Finally,

after a long long time since you all last heard from me, you once again get a sign of life.

I am in fact still alive and quite well! After having spent 20 amazing days near Rasnov/Rosenau in a summer camp, I am back in Sighisoara for the final countdown.

In a couple of days I will have to move out of the boarding school to make space for musicians participating in a music festival.

Lots of things happened these last few months and weeks and I cant even describe all the things I did.

I have some impressions however

- of the Choirday in Malancrav/Malmkrog, where about 20 choirs from all over Romania met up and had a joyful day of singing together

and a report of the Jungscharlager/Summercamp for children of 9-12 years organized by the German Protestant Church of Romania.

Pictures of the Summercamp

Love from insanely hot Sighisoara,

Edna

Dear friends, family, readers (whatever…)

Im really sorry,  I’m so bad at this whole “keeping you up to date”-thing. I’ve been really busy recently with lots of different things.

I went to England, Essex, with the School exchange from my school here.

I went to the Youth day of the German Protestant Church of Romania.

I drove a car for the first time in my life.

I had friends from Germany and England over.

I did so many things, that I cant even count them anymore, but I promise I’ll put some more interesting insights into my life here in Romania up as soon as summer holidays are here (which is very soon).

So hold on just a little longer.

Love from bright sunny, warm Romania

and an ill Edna.

If you believe it or not, this is the official slogan for Romanian tourism. I think it sums up my gap year here perfectly. I really wouldn’t want to waste my time this year elsewhere

Time here really flies at the moment.

It’s already the 1^st of March and in exactly 10 days it will have been six months since I have come here already!!

The first of March is an important day in any Romanian woman’s life. On the first of March all the woman and girls are given so called Marţişor or Märzchen. It’s a little brooch with a white and red thread attached to it, which you pin to your shirt. It’s a gift and talisman for the beginning of the spring and also a symbol of respect and affection. The white and red thread stands for the love – white for the purity of love and red for the passion of love. Another interpretation for the thread is that the white stands for the winter and the red for the spring. Even I got three of those =)

The new decade brought lots of first times with it.

On January 10^th I was invited for my first real Romanian Sunday Lunch by one of the women cleaning the boarding school. It was really nice to be in a real Romanian family for once in a village (in Daneş/Dunnersdorf), since most the other families I know are Saxon or else.

It was also lovely, because she – Grishan – has two small grandchildren, Denisa and Alex. They are about 8 and 5 and barely speak a word of German, but we still managed to play together and have lots of fun. It made me once again realise that communication really isn’t restricted to language itself.

Another thing that just pops up in my mind is Tripe Soup/Kuttelsuppe/Ciorbă de Burtă, which is one of the traditional dishes in Romania and also one of dishes least liked by me. It’s a garlic soup with some vegetables and paunch/Pansen (cow’s stomach). In the school canteen we sometimes get it served, but then with egg instead of paunch, because otherwise probably none of the kids would eat it – I can’t blame them

As a nice change I started working in the kindergarten some days, which is cute. Similar to Denisa and Alex, the children in kindergarten don’t speak very much German. They learn some there and they understand it, but they don’t speak. They still love me though and fight over who gets to hold my hand when we go for a walk. I enjoy the intense time I spend there a lot as it is a big contrast to the quite dull and antisocial work I have to do in the library.

I also help with a play that the “Burgspatzen” – the small German children here – are putting on stage. I have the important job of turning on and off the CD-player!

On Friday, January 22^nd I held my first three real lessons. It was really sweet because when I walked over the yard to the classroom, I could hear a pupil shout from the window to the others: “VINE EDNA! VINE EDNA!” (Edna’s coming!). After that you could hear hectic movement and by the time I opened the door, they were all sitting quietly at their tables like they’d never moved. That really made me feel like a proper teacher with authority

That weekend I had my first proper march through the snow in Romania. I went to Vulcan/Wolkendorf with “my” Family again (The Halmen family that is). It was Jose’s 16^th birthday and we took the occasion to walk from Sighişoara/Schäßburg to Vulcan/Wolkendorf, where they have a small house right next to the church. It took us about four hours to get there because firstly there was lots of snow and secondly we got slightly lost after a while and sort of just walked randomly through the forest until we found a known place again. It’s a really beautiful way to walk – the so called “Engagement path”, because you’re supposed to walk there as a freshly engaged couple. We all weren’t freshly engaged, but with the gorgeous weather it was a lovely path to walk anyway =)

