a lot halfway ruined. If you wnat to see the shocking pictures let me know.
Your story gets me to the brink of crying for the loss of opportunity the local population had with you.
But, there are more people like you are and to be frankly, I do not know a single one who is succeeding more than you did.
All of us immigrants to Romania seem to fail due to the saem causes.
But to that extend there is also our own heritage we bring into this country and we cannot expect that all our dreams we wnated to setup here would be fullfilled as well.
I am very sad to experience that you left and that you left after such a lot of investing not only financially but more of it spiritually and with a great will to turn things around.
Maybe you it already, but one of th egood things here is, that after a struggle or a fight with somebody or something, you can be friends again after a time. So I am positive that you might come back here once upon a time and check in to see wether things have evaluated.
One thing I can tell you already. The forest trail from lower Lunca to Sant will be disapearing in favour of an asfalt road. That was our second bad experience last saturday.

[White Horse Pilgrim]

Walter, thank you for the news and for your confidence in what I was doing. It did amaze me when I left that no-one wanted to persuade me to stay, not even the mayor who was generally quite a positive fellow. It would have served a number of them well to work with me, but no-one was interested. Maybe what I was doing seemed too strange to them?

The situation had been getting worse for a while. Once the company reached a certain size various other people decided that they were entitled to a share of the income. At the same time corruption prevented me from gaining access to EU funds. In the end all the work was giving me insufficient reward.

It's a terrible shame. I liked the people and the place, however it was not possible to make an honest living there. I do wonder whether, if I had gone to a Szekler area, whether I would have had more success.

I don't know about going back. Certain people had been trying to take money from me as I left, but I was too quick. I have been told by someone with connections that they created a dossier containing false acusations in case I did return. That is a problem with just a few individuals however the risk of problems means that I will not return anytime soon.

I've been told what state the house and land are in. Even the sale was stopped by a corrupt real estate agent and lawyer. I had thought that someone would take it and live there in no time. But within a week of my departure all was looted and stolen. Well I hope that the planks and pipes and whetever helped some people to improve their cottages.

Anyway for now I am working as a senior engineer on a large construction project. It's interesting, I get paid every month, and life is free from stress.

I wish you luck with what you are doing these days, in the village and elsewhere.

[Walter Born]

Meanwhile I read a whole lot of your texts and cannot express how much I would have liked to know you better and at the right time. If I could do something right now, let me know, maybe by mail.

I see on this and all the interent pages you have, that beside that you tellus you are well, you really liked being here for the reason of the beauty of landscape. Even people who cannot rerad english will understand that you still feel love for the land.

It is such a shame what happened to you and to others that left for good as well during the years I am here.

As it is, all of you that left, leave me even more alone in this place where ignorance seem to be the most common thing.

I believe from my own history, that for me it is no difference suffering here from ignorance of others or going back to whereI came from and suffer from restrictions and being unable to take with me my house and garden.

I can assure you that all you experienced had been and still is experienced by all other foreign people here, iclduing me.

It is a pitty though that we are not able to meet in the right place and time, talking honestly to each other when things coudl have been turned around maybe.

Sometimes I fel like giving up, going away, but then, I have run away more than once and this actually is the frist place inmy life where I stayed that long.

I think it is because here I found what I think are the memories of my childhood, when life was simpler and easier being a child. At least I can keep these memories alive in this place.

The most rewarding things that happen here is getting out into the mountains, not asking for access permit, not being plundered by anyone asking for entry fees. That is pure life.

And yes, there are many good people oout there as well, you just don´t need to expect that they have the same experience and point of view than you or me. For those few, for nature and for the good of my own family I will stay here.

Even the people of your village, have lost all they traditions, they actually seem to even hate traditions, which is visible in the colour of their houses and the fact that what they did not steal from your property are some traditional items that any westerner would take away firsthand.

[White Horse Pilgrim]

Sorry that it's taken a few days to reply. Work is busy and I'm doing some studying too.

By the time that you arrived in the village I was feeling a bit of a 'siege mentality'. I had a quite destructive Romanian first wife whose behaviour reduced the chance of the business succceding. Then the usual obstacles continued. A lot of the time working there wass like rolling a large stone uphill - a pity as the scenery was nice and many people pleasant. But yes I should have formed some clever alliances and worked with people who might have become allies. I'd have had a better chance that way.

It's worth explaining that, for historical reasons, I was suspicious of people promoting off-road driving. Back where I lived in England we had a great 60km hiking trail that was destroyed by vehicles in the 80's and 90's - it took a new law and ten years work to make it decent again to hike. Then in Romania groups we encountered some problem groups of off-road drivers - Italians coming for illegal races (these put my tourists in danger on occasions) and Germans with camouflaged vehicles and paramilitary uniforms (who we believed to be neo-Nazis). At the time I saw anyone else promoting off-road driving as a threat, not so much because of them but because of who might follow. Yes I should have found out more about you, and I am sorry that I did not.

