Graptolite - Meets the Gypsy King
Graptolite's Sailing Log
Martyn Pickup & Heike Richter
Sun 20 Dec 2009 16:16
20th December. The skipper is in Betzdorf, Germany.
I just had a week in Romania playing at Santa Claus. It was an experience.
Last Saturday we met up with old bible smugglers, Gerd, Klaus and Helmut and
flew out from neat and tidy Cologne-Bonn Airport to scruffy old Bucharest
Airport. Then it was a four hour minibus ride northwards to the even
scruffier town of Barlad in Southern Moldavia.
In Barlad is the Betania Children's Home where we were to be based.
Fortunately it was a nice place. I had visions of dirty-faced and cross-eyed
babies rattling the bars of cages but it wasn't like that at all. All the
kids were teenagers and for the most part were fairly well adjusted given
their tragic backgrounds. The accommodation was all in ten self contained
houses and while not luxurious was comfortable enough. There is also a
bakery and a warehouse on site.
A couple of large trucks had arrived from Germany which contained thousands
of shoebox Christmas parcels for local distribution. All this needed
unloading to the warehouse. On Sunday we loaded up two minivans and set off
into rural Moldavia. It's not exactly a rustic idyll here. Horse and carts
are the main form of transport and the houses don't even deserve being
described as 'wattle and daub'. 'Shit and sticks' is more like it but the
rich ones do have fine tin roofs with rooms by the dozen - diddle diddle
diddle dum. Packs of feral dogs are everywhere and really made me wish I had
had a Rabies shot.
The Roma, or Gypsy, villages were the worst. They are a sort of feral people
and were not easy to give parcels away to as they started grabbing and
howling at you if you were not fast enough. I confess to giving away small
girl's presents to large boys just to get rid of them. Some of the children
were switching hats behind the vans to get extra handouts and the little old
ladies were just plain scary. The local mayor, perhaps a gypsy king, did
invite us into his house for tea though.
A couple of days later the temperature dropped to ten below and the snows
came with a blizzard for three days. They do almost nothing here to clear
snow and cars were buried in the streets. Anyone would think these parcels
were organ transplants the way we battled with them through the drifts.
Getting the minivans dragged out of ditches and up hills by tractors was all
part of the adventure. When it got really bad we hijacked a one-horse open
sleigh (of an agricultural variety) for parcel deliveries. Very cool. Heike
got some 'freezer burn' on her legs from the cold on one run.
We delivered to some schools but the teachers were on strike and many
schools were closed. Mini-riots on the village streets were the usual
method. We also did some children's hospitals and institutions. Many kids
ended up looking like they were off to a German football match sporting
Hertha BSC Berlin and Bremen scarves and hats.
We mostly cooked our own food in the guest house, or a least Heike cooked
and I dried the dishes, so that we didn't need to get too familiar with the
delights and dangers of the local cuisine. This being Romania and close to
Transylvania, on Friday we did have Transylvanian wine, cheese and roasted
garlic for the better prevention of any vampire attack.
Yesterday, Heike and I caught the early morning train from Barlad back to
Bucharest and were met by Emanuel, who is associated with the Betania Home,
and were given a driving tour of Ceausescu's Bucharest on the way to the
airport.
It's snowing now here in Germany as well.
M