2010 was also the first time I spent my birthday in London, where I visited Ivan for a few days J

After I came back from there I went to Bucharest for the first time, together with Paul, Ramona and Tobi. We stayed at the flat of some other German volunteer’s, who showed us the real nightlife of Bucharest. It was quite livelier than the one in Sighişoara, but not really to my liking. We saw Connect-R live in a club – he is this semi-famous Romanian star Look him up on youtube, he is like REALLY bad. His best known song is “Burning love” with the amazing lines “I need some water ‘cause I’m getting so dry, your love is burning like the sun in July”.

Ramona and I also did some sightseeking together. And yes, that is not a typing error

We actually managed NOT to find the second largest building in the world – the people’s palace built by Ceauşescu. It took us two hours to get there, when it was a walking distance of 10 minutes from our flat…

It also took us an hour walk through snow storm to find the Triumphal Arch. We know, we’re amazing…

I didn’t like Bucharest that much. It’s too big and grey and communistic – means to many ugly and dull concrete buildings. Also it was freezing cold, snowy and stormy the whole time, which made the whole city seem even less inviting. At least the company was nice and we had lots of fun together despite the weather!

From February 15^th to 22^nd my school had eleven exchange students from England (Saffron Walden, Essex) over. For the first time I am allowed to take part in a school exchange not as a participant but as an assistance teacher, which makes me feel so mature and responsible

Paul and I took part in most their program points and I became friends with not only the English people, but also got to know the Romanian students (6^th year/11. Klasse) a lot better.

Apart from spending about 50 hours in pubs and bars, we went to see 2 factories.

A “Hochland” Cheese factory and the “Târnavă” Shirt factory. It was really interesting getting tours through the production halls and learning more about business in Romania. The fun thing about the cheese factory was the safety clothing we had to wear – a white “suit” that covered you from head to toe and made everyone look like giant marshmallows.

On the Friday (19^th) we went to see the salt mine in Praid, but as soon as we had been down for 2 minutes there was a power cut and all the lights went off. It was actually quite scary because it was pitch black and you literally couldn’t see anything. Luckily the emergency lights went on after about 2 minutes, so at least you could see the things around you again. We had to – however – wait down there for two hours until the next bus could bring us back up. Seeing as there was no light to see the church or the museum down there and now electricity for the Café or the restaurant, we sat there and sort of just waited for time to pass. At least there was a man selling balloons, so we played with those.

Afterwards we went to some skiing area where there was loads of snow and I built my first snow bear and we also built an igloo.

Being all wet and frozen afterwards we went to a trout farm, where we could warm up and also eat fresh fish, which was quite delicious! In the summer you can fish your own trout and then give it to the chef, who prepares it for you =)

That weekend I went for the first time to a seminar of the Youth work of the German Protestant Church of Romania, where we talked about visions and dreams. We also talked about the summer camps we’re organising – I will go camping with kids as well for a week in June, which should be really good fun =). We sang and prayed together and I got to know a lot of people my age from all over Transylvania.

The Friday after that (Feb 26^th) I went to Odorheiu for the first time with two classes from Primary school. We went to this big play hall there with a big ball pool, slides, a bouncy castle, jungle gyms, etc. It was great fun playing there with the children, but also quite nerve racking as you’d have to take car they wouldn’t kill themselves by jumping of something or kill each other by playing too wildly.

That evening I went to my first real Romanian house party in a real Romanian block together with Ramona, who visited me over the weekend.

It was really nice and we played Wii most of the evening – the first time I played it^^ – which was highly enjoyable.

So now its Monday, 1^st of March and half a year since my gap year officially started. Time really has passed very quickly, and I’m sorry I’m so bad at keeping you guys all up to date.

A lot more things happened this year already, but I can’t write them all down, that would strain my patience and yours. So this selection will do.