In many ways the village was a nice place to live. It was only the need to earn money that made life difficult. Just to be able to explore freely was great, there was so much space and many things to see. Still I think about trails that I wanted to explore and photograph, and would still like to return to record. I used to find historical signs and relics that the locals missed or did not care about.

It's a pity about the loss of traditions. Too often the attitude seemed to be that buildings or machines were left by Hungarians or Saxons, not Romanians, so they had no value. But I remember the doctor's wife telling me how sad she was that the peasant women had no longer any interest in traditional things - they preferred to sit about watching TV when not many years before they'd have been keeping cows and chickens, making clothes and growing food. Now they sit about, buy their food at the shop (where they have a big credit written in the book) and are bored.

I've met some others who left too. Some are really bitter, one even has nightmares still at night. I'm glad not to be angry or bitter, just sad at the opportunity which proved to be an illusion. I do wonder how much different it might have been if I'd gone to the Szeklerfold. Perhaps not much different.

I set foot in Romania first in 1990 and had a lot of experiences there before I settled. Most were good, otherwise I would not have moved there. I am glad to have travelled in deeply rural areas in the mid-90's when there was still an innocence that is lost now. I suppose now I have a Romania in my heart that no longer exists, and that is the fate of an exile.

Meanwhile I feel quite out of place also in the West, which is crowded, full of restrictions and not spiritual as Romania was. I suppose that now I an exile here too.

[Walter]

How similar the experiences are. As you had a wife that seemed to get you in difficulties, I had within the first years some business partners that made me loose a six digit sum, until I learnt to be able to be independent.

From then I tried several ways to promote excursions into nature by dracula-tours.com which had not been very sucessfull. Actually I had 4(four) parties of tourists, which hardly made me any money, but a lot of work.

The day, when one of them threw out an empty beer bottle in the midst of nature, believing that while in Romania he can act as many do still here and back in the fifties as well in western Europe, I called it the end of the idea. The very same day i asked the whole group to leave and do their own thing, without me as a guide.

But since then, you might imagine, some romanians took over with that group and I am sure they left what they could. I have deleted all the public content on the internet concerning offroading since then, no longer encouraging anybody to come here for this reason.

Anyway, I can hardly step back, from this activity myself, I agree. From time to time, maybe 2-3 times a year I take on my family and we go on country roads explorations. No longer is it the offroading that it had been, but for us this is the only time we get into nature, as we have no more time. Well, you had your chance to convince me and others that maybe horsebackriding would be a good alternative way to get out in the wild :)

Tell me about being an immigrant! Nobody of those who came here and left again, stays without influence, even back in his old life. Experiences here are sometimes so strange, but always intense in the godd and in the worse as well. I am sure that we loose lifetime spending in this extreme place but as well what would I miss, living in a german city or well organized society.

It is very exiting, both ways, good and bad, to be here and It is very clear to me that once I left my place of birth, I would become a stranger just everywhere else I go.

So why leave, where I have a house without a mortgage, with a view to the mountains, with the possibility to get out. And all this on a reduced budget.

Who would hire an over fifty year old craftsman at a wage in good old Germany at a wage that would enable us to have the same freedom there? That is just the same illusion than the illusion that during my lifetime there will be some changes here that satisfy our desire for some more civic movements into the right direction.

I rather stay here and clean up after my neighbours, than staying there, working day and night to make a living in somebody elses place on a lease and neighboirs telling me when I have to cleanup the place or how, when and where something has to be renovated.

I recall talking to a bulgarian, living in Boca Raton, Florida, back in 1995, about his neighbourhood asociation that presses him to paint his roof shingles in a certain way and how he handles the problem, by making akward, balcanic proposals, that would make the commission work and decide upon. He managed for years in a row to avoid any changes, giving them more work and ideas to decide about.

I believe now that you are back in the UK, there are some skills that you learned here, you are using for your advantage and thus educating some of the people there, that they are not the centre of the universe, as I sometimes have the impression when talking to my fellow germans, taht this is the main stream idea of west europeans that did not get out of their place except on vacation.

BTW, is any of your books available somewhere as an e-book? Take your time to answer, we still have some time ahead, its not a matter of immediate need of action:)

[White Horse Pilgrim]

It's good of you to be so honest about all that has taken place. Something that I realised about Romania, and have written about, is the way that history gave people certain strategies for survival. These were sucessful for centuries but now conflict with the expectations of people from the West. My first wife, your business partners and the people who take bribes, all are a product of a difficult past.

I did find some tourists who wanted to treat Romania as a place where it was possible to behave in any way possible. Usually the British just wanted to drink a lot of beer and palinca more cheaply than at home. Some behaved badly when drunk. However I had some real problems with French and Belgian tourists who thought that any pretty Romanian woman would sell her body for a few euros. There was quite a scandal up at Hotel Castel Dracula and I had to send these tourists away because of their behaviour. Probably in the West they would have been arrested and charged.

