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.
Hi, I'm Romanian. I almost cried reading your comments. I confess I felt resentful too but I empathise with you because I had similar feelings. I grew up in Romania, moved to the UK when I was 20, I've lived here 17 years. I travelled exactly the same journey you did. I moved to the 'West' and the picture I had of it, didn't match what I found. The people seemed very different from what I had imagined they would be. I found them self-righteous, lazy, taking things for granted, precious, easily upset, indulgent, self-pitying, the list went on and on. I remember thinking to myself how can this lot live so well, they are no better, no harder working than I am!!! I had always thought West = great work ethic but instead I found a don't break your back attitude and 40-minute coffee breaks. I grew quieter and quieter and talked mostly about the weather. Then Romania's orphanages came to the world's attention and I had to put up with agressive looks from people. I tried to engage in charity work but I was demoralised by what I saw. Money made out of suffering by both Western charities and corrupt officials back home. I've been to charity events which cost thousands of pounds and raised £200 or so. Watched charity workers congratulate each other, speeches from some local politician on a hunt for votes. Business networking mascarading as charity work. The hypocrisy, the well-hidden racism. Most people in the UK despise the Roma although they claim not to do so, but as a Romanian I know it. They think we are Roma and because I'm pale enough, they don't feel afraid of being labelled as racists if they trash me. The media has played this game for years and done really well financially out of it. The sanctimonious preaching of race equality in a country where two camps of travellers were dismantled because they brought down house value in the area. The kitsch Scottish tartan-industry, coupled with nauseating nationalism, built on distorting history and packaging it for schools. The list goes on and on. I'm fine now. I realised such is human nature, I shouldn't resent people because they fell off the pedestal I had them on. So I'm doing well, I have good friends and I am so happy I've had the experience to live in another country, culture. My biggest gain is that I managed to get rid of that self-loathing attitude Romanians seem to be burdened with. You know what I mean, you mentioned it yourself, the Romanians-are-useless-so-I-can't-be-blamed-for-anythying type of thinking. I have a small community of Romanians around me too, largely students, who appear to me mentally healthier than my generation. Anyway, coming back to the matter in hand, when I was reading your postings, I thought to myself oh, no, he's turned Romanian, one of those who spew out venim because things didn't go according to their plan! Plus a tinge of Western-style burgeois tantrums: my cute pets, my horses are hurt, I hate everybody!!! I see you're slowly coming round, which must feel good. I wish you the best of luck! Sorry for the lengthy ramblings. My lunch hour is almost up, must dash and, so what if I come back late, everybody else does it ;-) All the best, Diana
Posted by: Diana Sisu | May 11, 2012 at 01:52 PM
One more comment. Romanians denying the Holocaust isn't a unique phenomenon, the British are guilty of that too. Not a week goes by without the media mentioning the WWII. However, you never hear Britain's alliance with Stalin being mentioned. If both of us were to dig in our heels and be unforgiving, then I wouldn't forgive the British for jumping into bed with Stalin, who killed even more people than Hitler. Here I am quoting you approximately, most British people don't seem to know or care.
Posted by: Diana Sisu | May 11, 2012 at 02:54 PM
That's a really interesting and comprehensive set of comments, Diana, thank you. I have to admit to coming down to earth hard back in Britain, what with blinkered attitudes, a lack of gratitude for how good life is for most people, and an inability to sort out the antics of the banks. People here really don't understand how well off they are. On reflection, after eight years in a Romanian village, I had pretty well lost touch with the West. As you'll see from most of my posts, I did very much enjoy life in that village. The hard bit was to make a living there, for reasons that I'm sure you will understand. I liked my neighbours and we got on well. The final year contained some difficult events that shattered the dream, and I was on the rebound from that. Well, I'm back on the level again, and quite nostalgic at times.
Remember that, over those eight years, I took a thousand broadly well educated and interested tourists from forty countries around Romania showing them some of the most beautiful and interesting places, the authentic traditions, natural food and so on. Most of that money went to suppliers and employees in the villages. I think that I did quite a good job as cultural ambassador.
Yes, there were frustrations, and the rubbish in the rivers was one of the worst. I got the feeling (you might have a view on this) that Romanian cultural identity is based on language, food, religion, Stefan cel Mare, etc (good things too) - all except the land itself on which Romanians mostly were second-class citizens under foreign rule. Therefore a Romanian might be blind to a dirty river because he or she is looking at something else as a source of pride. What do you think?
The charities that flooded Romania in 1990 irritated me too. There was hypocracy and a desire to "make them like us" - often recruiting for some neo-protestant sect or other. Some of the most dishonest people I've encountered worked for certain UK charities. Yes, good work was done too. For my part I ran an event that provided a tractor and machinery for a community and the people there built on that. I understand that today the orphanages are a great success story - so, of course, they are not noticed by the news.
You do amuse me about the tartan industry. Of course it makes a lot of money, just like the painted eggs and decorated bowls in the Bucovina. The modern kilt was invented by Queen Victoria to make her estate workers look picturesque. I think that Scots, in general, have a much more robust self-image than is projected by the kitsch. They just use that stuff to take money, and good on them for it.
You are stretching the point about the Holocaust versus fighting Hitler as Stalin's ally. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of a million Romanian Jews were killed, a fair proportion in pogroms at the hands of their fellow citizens. Now I will be fair and say that modern Romanians are relatively peaceful and tolerant so, no, I don't think that whatever drove common people to kill their Jewish neighbours is still there. But equally, be fair, ordinary British people had no contact with Stalin or the Soviets, and Churchill's relations with Stalin were difficult and distrustful. It just came down to the Red Army having a great many men and being willing to lose millions of them.
Britain is one of the most tolerant countries racially though current "islamophobia" isn't helping. The people called "gypsies" most often ethnically are not so. People object to the lifestyle associated, the crime and animal cruelty and so on. That's not to say that there isn't prejudice in Britain, there is. But the eviction of some criminals and welfare scroungers from a campsite doesn't make a pogrom.
So, yes, there is a part of me frustrated at the waste of opportunity and natrrow-mindedness back here in Britain. There is a part that rises above that. There is a part that enjoys relating to educated people and doing high-cultural things. And I miss the countryside, the small farms, the friendly and versatile neighbours, the monasteries, so many things really. I don't miss some other things that you can guess. There is no perfect place. And most probably, whilst there are some absolute standards, each nation should be judged against the background of the cards that it has been dealt rather than a rich neighbour or some fabricated straw man.
Posted by: White Horse Pilgrim | May 11, 2012 at 10:21 PM
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves"
Posted by: cezar | August 23, 2012 at 09:59 AM