I hope to see you all sooner all later,

Please feel free to come and visit me in this beautiful country, if you find the time

because all my rhapsodizing about Romania doesn’t compare to its ACTUAL beauty

I wish you all a lovely spring, in Romania spring is really coming now. All the birds have started returning and singing, the air smells warm and fresh, the flowers start blooming and the sun sends down her first warming rays

It nearly makes me want to write a poem again!

Mit Frühlingsgefühlen and with spring fever I send you all my love in all the countries that you’re in at the moment,

Edna

Again it’s already been over a month since I last wrote.

I think it’s just that now all the things here seem so ordinary and normal to me.

Like I still see a lot of horse waggons, but suddenly it’s nothing special to me anymore.

I think that’s a good sign, it shows that I feel quite at home here now.

The week after we went to Deva was mainly very foggy. And if I say very foggy, I mean VERY VERY foggy. So foggy, you literally can’t see the house on the other side of the street. That kind of fog lasted for three days in a row and has been coming back quite regularly since then. Maybe it’s Dracula’s fault trying to get to his victims closer without being seen?

On November 22 I went on an outing with a befriended family of mine, another family and their 4 horses. Seen as I don’t ride I walked up the hill with the mothers while the kids and fathers galloped up there.

To get down however, I had quite a different method. I fell, literally, off the hill.

Sounds funny, but in fact it was REALLY painful and I landed that hard on my bum that I couldn’t sit properly for over a week. (Okay, looking back, it DOES sound hilarious.)

The day after November 23 was a very important day too, and most of the people reading this will know why. But apart from being very important it was pretty normal, like any other working day.

Tuesday December 1 is a national Bank holiday in Romania, because on the 1^st of December 1918 Romania and Transylvania united.

As we got the Monday of as well, Paul, Tobi, Orlane (a French girl from Deva) and me took the chance to visit Ramona, another volunteer, who lives and works by the Black Sea in Constanta.

It was a very eventless but fun weekend and I can now proudly say that I have been in the Black Sea on first Advent!

The rest of Advent was full of concerts, eating, concerts, mulled wine, church services and hot apple juice with spices.

On Friday 4^th of December we had a concert with the Gospel choir on the Nicolas market and Paul had to dress up as Nicolas and give apples to little kids.

Actually even to me – the whole choir got a present as a thank you for singing: an apple and a T-shirt of the Peter Maffay Open Air Tour 2005 (yes, you may laugh now!)

On Sunday (6^th) I went to Brasov/Kronstadt to a church service organized by the youth. It was really nice and I met a few nice people, of who I’ll probably see more of in the summer as they are organizing camps for smaller kids and I might go along. Looking after kids in tents – sounds fun to me.

The Friday after that was the last day of school. It shouldn’t have been, but the government wouldn’t pay the teachers for a week of work, so the teachers simply said: If we don’t get paid, we won’t work.

- And so the whole school got the week before Christmas off.

On Saturday we had a concert with the gospel choir and the church choir on another Christmas market. After that there was the Christmas gathering of the German Union Sighisoara/Deutsches Demokratisches Forum Schäßburg, which was very Christmassy, with a “real” Santa Claus for the kids, Christmas carols and lebkuchen.

On Sunday, 3^rd Advent, we had a church service in Reps – a town close to Sighisoara – were we sang with the church choir and had tea and cake after.

In the evening there was a candle walk round the fortress and even though it was freezing cold it was lovely to sing Romanian Christmas carols and walk around with candles J

On Wednesday 16^th of December I went to Sibiu/Hermannstadt once again to pick up Lisa’s sister from the airport. She was coming to “collect” Lisa, who left on December 21^st.

The airport of Sibiu (which is closest to Sighisoara, in case you want to come visit meJ) is TINY, but adorable. It has about 2 Gates and 2 shops, which are closed, when you need them most (at half eleven on a Wednesday night).

Sibiu/Hermannstadt was however highly enjoyable as they had a REAL, big Christmas market with lebkuchen and mulled wine and roasted almonds and eeeeverything a German heart needs to become all festive – which we of course did.

Thursday was full of rehearsals and concerts. And also eating – Lisa cooked for us one last time in her flat. L

On Friday Ulrike Lueck took us to Praid, where there’s a big salt mine. It is so big, you drive in there with a bus. And then you walk down about a million steps – it feels like you’re walking straight into the underworld.

