Real Life
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I went to Romania in June 2007 with Habitat for Humanity,
building houses for people who have nowhere decent to live. I kept a
diary
and took lots of photos. Here is my diary with a selection of photos -
the page might take a while to load. Click on any of the photos for a
bigger one.
All of my Australia photos, including the ones here, can
be found at flickr
Friday 1st June
Somehow, getting from my house to the hotel at Gatwick took four and a
half hours. It didn't help that all the trains at Didcot were delayed,
so I had to wait 40mins for a train at Didcot and 30mins for a train at
Reading.
Then when I got to Gatwick I waited 15mins for a shuttle bus which was
then full, so I had to wait another 25mins for it to come back - so
then there was only two of us on it. Gatwick looks a lot like Heathrow,
only smaller. And it has two terminals, North and South.
Saturday 2nd June
I got up at 6am to find breakfast started at 6.30, not 6am like I
thought. So I checked out first, then discovered breakfast consisted of
cereal, toast and croissants, so I got my money back. I still had some
of their orange juice though, and fortunately I had a cereal bar and a
bit of chocolate.
The terminal still managed to be really confusing, mostly because it
was so full of people. But once through departures it was just like any
other terminal. The plane was an ordinary one with three seats on
either side. And there was no choice of food - it was just a hot ham
and cheese roll and chocolate biscuit. So I was glad I'd brought my
lunch. And then it was so bumpy on the way down that I threw it up
anyway. I had pins and needles in my whole arms and legs, which was
horrible.
Driving through Hungary was quite boring. It started raining once we
set off too. We stopped for food at 4pm local time - Hungary is one
hour ahead, Romania is two. Once we got over the border the scenery was
more interesting. It all looks a lot poorer - no TV aerials and
telephone wires on poles. People were sat on benches out the front of
their house. There were quite a few cows around with people leading
them on bits of string. A few dogs were wandering around in the road.
The one thing that was the same in both countries was that it seems
normal to pass cars in front all the time. But they are all really good
at signalling though.
I think the house we're staying in is made of stone as its quite cold
inside - although it was chilly in the night. Romanian looks a bit like
French, so some of the signs I've sort of understood.
Sunday 3rd June
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Wooden church
Bear Cave
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Today we had a lie-in. Although I
was woken up by the cockerels which crow all morning. I had chicken and
a banana for breakfast. Just as the service was finishing we went to
see a little 18th century wooden church. It was very cool and decorated
inside. Outside it was just a nice temperature.
Then we went to the Bear Caves where it was 10C and 97% humidity
inside. It was nice and cool to begin with but felt really cold after a
while. The caves were discovered in the 70s and created 4 million years
ago by the rivers that ran through them. They left calcium deposits so
now there are lots of stalagmites and stalagtites, some of which have
joined up. It was all very impressive and looked a bit like an alien
world.
We stopped off next (after lunch - more chicken) at a museum, which was
someone's private collection of all sorts of random old stuff and some
national Romanian dress - and old flag of Romania under communism.
Then we went to see a Habitat neighbourhood. There were a couple of
roads of Habitat houses - mostly quite small but brightly coloured and
looked really good. |
Monday 4th June
The first day of work meant getting
up early for breakfast at 7.30am so we could start at 8am. It was quite
chilly at that time of the morning and we were mostly working in the
shade, although it still got a bit warm.
We were nailing roof trusses together, so it was mostly hammering.
Which I turned out to be not very good at (but wasn't the only one).
Plus it made my arm ache.
The morning went really quickly and it was after lunch that we felt the
heat. Apparently it was around 30C in the shade - and we were mostly
working in the sun. But we finished the eleven we needed to do, and did
a bit more nailing. So we knocked off early and went to change some
money. I found some plain crisps I can eat - the ingredients list was
in a lot of languages. I was hungry because lunch had only been soup
and a banana. Breakfast was muesli with So Good soya milk (from
Australia!) and a banana. We were all really hot and muddy so it was
good to get back to a cool house and a shower before dinner.
