From what we've heard along the way from other Workawayers, is was only a matter of time until we found ourselves in an umcomfortable situation such that we had to leave. Unfortunately for us, our 5th Workaway experience happened to be it... We were situated in some of the most beautiful surroundings in the Carpathian Mountains Romania, our host family included an elderly mother, her son and daughter. We were throw into a very traditional home which will no doubt be one of the most memorable experiences of our trip.
This was the first WA we decided to go to from a host request. We were attractive to the family's son specifically due to my engineering skills. He was an ambitious bloke who likes to tinker on little projects. He had made a mobile ski lift, started building a biogas system to capture the methane from his cows and had other repair/steel fab requirements. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to do anything engineering related, other then benchmarking a mobile excavator which he wanted to make to help with the road making and shovelling cow shit.
From the initial contact Amy wasn't 100% convinced about going to this WA, but we decided to accepted it since we wanted to go to Romania, and we needed to spend the extra time outside the Schengan zone before Christmas. A couple of weeks later we had a bit more of a detailed look at their profile and reviews (which were all positive), and came across a mention of 16 cats!! We both hate cats so in hindsight really should have pulled the pin, but trying to keep an open mind I really wanted to go and see what it was about.
We contacted the host again a month or so out from the stay just to touch base, and their reply was short "sure"... This wasn't very convincing... About a week out we asked for directions to their place and if we needed anything specific. The directions included a 5km walk from the bus station up a road to the accommodation (which would of ended up been an average gradient of 5% I reckon) which we through was strange... We asked if there was any chance we could be picked up because our bags are 20kg - unfortunately not. To make the situation worse it had snowed the days leading up to our arrival so roads were icy and very slippery.
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| All smiles at the base of the road up to the property! |
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| The road was ice and surprisingly slippery under foot, there were a couple of cars parked on the side of the road on the way up which had just lost traction and momentum. |
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| A fresh wolf paw print! |
The views from the property were second to none!!
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| They still make hay the old fashion way - back breaking work. Using like an industrial walk behind/self propelled petrol mower they cut the grass in their steep paddocks, then a pitch fork is used to rotate and dry the grass. To cart the grass up the hill and into their barn they used an old Land Rover looking ute. The pitchfork, wheel borrow and shovel was used for 90% of the work on the property. It was bloody steep, and it really opened my eyes to how farming was completed without the aid of machinery. We really take having a tractor and front-end loader back home for granted! |
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| Looking west back toward Bran and Brasov. It was so peaceful here. |
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| Traditional style Romanian building on the property. The buildings were pretty big! |
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| Their 'winter' kitchen... It was a small room with a wood stove which was warm and more efficient to heat then the more modern kitchen in their house.. A couple of the cats had the flu and would sneeze and cough... |
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| Wood splitting was one of my activities. It was bloody efficient using a tyre to hold a heap of wood and you can just launch into splitting everything in the tyre! |
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| Amy's handy work weaving this fence. |
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| I spent a couple of days digging out this hole for a cement water tank. |
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| Fresh water spring at the bottom of the property. The grandfather of our host used to make his own whisky and spirits for the locals from this stream. |
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| This shepard was outstanding in his field. |
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| Didn't take long for the snow to melt after a good couple of sunny days. |
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| They had a couple of watch dogs to keep an eye out on the place, as well they try and keep away the wolves and wild boar. Our host had never seen a bear, but had came across the wolves a couple of times wandering through his property. |
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| On the Sunday they went to church, and we had our day off. We decided to take the 12km walk down to Bran for the markets and to get a good feed. Have a coffee and relax. It was freezing down in the valley - meanwhile up at the work away we seemed to be above the clouds (it was at 1100m altitude) and we had some ripper sun and fine weather. |
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| Traditional romanian hotplate. |
The hosts had 7 cows already in a barn because the weather had turned cold earlier then usual. Each day they milked 3 of the cows for their own milk, made their own cheese and sour cream. We were't quite used to this pure food and we both had a power spew on the first day, Amy had a couple more chucks and she was left feeling sick most of the time. We weren't left hungry, just such a difference in diet was a bit of a shock to our body - as each meal would include either a glass of warm milk or cheese. Whats interesting is we were eating food which was so close to the source, that you'd think this would have us feeling so much better and healthier...but now days we aren't used to the bacteria I suppose.
The work was the most labours of our trip, this was ok because we could see everything we helped with was making a difference. We managed to fill up a room of the house with dry split wood for the heating and stove. Amy begun a new fence and she helped finish some concreting on his Biogas system and on a tank cover. We were only there in total 7 days and we were happy we carried our weight and always did the best we could. One annoying thing was that we changed from job to job really quickly and didn't get a chance to sink our teeth into a couple of jobs to finish them...
At the end, the diet and cats were too much to handle so we decided we had to leave. Because we were cutting our stay shorter then expected we were left in limbo a little - but decided to head back to Brasov where we had a handful of days up our sleeve before we were flying out to Munich - Germany.
It was really hard to leave because the family were so grateful for our help, and really did everything to try and make our stay as comfortable as possible. It was a hard week of work, and an experience which really took us out of our comfort zone, I think it made us really appreciate what we have at home with regards to resources and the comfort of living.
Still more amazing lifelong memories. Sorry for late Seasons Greetings. Even one cat is too many, so bonza effort to last as long as you did. As alwAys, take care & well done.
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