Fortunately most visitors were civilised and just wanted to experience nature and culture. I know that I gave some people real insights into interesting and good aspects of the rural life.

I think that one can move to a foreign place to become an exile. Then one is in exile everywhere and anywhere. Finally one comes to a self-knowledge that makes one feel secure in almost any place. That is my position now. Probably living in the village was an essential step.

I know also that I needed to move on in order to make some new connections from which I have learned and continue to learn from. That is a personal thing. One person goes to a place and finds a folk wisdom and tranquility in which they can flourish. Another needs after some time to find an intellectual input in order to move them on, and that is my position. But life in the village and travel in the mountains gave me the self-knowledge that is my new foundation.

Living in the West again also gives me a new respect for the self-sufficiency of the people in the village who could make and repair so many things, grow their food and work hard to take care of themselves. I miss living amongst those people, and in fact often see them in dreams.

I do like your account of the Bulgarian. That way of making odd and awkward proposals is a useful skill. Life in the village taught me some skills, one being a more sociological approach to human relationships, another being that way of asking questions that stop people and processes. Also it taught me to ask whty people do things - 'what is in it for them?'

Also I sympathise with your position. Craft skills are not rewarded well in the West. People just want cheap things from China. Over here we are creating millions of jobs so badly paid that only immigrants will do them. The biggest store chain recruits workers from Slovakia now because their wages are so low that British people are better off taking unemployment benefits from the state. Probably it's the same in Germany. How have millions of people simply been forgotten?

Thinking of that kind of thing puts places like Romania into context.

As for educating people - well, yes, those who will listen. One difference between the West and the Balkans is that there are more intellectuals in the West. (One might say that Romanian intellectuals are in Chicago, Paris, etc for historical reasons. Just to remind me of that, I've been reading Mircea Eliade.) So more people over here will listen. But, yes, a lot do think that their countries are the centres of the world. I think that concerns about 'Islamicisation' are polarising nationalist thought. People worry about a new conflict that threatens the Western way of life - without understanding what their country stands for.

As for my books, I am working on one about a horse ride from Cluj to Iasi in the 1990s. It is written but needs to be edited. I hope to issue this as an e-book within the next six months, not least because I would like it to be read in Romania. (It is a sympathetic and honest account of what I saw in 1994. It should interest people.) The longer book about my life in the village will take another year or more to complete.

[Walter Born]

Surely, once you got something out as an ebook, you will have at least one customer:)

It took me some days to respond to what you wrote last and I hope I am not a pain in the neck with my writing.

Last night I dreamt about horsebackriding, can you imagine! Well this just reminded me that I wanted to comment on your comment :)

Besides our seamingly common view of the west I believe now that the essence of what can make any of us happy here in Romania, you have written down in your last comment.

It is something that even romanians should miss but don´t.

Intelectual exchange within a group of people with similar life experience and education, or origin.

For myself I found two french artists that I meet regularily and with them I have the occasion to feed not only on nutrition, but also on cultural level.

Actually I find it hard to find romanian friends that are not into pure making money or the lack of it and constantly begging for support or keeping in touch for opportunistic reasons.

This, I find is not necessarily a personal defect of them, its is just their partly desperate situation they are in which I do not like to be confronted with at every occasion.

I tried to found a Group called "Bistrita talks" that woudl meet once a month and just talk about topics like culture, literiture, music or philosophic topic. No success. Two meetings only and it always ended with complaining about politics.

We are just so fed up being asked for help and then getting ripped of by the so called "smecher" who afterwards calls us "fraier". You surely know what I mean.

This is very exhausting and besides living in a romantic and remote place where we wanted to be in the first hand, we also need some culture, at least some people that understand our feelings and comunicate on teh same level.

I am sure the lack of this possibility of human interaction on at the end and a feeling being exploited by a large number of your customers made you leave more than any of the very odd things one can still experience every day anew here.

I would not be here still, if I would not have my french friends or find out about new or other people like Phillipe Coupe, the belgian, who runs an organic microfarm and ecological venture at Malin close to Beclean.

It is very fascinating also to see that those people that come here are not the typical guy you would meet in your homecountry. All of the foreigner that I know, who came here or who still live here ,including myself, bring in their own, sometimes as well difficult and very interesting past.

This colourful past makes us so different from the ordinary guy who is here just on vacation or on a business trip. And I feel somewhat proud of it as well, even if not everything is an example of good and positive.

We like to try to understand what is going on and makes us feel like pioneers in a way. It is rewarding to follow the small steps of change that is taking place anyhow, even if it does not seem to be enough for us.

As long as we have friends we can talk to on a similar level and be understood, life is good anywhere to my opinion.
The greatest reward I have is getting to know or having the possibilty to talk to people like you and other immigrants here in Romania. Then reading theier mail, once they left.

I would badly miss this experience more than anything else. I am content with few contacts but those being very intense and personal.

[Rugged Maniac]

I was so thankful to have this story, it sounds good to you guys. Thanks for posting this great adventure.