It's very pretty and detailed, worth the half hour walk across town.
So now we are heading to another small village, Rupea, this time outside the city of Brasov. It's about 5 hours away from here and north. (Red dot)
A few months ago Tessa and I signed up for Workaway.info which is a site that's sort of like helpx, which is older I think; people looking for work trades, and visa versa. Since we signed up and sent out requests, we have gotten two "already full" (five months in advance) and the rest didn't even respond at all. Finally as we tried to figure out something to do after Curtea de Arges this post popped up.
"Help out at a permaculture farm in Northern Transylvania."
Right up our alley!
I didn't know what exactly permaculture was, so I looked up an exact definition:
"a system of cultivation intended tomaintain permanent agriculture orhorticulture by relying on renewable resources and a self-sustaining ecosystem."
So we contacted them right away and they responded a few hours later saying we were more than welcome to come stay and help out at the farm. We got really excited; finally, something more than touristing around big cities! Work! Experiencing rural Romanian life! Anyway. Maybe we got a little too excited. :)
But of course getting there was much frustration as usual, and after a whole day of traveling and figuring out these Internet timetables for busses aren't actually accurate (I'll spare you the details because you've seen my previous getting-lost posts), we found our people...
We googled the guy's name, actually. Because we were curious to what this farm actually is. It was a very new post on the site, and had no feedback or anything yet. Here is what we found:
If the link doesn't work, YouTube "Krishan George tedx"
So yep, we are staying on his farm now, with him and a bunch of workers who differ every day.
Right now there is only one other volunteer, an Italian guy staying for the month, and then another lady who is staying here indefinitely to help with everything in general. Our host Krishan, the farm owner, is Indian but he sounds British and speaks a number of languages. I can tell by talking with him and looking at him that he has great visions for this place, and I can't wait to see what happens in the future, if we come back. (As you can tell in the video)
Oh, and a few camera guys. They're making a documentary about Krishan and this farm idea, hopefully to pitch to the Discovery Channel or something. I'm not sure details, but they're really nice people too.
For now we are staying here for....who knows how long. As long as there are projects to keep us interested. Right now a few items on the list are: making some curtains for the bathroom window, creating a visual list for composting the right foods, and coming up with a way to recycle our glass, paper, and plastic, when it can't be repurposed. Since we are in the middle of nowhere there are no recycling facilities within a reasonable range, its a task.
I tried some fresh (raw, unpasturized) buffalo milk, butter, and cheese today. And it's really rich and delicious. They have 150 water buffaloes on this 500 acre piece of land, and they employ some nice gypsies to take care of them, milk them, and also deal with the horses which are not broken in yet.
It's raining outside now, and we are chillin inside from working in the fields this morning. I've already learned a bunch about plants and my brain is still processing it all, but I love it.
(Not sure how this panorama will show up on the computer. It's a view from our dorm door from when I got up this morning.)
That sounds so cool! What a blast
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