Sheep Guarding Llama

Saturday.  Luciana was the first one awake actually getting Dominica and me up today.  That is unusual.  And she had not just woken up, she had already done her morning ablutions and was looking for breakfast and YouTube videos to be set up for her.

It is cloudy today.  We have seen mostly just bright sun since getting to Romania.  This is a bit more of how I had pictured life in Transylvania.

The home owners came by this morning.  They wanted to check on us since we had had the power issues this week and they felt bad that we had to deal with that and wanted to be sure that all was well.  They stopped by in the morning and after introducing us to her husband, she went to her parents’ home to visit for the day while her husband Tony, who grew up in this house, spent the day doing lawn work, gardening, pruning the plum trees (called prune trees here), mowing, watering and such.

Since Tony was around all day outside working we think that it discouraged the village kids from coming by early on in the day.  We had no visitors but did see a few going to the well.  Tony came in at one point and had some tuica with us.  It turns out that the tuica that we have in the house is made by him personally and is made from the plums that grow in our garden and orchard!  That makes it that much cooler.

At three we decided to make a daytime run to the grocery store in the hopes of being able to hit a playground and get dinner while we were out.  We wanted some things that we knew were available at the Lidl so we went there.  We were not so rushed this time, which was very nice.  We had a relaxed, successful grocery shopping trip.

We had such a nice dinner a week ago when we were at the Pensiune Casablanca that we decided to just return there and get much of the same food again.  Their vegetarian offerings are just delicious.  It was not so overly warm this time, either.  We had the only table in the place that was not being used for a private party so we sat in a small room on the side to ourselves.

After dinner we stopped at a gas station on the west side of Reghin that was on our way back to the village.  We had noticed before that they had a nice looking playground and outside cafe seating area and figured that we would check that out for the girls.  We wanted to get gas, so this worked out well.

The gas station is really nice and modern, offers a few sandwich made to order items like better American gas stations, pumps your gas for you and cleans all of your windows and lights while they do and has a cafe with decent coffee and a little shop with all of the mini market things you expect from a gas station.

What is amazing is that we have been in Romania for over a week now, eight days, and we drove from Bucharest all of the way up to Baita, which is most of the way across the country, and have done three trips in Reghin and in all of this time we have used only half a tank of gas!  Amazing.  This Ford Focus Eco does a great job.

Dominica and I got coffee and sat outside at the cafe while the girls hit the playground.  The playground is excellent.  It is very well made, has lots of things to do, has lots of nice safety features and is all on nice rubberized mats so extra safe.  No other kids were there, really, the whole time so we put in close to an hour just relaxing with our coffee and letting them play.  This is way better than the playground in the city square, even though it is much smaller.

The area where the gas station is located is an odd suburb with amazingly large, American style houses laid out close together in a nice Romanian style.  I could see Americans or Panamanians liking this area.  There are some really amazing houses on the rise behind the gas station, one house with commanding views and is very modern that I can only guess is worth over a million.

While we were sitting out at the cafe with time to talk we suddenly decided that we were itching to go see some stuff and that we had energy and that even though it was late in the evening that we should go home, back and do a two night trip up north to see some stuff in Romania!

It was nearly eight when we headed back to the house.  Dominica set to packing and I tried to wrap up what I could so that we could get onto the road.

It actually took us until ten to actually have the kids in the car and pull out of the driveway.

The drive north took about three hours.  The weather was fine and the traffic was light but with low visibility and crazy Romanian roads (crazy because of the mountainous terrain) it is slow going.  And there are no real highways, just roads that go through towns and cities so a lot of slow speed zones.

We got into Baia Mare, which we had chosen because it was one of the few places that we knew that we wanted to see in Romania and we knew that we could get there quickly and see the area on short notice.  Dominica has been extra interested in it because the hotel owned by the family from Somewhere Different is located there and she wanted to see it.  She wanted to stay there but they had no rooms available for this weekend (because they were closed, it turns out.)  So she had researched the area.

I am most interested in seeing the famous UNESCO World Heritage wooden churches there that are a remnant of the Hungarian occupation in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.  There are eight UNESCO sites up there, we are planning a way to see four of them on this trip.

We got into Baia Mare at one thirty.  We struggled for a good half an hour to find the hotel after we had parked.  It was very hard to find and the girls all stayed in the car while I wandered around on foot trying to located them.  I finally found them, after calling them and making someone pop their head out to wave at me, right on the main Millennium Square.  A really awesome location.