But once you’re down, you’re not just breathless because of the many steps, but also because of the view. There are several big mining shafts. About 500m long, 30m wide and at least 20m high. You have a Restaurant for ca.1000 people down there as well as a café, several gift shops, a church, a massive playground, two bouncy castles, several snack shops and 7 ping-pong tables. You even had a hut with PCs connected to the internet down there!

I’ve been in a salt mine once before in Germany, but it was really not comparable as this one was so incredibly huge. And again I can proudly say I’ve done something unusual: I had lunch in a restaurant a lot more than 6 feet under!

There is one more thing to add about this Christmas

I might have mentioned that we have three primary children in the boarding school. Marcel in 1^st year, Floarea in 2^nd and Alexandru in 4^th year.

They all had a Christmas party with their class, where each of them did a nativity play.

Since I basically live with them I had to go to all three of them. It was very adorable hearing them sing and play the recorder out of tune as well as dance.

The 4^th year even did a Hannah Montana dance – right in the middle of a nativity play! Quite an experience…

Also interesting was that all the plays were bilingual. So the kids would first say their sentences in German – seen as they go to a German school – but for the parents they would say them again in Romanian. It was very cute and helped improving my Romanian

When Lisa left on 21^st there was obviously a big hole for me. Paul had already left on Saturday 19^th, so I was all alone in the big boarding school building.

So I sort of moved in with the family of the church organist. They have 4 children of which only 3 were home over Christmas, so there was a space for me.

It was lovely being in a family again and getting acclimatised (oops, I don’t think that word exists) to family life again before my own family arrived.

They arrived the day before Christmas eve and from the spot on they were busy doing lots of things: Going to approx. 3 church services a day, trying several traditional Romanian dishes, including Ciorbă (Sour soup) and hot Ţuica (Schnapps), singing and playing the organ on quite a few occasions and also exploring the Romanian villages and countryside.

They loved being here, as far as I know, and I loved having them here and so did the rest of Sighisoara as they still don’t get tired to tell me J

For New Years Eve I went “home” to Oxford, which was lovely too, but seen as this blog is about Romania, I won’t write anything about that trip here.

I arrived back safely here on January 6 and life is back to normal now.

I just hovered the sports hall – one of my less grateful duties,

Paul is off for the weekend, so I have the house to my own,

and I started knitting my first scarf today

My work is still as diverted as the colours of the rainbow.

It now also includes: sorting stones.

One fascinating occupation! I take them out of the shelf, write down their name and old number in a list, put a sticker with a new number on it and put it back on the shelf.

The only problem is that I also have to tell, whether it is a mineral, a stone or a fossil. Seen as I’ve never had particularly much to do with stones I don’t know in some (or most) of the cases – so I just guess. Everything that glitters is a mineral!

I just hope nobody is ever actually going to study these lists – he’ll either die of a heart attack, how anyone can have so little clue about stones, or of laughter.

I’m not sure, which would be worse.

The kids from 1^st and 2^nd primary finished their photo love story project just before Christmas and were completely overwhelmed by the amazing results.

Now they come to me every break time and say: We WANT more extra German lessons!

I wouldn’t have thought to ever hear that from anyone – a German teachers dream come true

I’m sorry this blog turns more and more into a “then I did this and then I did that” – I’ll try and make it more interesting next time.

It’s just that I have to read my calendar to actually remember all the stuff I did

I hope you all had lovely Christmas and a very happy start into the new year – if it was only half as happy as my year so far, that’s already pretty amazing.

Last thing I have to say is “GOOD LUCK!” to all my German colleagues, who just started their written BAC/ABI today – I’m keeping my fingers crossed, guys J

(And if you’re reading this instead of revising – feel ashamed right now! This is just as bad as facebook!)

Love for the new decade!

Edna

The weather prognosis for October 14^th was snow, at which we all laughed as we had had 23°C the weekend before. But when we woke up that day, we nearly couldn’t trust our eyes. It was actually SNOWING! Not very much, but still, we were proven wrong.

The weekend after, it had stopped, but it was still pretty cold and Lisa, me and Tobias – a Comenius student working in Deva – went to spend the weekend in Sibiu/Herrmannstadt, where there was a meeting of all Erasmus-students in Romania.