It thundered before dinner and raining during it, but finished by the
time we did. But there was a big thunderstorm overhead during the night
which woke nearly everyone up. |
Making trusses
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Tuesday 5th June
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Taking a break from mixing concrete
View from my bedroom window
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The muesli for breakfast is getting
tasteless already, but is actually much improved by soya milk and
banana.
Today we went off down some bumpy roads to mix concrete and lay it out
as the bottom floor of a house. The concrete was made of stony dirt,
cement and water. I had the job of making sure the buckets of water
were always available. It wasn't as hard as shovelling dirt or wheeling
the cement in wheelbarrows but I still ached and sweated and got hot.
The house was in the backgarden of a family. They have three
generations living in a house made of mud with two rooms and the only
running water was a tap outside. The toilet was at the end of the
garden. The new house was for the two younger generations.
We got done quite quickly then went to a field by the river for a
barbecue. A shepherd and his sheep came past. I had chicken and chips.
The chips were done on the barbecue too and were really nice.
In the evening it thundered again and rained, although not for long. |
Wednesday 6th June
To get to the site today we had to
go on some roads that were really dusty and stony, although some of the
main road was being replaced by tarmac. The house we were working on is
for a teacher called Livia, who speaks very good french. She lives in a
second floor flat with no running water, so she has to go down two
flights of stairs to go to the toilet.
The family had started the basement of a house using bricks/stone but
didn't have enough money to finish it, so HfH are building another
storey in wood. Our job all day was to transport a load of wood from
where it had been dropped (in the wrong place!), putting it on the
pickup truck, then sorting it afterwards. The professional built some
steps.
It was really hot but I did find an ice lolly (strawberry and apple) in
the shop. We finished about 1pm and had lunch which Livia had cooked,
and consisted of two types of chicken, deer, cucumber, tomatoes,
cabbage, strawberries, cherries and round chips - so very potatoey. It
was all really nice. There was a bit of rain but not enough - so it was
mostly just humid. The temperature on the farmacie in Beius said it was
29C.
Because we finished early we had plenty of time before dinner. So
Alexei, the son of the family whose house we're staying in took us for
a walk around town and up a hill to a nice bar in the middle of
nowhere. It was really hot walking up there but then while we were
there it chucked it down. Fortunately we didn't get too wet going back
down to dinner where it rained again. I had a tuna salad which actually
tasted quite nice.
After dinner we played football in the road with some of the locals,
until it got too dark to see, the streetlights not being up to much. |
Third site - Livia's house
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Thursday 7th June
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Singers at the traditional Romanian evening
Dancers at the traditional Romanian evening
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We were back at Livia's this
morning, although first we stopped off at the local market. There was
one just out of town with tools and some livestock. Then there was one
in town which was just like the markets I went to in Australia.
I started the morning by drawing squares on some chipboard. I had to
practically lie on it to get to the other end and I noticed afterwards
that my legs had gone red - so I think I am definitely allergic to
wood. After that I helped do some nailing of more trusses. There were
sixteen that needed doing but we planned to only do ten. But we managed
twelve before we ran out of things and it was still before 4pm. Then we
went round to the local shop and I had another ice lolly. I think that
even if I could have ice cream I'd have had the lolly anyway.
Lunch was the same as yesterday, only with chicken legs this time and
chicken soup that was exactly like passover soup, even with noodles in
it! So I ate a lt - mostly chips which is good because its harder for
me to eat snacks. They mostly seem to consist of bananas - although
there were none at breakfast (but there was cornflakes as well as
muesli which was really welcome and just as well because the muesli is
only really edible with banana in it).
In the evening we had a Romanian evening. A group came and did some
traditional dances and songs, while dressed in traditional clothing.
They also talked about the violin they used, which has a trumpet horn
attached to it to make it sound louder. We got to join in with a simple
dance too.
Then we had a traditional meal: stuffed pepper soup, followed by
chicken, raw cabbage and polenka (which is made from grain). The
pudding would have been plum pie but its not plum season. Although that
didn't stop us from having plum vodka - polinka, which is double
distilled and 60% proof, so a bit lethal.