The city was hopping with tons of people out on the streets and in the square.  We had been seeing long lines for clubs for a while while we were out driving.  Saturday night is a big time to go out in Romania.

The hotel turned out to be really awesome.  This has to be one of the best places in town.  The hotel has an outdoor cafe, indoor cafe, restaurant and an amazing location.  We rented out their apartment instead of one of the regular rooms and this turned out to be absolutely ideal as this gave us an entire floor to ourselves – just us and the restaurant are on the first floor and we have views in a few directions and can see our car parked on Dacia Street, too.

We were straight off to bed, we were all quite tired.  Dominica and I have the main room and the girls have a little room off to the side with a fold out bed.  They like the set up of the room as it keeps them close enough to use to feel like they are with us but lets us all have enough space.

The Hotel Diafan was a great find on Booking.com.  We are thrilled with this one.

When we got into the room and got Internet access (which is normally wide open in Romania making things much easier) Dominica found that Liesl had taken a selfie with some of her new Romanian friends at the playground yesterday while the power was off at the house and it was posted on Facebook.  Our little girl is so old that she is taking selfies all by herself.  So adorable she is…

 

I woke up at seven thirty, got some water, reminded Dominica that we were scheduled for coffee with the neighbours at nine and tried to nap until it was time to go.  I was really exhausted from last night and not feeling well.

At nine we went next door, bringing a tray of cookies with us, to Nikoli and Maria’s house.  We had a good time attempting to communicate.  They know a tiny bit of English and we were able to struggle through.  There is no WiFi at their house so there is no way for us to use Google Translate when sitting there unless we climb the hill behind the house to get a signal.

We learned that they only weekend at the house here in Baița and that they live most of the time down in the city, in Târgu Mureș which is the largest city and capital of Mureș County, where we live.  They have been working on building a new home down there as well.

Yakov (we have no idea how to spell his name, it is Jacob in English and pronounced with a Y sound here and I believe that it is spelled that way but actually have no idea) came over to feed the pigs and joined us for coffee as well.  Yakov keeps his pigs at the farm here, Nikoli and Maria no longer keep any animals of their own but only tend the garden and the wine cellar.  But as they have a large barn, two pigs are kept there as the priest does not have any farm space of his own at the casă parohială.  He invited us to attend mass on Sunday because Dominica asked him about the services this morning.

We went back home and I managed to do some writing for maybe an hour when the power went out.  The power being out is a bit of a problem here because we are on well water (there is no village water supply) and it has to be pumped from the well so no power means no water.  At least we can walk to the well outside and get water by the bucket so we wouldn’t get dangerously desperate or anything, we just go from indoor plumbing to old fashioned wells.

Since the power was out I decided that it was a good time to take a walk.  The girls were doing school and the power was out so some exercise would be a smart way to go.  I walked about four kilometres round trip going north on route 160 all of the way through town until it Petered out and turned into a mud farm trail and went up in the hills.  I went as far up the hills as allowed me to still see Baița in the valley and managed to get some great pictures with the iPhone while I was up there.  I actually went far enough that I went into Bistrița-Năsăud County.  I walked about halfway to the village of Ocnița.  It was a nice walk.

I got back home and the power was still off.  Liesl was still doing school but there was a lot of her stuff that she could not do without power.  Luciana asked if she could have a break from school (if Liesl could) so that they could go to the playground now that we know that there is one basically across the street that they are freely allowed to use.  So we walked over there and let them play for a while.

After a bit some of their friends came and joined them on the playground and slowly it grew from a couple of kids into a giant pack of them.  I noticed that there was power now at the municipal building where they were working putting on a new roof overhang.  I figured that our power was back on at the house.  I went back to check, but there was nothing.

We took the girls over to the little general store, the magazin mixt, and got ice cream (they did not have ice cream a week ago when we moved in to town but they brought in the cooler for it sometime this week.)  The store had power.  So after eating my ice cream I set out to see what was going on.

I called in to Nikoli and he checked and he had power.  As we are only feet apart, he came over to look at the house.  He checked the outside box, he checked the breakers and decided that the issue was outside at the pole but we were the only ones affected.  He said that we needed to call the power company in Reghin but he had no idea what the number was.   So we walked all over town trying to find someone with the information.

Eventually we got it and he climbed the hill to get some signal and called into the city to let someone know that our power was out.  It took a little less than an hour before they came out.  We waited for a while then he gave me a tour of the church and then I went back to wait with Dominica who I know was a bit overwhelmed being the only adult around with close to twenty kids at the playground.