It was good fun and we met a lot of interesting and international people. My personal highlights was when we went into a club in a cellar of a bar (Bisschen wie’s Bruch =)) and after we has spent a while there suddenly there was a police control. But not like you’re used to police coming and controlling ID’s – no they came with 8 masked and armed policemen and blocked the staircase. It looked really frightening – like they would start shooting any second or something – but they luckily didn’t. And actually they didn’t do anything really. They were just standing there looking evil for 5 minutes and left again, but it was still really impressive.

The Friday after was the so called “chicken  ball” or “balul bobocilor” or “Kückenball” – whatever language you prefer.

It’s a ball for the “chicken” of the secondary school – people in 9^th grade, as our school is split into Gymnasium (grades 5-8) and Lyceum (grades 9-12).

It consists of a big show with a beauty contest for Mr. and Mrs. Balul Bobocilor and has a very long tradition. Afterwards there are two big parties – one for the teachers and one for the pupils.

All in all a very noisy business

On October 25^th we went to Apold/Trappold with the church choir to sing a service for harvest festival (Erntedank) and the 700 year celebration of the church there. It was a lovely event with lots of self-made cakes and pastries after and I met a German organ builder (einen Wandergesellen) there, who was really interesting to talk to!

On Monday (26^th) we went picking apples with the pastor in a nearby village, which was great fun.

Out of these apples I made a cake for the pastor on Friday (30^th), because he was having a little party for the children showing them a movie.

Since that day I am the absolute hero of all the kids between 11 and 13 and even today there were still kids coming to me praising my amazing cake

The weekend over Halloween I spent in Sibiu/Herrmannstadt again – there was a meeting of all German volunteers in Romania and it was amazing as we played amazingly stupid games on the biggest square in the town – the Piaţa Mare – making complete fools of ourselves.

I just realized I am not telling much of my weeks – that’s because its just the same work over and over again and it would probably be quite boring to read^^

However the next weekend we had 2 German girls visiting us. They work in Alba Iulia/Weissenburg over the same organisation I do and so they took the chance to have a look at our beautiful town.

The highlight was Saturday, when the pastor – Johannes – took us out to the countryside to see 2 of ‘his’ churches. In Keisd we didn’t go into the church but had a look at his bees, which he’s keeping there.

Genius as I am, I took of my shoes right next to the beehive and apparently one bee didn’t like that and stung me right into my big toe.

It was very painful for sure, but as an apology I got a big jar of self-made honey from Johannes, which is one of the best things I’ve tried in my life, so it was very much worth the pain J

In Arcida/Arkeden we had a look at the church fortress (Kirchenburg), which is a very beautiful church and we even got to ring the church bells, which was good fun as well.

Afterwards we had lunch in the home of a family there, which was SO nice – self-made bread with self-made jam and self-made honey and self-made Zakuska (which is a bread spread made of peppers, beans, zucchini and I don’t know what else. It’s extremely tasty!). Afterwards we were SO full, we didn’t even eat dinner that night.

On Monday, the 9^th of November, Lisa, Paul and me were invited to dinner by Manfred – one of the German teachers – to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a lovely evening full of memories about Germany.

On Wednesday I spent the day with the daughter of the cantor at her house. She is 13 years old and funnily enough called Agathe.

She already sees me as the sister she never had (She has three older brothers) and is an absolutely lovable child and I adore her. She has a really big trampoline (like Ely’s or Ivan’s =) ) and made me learn all the tricks on it – very much to the amusement of her.

Last weekend (13-15^th) I went to Deva with Paul to visit Tobi and Tobi, which both work there and live together in a flat.

We made Feuerzangenbowle (couldn’t find the English word), ate French cheese and drank French wine and cooked curry. We were really lucky with the weather so we walked up this mountain to have a look at the castle on top and had an amazing view from up there.

The Friday before I had made Brownies for Johannes again, as he was showing another film and now I am even more popular with the little children and even had to give out the recipe

We (Lisa, Paul and I) also started giving voluntary extra lessons in German to the children in 5^th and 6^th grade and it’s lots of fun.

We’re making a “Photo Love Story” with them and they’re really into it. Every break time at least two are coming up to us telling how much they look forward to the extra lesson and when we had to cancel it on Monday, as Lisa couldn’t be there, they were nearly in tears. It’s absolutely amazing to see them so dedicated to something and completely forgetting that it’s actually doing German.