Then two of the women who played football came along with one of them's
daughter, Alexandria, who's five. Seamus had promised to buy them
pizza. So they ate pizza and drunk beer. I felt ill from something at
dinner. Originally my main chouse had cheese on it, so I dread to think
what it was. So I went back at 10.30 - some fo the others went to play
pool then onto a club, so didn't get back till 1.30am! |
Friday 8th June
Today we worked in town in the
workshop. So quite a bit of what we did was inside, where it was warm
but not quite as hot as outside in the sun where it was 31C. Lunch was
soup and a banana, which wasn't terribly filling. I needed some more
tissues and it turned out that they were kept under the counter and in
packets of 10, which is really odd.
We knocked off slightly early after making door and window frames, so
we could go up into the Carpathian Mountains for dinner.
Partway up we stopped to take photos and there was another group there
which included Roman and Daniel, who are two of the people working with
us via Good Samaritan.
When we got up to the hotel there were amazing views and it was a bit
chilly in comparison to the temperature in Beius. It's really nice to
have an en suite room. We went for dinner but they were really slow to
serve, so we didn't eat until 9pm - we'd had lunch at noon! I had a few
choices on the menu, so I almost couldn't decide what to have. |
Mountains
House in the mountains
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Saturday 9th June
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Ice Cave
Rusty Canyon
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It was so nice to have a lie-in.
Breakfast wasn't until 9am - we ate at 7.30am on weekdays. But the
choices for breakfast were chocolate balls, which had 12% wheat in,
eggs, toast, cheese and ham. So I decided to risk the cereal. The soya
milk was really nice though - I could quite happily drink it on its own!
We went off in a 4x4. Which I was expecting to be the sort of thing you
get at home, but was actually an old thing with seats on the side in
the back. It shook a bit! And we had to squish in. There were amazing
views going up the mountain - we saw the tallest, which is 1.8km above
sea level (we're at about 1.6km). Annoyingly, it started to rain, so we
had to put the top down on the 4x4. When we got there, we waited for it
to ease off before we continued up the hill.
We had to go through a date and down 300 steps to get to the ice cave.
The stairs were metal, and the rail got colder, as did the air
temperature. At the bottom there was snow. Inside the caves was 26m
thick ice and structures from when the snow melts on the mountains in
spring.
Going back up it was nice to be in the warm - it was 0C in the cave,
unsurprisingly. Then we went most of the way down, but stopped off at a
cave where an underground spring came out of the water and cascaded
down the slope.
Lunch ended up being at 3pm! Their chips are home-made and very nice.
After a break we went up a hill, through a stream and across rocks to
go and see the Rusty Canyon. There were a lot of flying bugs there.
Matt threw 1lei in, tied to a piece of rock using grass and a plaster.
We had dinner at the Four Seasons hotel, which is new and very posh.
The food wasn't as good as the other place. My chicken legs tasted
weird because they'd de-boned and grilled them! |
Sunday 10th June
Another late morning with more
chocolate cereal. Followed by a trip to the local market to buy some
souvenirs. We then had a walk up a hill to go to a really isolated
village where they carve wood. Various people tried to play the
traditional instrument (tunica) with varying degrees of success.
Lunch was late, therefore, but was followed by going home for a
much-needed lie-down before dinner at the Pizzeria.
We decided to go a slightly different way to the Pizzeria and just head
in the right direction. We ended up having to walk along the river bank
then up some steps to get to the bridge. Then we ended up heading away
from it. We left late to start with, so we were very late by the time
we got there. |
Ski slope on the mountain
Church
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Monday 11th June
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Carrying wood
Carrying wood
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It was overcast and wet too this
morning which was nice. Except that it absolutely chucked it down while
we ate breakfast, which was typical considering that we were all
looking forward to getting back to work.
It mostly stopped though, so we collected lots of wood and went to the
second site. We get to unload it and make more concrete and eventually
the sun came out. We stopped for a late lunch before finishing, which
is probably just as well because after that it got hotter and humid -
walking back to the supermarket and home made me really sweaty.
Dinner was with some of the Chairmen. I sat next to the Chairman of
Family Selection Committee. He had a Habitat house himself, in the
Habitat neighbourhood where Robbie lives. I asked him what difference
it made to his life and he said it changed everything, including his
mind. |
Tuesday 12th June
We were back at Livia's today. We
finished off the trusses but ran out of the right length nails so we
had to use longer ones and put them in at an angle. I managed four
altogether!
