Alba & Kamille’s trip to Romania

-21st we arrived quite late to Budapest and went straight to sleep at our hostel.

-22nd we spent the morning looking around the city, seeing historical buildings. At midday we caught the train and met Robert. We spent two hours on the train with him which was good to catch up on what we knew about the project we were going to and also to speak about our experiences volunteering back in France. Peter, one of the people who works at Imris association picked us up and took us to the supermarket to buy food for the following days. They dropped us off to stay at a university residence and we went to a local pub in the evening.

-23rd The project team picked us up early in the morning and we went to the project site to see the space they had available for the mushroom growing. It consisted of two small rooms with wooden doors and corrugated roofs. There were no water faucets installed as of yet and both rooms were quite dark, but they had the plan to make one of them have a fiberglass roof to let in natural lighting for the fruiting of the mushrooms. Another potential issue was the difficulty of making the rooms sterile as the wooden doors and walls looked as though they might harbor contamination in the future. The building was on a piece of land where they also intend to have a permaculture project among other things. Once we had seen the site we started the 7h car journey to Transylvania, we stopped in the town of Sighisoara to go sightseeing, and then went on to Cristuru Secuiesc to stay in the hostel which would be our home for the
stay. We shared the apartment with Agnes, another one of the associates who would be in charge of the permaculture side of the project. We installed ourselves in our rooms and then went to eat dinner all together in a small local restaurant and tried typical liquors.

-24th day started at 8 with a shared breakfast, then we went to Petőfi Sándor Versek park, where they explained to us a bit about the history of Transylvania and about a very significant poet who fought for freedom of the people and the land there. Afterwards, we went to a farm where they grew tomatoes(1), plants, flowers, succulents(2), strawberries in greenhouses heated by a wood furnace fed with sawdust and corn, so that they can continue local food production even in the coldest seasons. They also had a robotic water system, which allowed a small amount of people to handle a large amount of crops. We were impressed by how resourceful and efficient they were with the technology available.
When done there we went to Atilas’ (the project associate from Transilvania) farm, ate snacks and saw his aquaponics system (3) which they were also contemplating to imitate back in their project in Hungaria. He also had an “ancestral wheatgrass” (4) plantation with which he made health products and food supplements. He was using a freeze dryer to create powder from the wheatgrass juice to make it easier to be consumed in the form of pills. He also owned a gorgeous water buffalo (5) that behaved like a giant dog. Atilas was also in the middle of a renovation project, repurposing old traditional buildings from the area to make a socio-cultural space to host events and guests as well as creating an alternative school(6) project for young children of the area. When done at Atilas’ farm we went to visit a reconstructed wooden castle built to protect a local area. We continued our journey to visit a Presbyterian priest’s house (7), he showed us around the 14th century church (8) he was in charge of and we saw the beautiful ancient frescos on the church walls. He was also a water buffalo farmer and had his own artisanal cheese (9) business so he took us to meet his buffalo and try his cheese. After that we went to his home and met many of his children and he explained to us some of his views on life, the workings of the local area and the importance of maintaining biodiversity in the land while we drank his homemade Palinka. When we left we brought some of his delicious buffalo cheese home.

-25th we were meant to visit a lavender farm, but as it had been raining we were not able to access the land and went to a lavender garden(10) instead, but unfortunately it was closed. Then we went to a place where they help people start their projects and businesses. They told us about their success and how they work, which didn’t really inspire us. We had a meeting with Imre in charge, where we spoke about the more bureaucratic, technical and economical side of the project as well as what they expect from the different partners. Then we had lunch and went to Atilas’ business, which was a distribution center for different imported health products(11) and supplements. Kamille ate green packing peanuts
like a monster. After that we went back to see Atilas’ alternative school project in action, where we sang a song with the students. Then we visited mini Transilvania, which had mini models of emblematic Transilvanian buildings, which could have been impressive if seen in real life, but lost all value and interest in the context of a sad theme park. For the last activity of the day we went to a project run by a couple who worked with disabled youths facilitating them to come in contact with agriculture and other manual projects. They also had the intention to start hosting volunteers. Then we went back to the hostel and prepared for our departure the next day.

-26th We woke up early and started our 7 hour car journey back to Debrecen. On the way we stopped to look at some ceramic plates(12). From Debrecen we took the train to Budapest, where we stayed at the
same hostel. We spent the evening sightseeing with Robert and previous volunteer Anita, who leaves no one indifferent.

-27th we caught our flight from Budapest to Paris and ended our journey back to Carcassonne with a 10 hour bus ride.