A Grand Day Out

Yesterday we went for a drive into the mountains with Ron, Jo and Persida. Persida spent the first 6 of her 7 years living on a rubbish tip and moved into the Sanctuary after her mother died of Aids last summer. She's a lovely little girl but needs a lot of attention.
On the lower slopes there were many families and groups spending the day by the river, with barbecues and open fires, but we drove higher up hoping to catch a glimpse of wild boar and maybe a bear, but all we saw were a couple of lizards. We lit a fire when we stopped - not because we needed one but because it wasn't forbidden.
Ron told us a bit about Romania since the fall of Ceacescu; I'd noticed that in the village there were many young people and many old people but not much in between. Apparently this part of Transylvania has always had a lot of people of German descent living there and if they wanted to emigrate to Germany the German Government had to pay Ceacescu's government hard currency and he'd only let so many leave each year. With his fall, and the fall of communism, the German Government said that anyone with proof of German ancestry was entitled to a German passport. Many young people took advantage of this to leave the poverty of their villages to start a new life, meaning the loss of a large part of the workforce, and by it's nature the entrepreneurial spirit needed to start new businesses. This will obviously take some time to correct itself.








Tonight Bob and I hope to take our guitars up to the sanctuary and play to the children, though the Romania-France game is on at 7.00pm, so we'd better play before then or see our audience dwindle.
Wednesday Jo is taking us to Sigisoara, home of Dracula, so there should be some intersting pics from there.