We then spent the rest of the time cutting up wood and making door and
window frames and the frames for all the walls.
Livia was telling everyone, in French, how happy she was with her new
house, how grateful she was to use for helping build it and if any of
us came to Romania for a holiday we could come and stay at her new
house - and she wasn't just saying that, she meant it too.
We had a long day - it was after 4pm when we finished and the sun was
very stronge, especially in the afternoon. We stopped off at the shop
for beer and ice cream and someone discovered a juke box with some
english songs on. |
Making the wood frame
The finished frame
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Wednesday 13th June
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Fourth site
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Today was really hot, so it was just
as well that it as only half a day - we finished about 1pm. It was a
new site we went to and got there just before a priest started blessing
the first stone, which took about twenty minutes, involved candles,
people crossing themselves a lot, waving water everywhere, and people
kissing a wooden cross.
Then we could start work. Some of us went off toe collect some bricks
and I discovered they were too heavy to lift. So I stayed on the site
after the first load. They were filling in the foundations in a trench
around the house with concrete. And we had to throw stones in after
every layer of concrete so they wouldn't need so much concrete.
Lunch was stuffed pepper soup, which made me feel ill, so proved that
was what it was that made me feel ill on Thursday. After lunch we
stopped at a shop that sold handmade pottery, before having the rest of
the afternoon to pack and rest.
Dinner was quite a short, informal affair, followed by a trip to the
pub.
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Thursday 14th June
Breakfast was at the usual time. I
had my cocoa balls because I just couldn't face any more muesli. The
boys joined us, which was nice.
We stopped at Oradea - the county town - on the way to change money.
It's definitely a city - much busier than Beius and the Romania we've
got used to. We stopped off in Hungary for lunch and I had a really
nice beef steak with rice and chips and a bit of salad. Hungary is much
more boring to drive through because it's so flat and mostly all you
see are fields. I can see why people are so keen to pass though because
the main road from the border to Budapest is one land most of the way.
So you keep catching up with lorries.
We had a bit of trouble finding the hotel, but got to see Budapest,
which is very busy and Westernised - we kept seeing McDonalds and signs
for Tescos! The swimming pool at the hotel is a massive Olympic sized
one, along with a kids one and another smaller one.
After swimming I discovered the hotel had Eurosport, which was showing
the Stella Artois, so it was nice to sit in an air conditioned hotel
room and watch the tennis, especially when we saw digital displays
telling us it was 33C outside.
The restaurant we went to for dinner had symbols on it to say which
dishes were gluten free, although I'm not convinced it was right.
After dinner we went to the hotel bar, which had an area with sand and
skittles, big chess and a table tennis table. When I got back to the
room I watched Spooks with german dubbing. The only voice that was
really wrong was Ruth's, which was too high. And Harry couldn't say the
th in her name properly. |
The hotel pool
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Friday 15th June
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Budapest
Parliment by night
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I woke up at 6am, so got up at 7am
and went for a swim - this time it was 50m lengths, which is quite a
long way. We went on some trams to go on a tour down the river. It was
nice to see Budapest from the river and hear about it. And it was so
much cooler than on land where it was 32C - and certainly warm enough
to walk around wet in a swimming costume at 7am!
After that we had lunch at a cafe in the square on Vaci road. Then we
all wandered off on our own. I went to the C&A I'd spotted, and
bought a pair of shorts and a pair of sandals. Then I got various trams
to get to the cogwheel railways that went up the mountain. We went all
the way up and came straight back because we needed to get back to the
hotel and it was really hot, but the best views were halfway up anyway.
In the evening we went back to the Square for a drink then dinner up
near Parliament where it was cheaper. I had steak, onion rings and
chips which was really nice, if massive. We walked back over the bridge
to the hotel, bu which time I was really tired. |
Saturday 16th June
I woke up early again and had
another swim before breakfast, a nice leisurely breakfast, then
packing, which was tricky.
I was too knackered to do anything much, so I sat in the bar by the
swimming pool and watched some synchronised swimmers practise. |
Tram - taken from my hotel room
Synchronised swimmers
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