The kids were all congregating at the playground waiting for us to get power as they were all hoping to come over to our house again.  Eventually our girls were just very, very done with the playground and wanted to go back home.  So we decided to head back even without power.  The pack followed us, of course, so we moved like a mob through the street.  When we got to the house the electricians from Reghin were there and already working on the house.

It turns out that the wires where the power comes into the house had shorted out and fried.  That is why we were having brown outs yesterday and why it was only us that lost power.  So this is actually a very good thing, power has not gone out in the village at all since we have been here, it has only been faulty wiring in our house.  Twenty minutes later and we had power again.

Our house was a mad house of the rest of the evening.  It is Friday night so it seems that kids were able to come over longer.  I got the video games set up again and kids were playing games all evening.  The Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing is a pretty huge hit.  We really need more multiplayer games and only having two controllers is that much more of a limitation now.  Four controllers would go a very long way.

Dominica was busy baking cookies for everyone, as well.  Kids made different activity areas all over the house.  One room for video games, one room for Legos, one for Playdoh and Shopkins and kids running around the yard.  It is crazy.  And this is three days of this!

Normally the kids disperse around six because they have to go home for chores and dinner.  Paula and Diana were allowed to stay here this evening because we were doing movie night.  Paula has never seen Star Wars so we bought the six movie pack from Amazon and got it ready.

Paula helped me to go over and talk to the farmers that supply our milk and eggs to let them know how much we would need and when.  They gave us eggs right away and told us to come back after seven when they milk the cows to get the milk.  Liesl went along so that she could see some of the animals.  She got to see the cows and chickens and sheep.

Paula, Diana, Liesl and I watched Star Wars for a while, but we did not make it halfway yet, when it was time for Paula and Diana to go home.  Everyone goes to bed very early in Romania.  It is a farm life and it is common for everyone to be awake at five in the morning so they can’t be up late like we often are.  Liesl scheduled to meet Paula at the playground tomorrow at three in the afternoon, though.

After everyone had left we felt like a family movie and Liesl has been begging, literally since the first day that we arrived in Greece and got into our home there, to watch Transylvania 2 with us.  So Transylvania 2 it was.  And it is actually a very good movie, I can see why she has watched it so many times.  It is one of her favourites.

Thank goodness for Amazon Instant Videos which work flawlessly wherever we go while Netflix and Hulu really barely work at all, and often not at all.    Amazon has made it that most of the movies that we want are able to come with us all of the time.

Today was kind of the day that we made our leap from being visitors to being real members of the community.  It started off as a normal day.  The sun was out and it was bright and warm.  Liesl did school in the morning and I spent the morning working on my writing and posting.

We knew that there was some chance that the kids would be coming to the house again today so we worked to make sure that Liesl was doing school early and I was getting lots done in the morning as they might come back at any time.  We had little idea when they would be likely to arrive, if at all.

We were supposed to go on a picnic today and had made all of the food for it and the girls were so excited but we never managed to make it.

We were right, in the middle of the afternoon suddenly a huge group of kids, about sixteen of them, came down the road and into the house.  Suddenly it was a massive party at our place.  Kids all over the house with toys and kids all over the hard.

An older girl, thirteen, came over today who speaks English very well.  She spent a bunch of time hanging out in the kitchen with Dominica.  Since they were able to communicate nearly fluently they just talked and talked.

I tried my best to work through everyone in the house, but it was hard.  In the later afternoon the neighbour from next door came over and said that I was to go over to his place.  We had not met yet.  So someone came and got me and told me to go out and meet him.  I grabbed Dominica’s interpreter and across the “road” we went.

We went over for at least an hour.  The cognac flowed rather generously which made for quite the start to the afternoon.  My neighbour makes the cognac himself from his own wine.  I got a tour of his farm including his “secret” winery.  He hooked me up with two litres of his homemade wine, too.  The grapes grow right up on the hill behind the church.  I got a tour of his home and all of his antique furniture as well.  Good insight into Romania life, the house has a lot of original stuff.

I was over there for a few hours before there was a group of kids going to get ice cream because the ice cream coolers have been brought into town now.  So my interpreter and I went back to my place, dropped off the wine and a lot of other things that were given to me like a tomato spread and tomato juice and I grabbed cash and we ran down to get ice cream.

We returned, met back up with the neighbour and were set off to go see his gardens down the road a bit.  We ended up getting side tracked and taken to my interpreter’s home where I was introduced to her parents and grand parent and promptly was sat down on the porch and a glass of their own homemade cognac, tuica and wine were all brought out!