The sweetest thing is that they call me “Frau Lehrerin” or “Frau Edna” (“Ms. Teacher” or “Miss Edna”) and they look up to you in such a respect that you just have to adore them.

That’s all the news there is for now, I hope you all have a similarly good time.

Lots of love from your Transylvanian Edna ☻

I could start every entry here with the words: A lot has happened since the last time I wrote.

And so it is! I’ll try however to keep it short and some of the things are too long ago to describe them in every detail…

Vorneweg: Lisa, because some people asked, is 25 years old and a German student, studying to become a secondary school teacher for German and Latin. She’s doing 3 months of work experience here in my school (Ihr Praxissemester vor dem Examen) and that obviously puts us in similar positions. She is really lovely and we get along well, so we do many fascinating things together, which mostly involve the words: “Can you remember when we still had a social life…” – these typically when we sit in her flat or my room and don’t know what to do that particular evening. It has sort of become a running gag between us.

Anyway,

during the week not much happens here, apart from us working and killing time. So the week after the weekend in Sibiu wasn’t very eventful, but we did lots of work in the library and managed to work our way through quite a lot of ancient books.

Sunday was the highlight of the week. Volker, who is – next to other things – the head of the school radio (I will talk of that more later…), took Lisa and me out to the countryside to Neudorf, where he went to visit a family.

Neudorf is a pretty little village in between hills and mountains and when we arrived in the nicest October sunshine it seemed really surreal. The family owns several houses there and they make a lot of things themselves. They built all the houses themselves, they’ve got a sawmill, they plant their own seeds, make there own honey etc. All of them were lovely people and Lisa and me really enjoyed a relaxed day in their Hollywood swings.

The good thing is that they are Sachsen – German people living in Transsylvania, so we didn’t have communication problems, which made liking them a whole lot easier, because we could actually understand what they were saying.

In general I really need a T-Shirt saying: “I’m not retarded, I’m forgeign.” Because even though I’m doing a language course now and I’m improving slowly, I never understand people well, because they talk so fast. So my standard answer to everything is nodding, smiling and saying: “Da!”, which means yes.

I guess if I were them, I’d ask me: “Are you a complete fool?” – and then laugh at me for agreeing and smiling to it…

When we took a walk through the village it was just so peaceful. There’s a little stream in the middle and houses on each side. All the old people sit together on a long bench on that road next to the stream just looking and greeting everyone that passes. It is just really adorable to see the small worlds they all still live in (or seem to anyhow) and how happy they still are.

The Monday after that (5^th) was a day off, because all the people working in education striked that day. There are big complications with the government here (don’t ask me exactly, rather ask the BBC… I know I had politics lessons for 2 years, but I still don’t understand much about it ) and because of a possible new law, where the teachers would have to work more for the same money, they went on strike.

So that day I didn’t do much except drinking coffee and eating pastries, poor me, because seen as I sort of work in the educational system, I “had” to strike too.

On Wednesday we had the first meeting for the school radio.

My school has a project where a few voluntary students make radio for the other pupils in break time. Paul, Lisa and me were chosen to lead the whole thing, so now after my experience with school newspapers, I’ll get the chance to learn something about radio

Luckily the program they use to record the things is Logic, a former version of Logic Pro, which we used in the “ESC Music Studio”, so at least there I’ll soooort of know which buttons I have to press. With writing texts for Radio however, I’m completely lost and new to the whole thing. But I’m really looking forward to the work awaiting me there as it all sounds really interesting and the kids doing it seem really nice so far. We’ll start broadcasting again in 10 days, so till then there will be lots of work to do and hopefully it’ll all go well.

On Saturday the whole German speaking bunch of teachers went to Târgu Mureş to a Teachers training day and we had to go along. Well, we could choose. But we all decided to go, seen as it was something different to the things we had done otherwise.

It was about key qualifications that school has to teach children these days and it was fairly interesting in my opinion.