We were there for quite some time before I finally managed to return home.  But that did not last for long.  My interpreter’s father had been sent down to fetch me to go meet what I can only best describe as the deputy county executive who wanted to meet me and had wine stores to open.  So I went down there, it was dark now, and the three of us sat out testing out his wines (he had red, white and rose of his own) until nearly midnight.

I was in very rough shape by the time that I got back home.  Not only had everyone insisted that I try their wonderful, home made drinks all afternoon and all evening, but I had been interrupted and never even had a chance to get any food all day, either.  We had been just about to leave to go to lunch for the picnic when the kids first arrived and we had been trying to do the picnic somehow all day.  Dominica and the girls ended up doing an indoor picnic late in the afternoon after all of the kids left without me.  My sandwich was saved for tomorrow.

Dominica and I have to be up early tomorrow because our neighbours, not knowing what my night was going to be like, invited us over for coffee at nine.  Originally they had asked us over for coffee at six, but that was just a bad idea.  So we made it nine.  Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day.

Today started off like “any other day” in Baita, Romania.  Sun was out and it warmed up quickly from the chill over the night to the warm of the day.  We are feeling pretty comfortable here, now.  We know how to get around, how to get what we need.

My desk at the house sits right in the front so that anyone coming down the side road that goes to the village well and our drive way can easily see me sitting at the desk.  So I often wave to people all throughout the day.  And I keep the window open so I can hear people as well.  It is very quiet outside and the hard is shallow so it is very easy to say hello to people out on the road.

Each day we have noticed a lot of kids going to the well to get water, it seems to be getting more and more common.  We live right across from the school so kids on the playground sometimes come over to get a drink or fill up a water bottle.  What is weird is that there is a communal coffee mug that sits on the edge of the well and everyone just shares it.  Yes, a village sharing a single coffee cup.  It seems a bit much.

At one point this morning a group of girls went to the well and waved a bit.  Then one of the older girls tried to convince some of the other girls to come back to our fence but some of them continued on.  Then they waved when they went down the main street and could see me through the front room windows (we are really close to all of the roads.)

Later this group of girls returned and stood at our gate.  So Liesl and I went out and introduced ourselves.  They had brought some boys with this this time, the oldest girl, the one who had tried to get them to come back and had waved so much did most of the talking.  She spoke a bit of English and they all thought that it was great fun to practice their English with us.  So they all introduced themselves a few times, then all said their ages and such.  There were nearly ten of them!

It was  a fun time trying to communicate.  We eventually got Dominica and Luciana to come out and meet everyone as well.  Luciana insisted in bringing out her robot monkey, Cuddles, to show to everyone.  The kids all thought that it was great fun and played with her.  The gaggle of children ranged in age from about eight or nine up to twelve.

They did not stay too long, probably needed to get back to school.  We would see some of them passing by the windows throughout the day and they would wave.  We suddenly know a lot more people in this town.

Maybe two hours later, a dozen kids returned to the house and this time they came onto the porch and tried talking to us again.  A lot of repeating what was said last time as only one of them has a significant amount of English and that’s being generous.  A lot of things could not be conveyed.

Dominica brought out load after load of the girls’ toys which were met, with each successive round, with loads of ewws and ahs.  I have no idea if this was just a lot of toys, toys that they rarely see or just they were being encouraging to the girls.  But everyone seemed genuinely excited to see what toys the girls had.

The kids hung out for a while and everyone had a good time.  This is awesome as our girls have such a hard time making friends when we are in different countries and we have not been in Romania even a week, let alone in Baita for that long and already we have a dozen kids over to see them.  This has never happened before!

So that made for a very exciting day.  Dominica was exhausted after an hour or so of a dozen kids over at the house.  And we didn’t have anything for them, we put out some pretzels and tortilla chips.  We were not stocked for anything on this scale.

The excitement only lasted until around six when everyone suddenly took off and headed out to their homes.  After that it was a quiet evening for us.  A very unexpected day, to be sure.

Today would turn out to be our one quiet day for quite some time.  It is Tuesday and today was the only day that we had almost entirely to ourselves.  Thankfully we turned it into a very quiet day and did almost nothing which would turn out to be important.

We were up on the early side and I got a lot of writing and posting done today.  It was a pretty good day.  Bright and sunny again.  We are loving the weather in Romania.  I’d prefer light drizzles but this is pretty good, too.  Great weather for whatever you want to do, although being able to sit outside at night at cafes without a jacket would be nice.

We just stayed home today.  We did not go out for food nor did we go out and do any shopping.  Just us, at home.