Even though the best parts for me were the food (I know – quite sad. But it was homemade pastries!) and the conversations with some pupils from other German schools in the region. It was a nice day, but I felt slightly out of place there as I wasn’t really a teacher. However I got a certificate that I did that day of training and I’m sure it’ll come in handy someday. =)

The day after that, Lisa and me went to Neudorf again, because the family we had visited the week before had invited us to help them making apple juice.

They press about 600 litres every year, so its quite big style. Our help actually only consisted of consuming freshly pressed apple juice, but we didn’t really mind as there is hardly anything as tasty in the world!

We also got a massive jar of amazing, self made honey each, which will last me the whole year presumably (well, not once Rufus comes, then it’ll go quite quickly =) ).

It was another lovely day in the countryside and we also took a walk through the woods and enjoyed the forests in their autumn colours.

While on that day it wasn’t a problem to walk around in T-Shirt without getting cold, we had a drastic temperature drop the days after.

So drastic, that we had the first snow on Wednesday – the 14^th of October!!

It wasn’t very much, but enough to put a thin white glaze on everything.

Since then it has been freezing cold and this morning it snowed again. I’m pretty positive it’ll snow some more later as the sky is all grey and the clouds look heavy.

I really don’t get the climate here seen as literally a week ago, we had temperatures at ca. 24° C and now we’re freezing our arses of at a maximum of 4° C. The weather god really must be drunk

But on the other hand:

1) If it goes on like that, I’m pretty positive we’ll have a White Christmas J

2) And I’m using the temperatures in a very English-student style – to keep my milk fresh I hung it out of the window in a plastic bag, so that it keeps cold and fresh as I don’t have a refrigerator in my room. That great invention (to spare me the walk over the yard to the kitchen everytime I want milk) is now on about 37.649 pictures made by tourists from around the world, because my room is built right onto the clock tower – the main sight of Sighişoara.

The tourists probably think, Romanians are weird…if they only knew

And I end this entry with LOVE from the country, where there a white clouds hanging from the sky and where summer turns into winter quicker than you can say the “Flintstone”.

Waking up early in September is like

Waking up to an enchanted world.

Peaceful mist hanging in the valleys,

and the red sun rising

behind the vaulted hills

to a clear autumn sky

turned all orange and purple.

Somewhere in the distance

church bells can be heard

striking the clock

to an awaking village.

The slow horsewaggon trotting by –

with horse and owner looking equally sleepy -

stopping for an old woman

leading her only cow to the field,

while the children walk along

waving their mums in the small houses.

Waking up to this indescribable beauty

is like waking up to an enchanted world.

This is my desperate try to paint the emotions you have seeing all the natural beauty of Romania on such a morning like the one today. It’s hard for me to actually put them in words.

It’s the second weekend I enjoyed in Romania and it’s also been my second weekend trip. This time we went to Sibiu (Herrmannstadt), which is one of the bigger towns close by. It’s a stunningly beautiful place (like basically everything I’ve come across here so far…) and the city centre is lovely with lots of little Cafés and churches on big open spaces, which I miss in Sighisoara a bit as everything is really close.

The plan was to go there as we were invited to this “election party” at the German consulate (there were elections for the Bundestag in Germany this weekend (; ). But about three hours before it would have started, we were told that the party wasn’t on anymore for various reasons. Seeing as we were in Sibiu anywa, we enjoyed our time there just having our own small party.

One thing I learned: In Romania you have to get used to just be spontaneous.

You might for example go into your lesson and find that the class decided to go home early today.

There isn’t a proper timetable yet either. You just come to school and see what lessons they decided to give you that day.

Or you might want to go out of your door. But while you were in, they decided to dig a hole right in front of it (like they did right in front of the boarding school).

But don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you’re trapped in your house. You just jump into the muddy hole and walk through – just be careful the digger doesn’t mistake you for some stones or runs you over.

There were several things fascinating about this trip, but I’d like to talk about two in detail:

1)      Train service in Romania.

Even though we’d never have thought, so both our trains were perfectly on time – literally to the minute!

The trains were both quite old, but functionable and more or less comfortable once you managed to climb into them.

Funny however are Romanian train stations.

The bigger towns mostly have a station house much like they are in Germany or England.

But VERY few stations have platforms and if they do they’re more like some asphalt in between two train tracks, not neccesarily higher then the ground the tracks are on, so you have to jump out of the train or climb in.

Theres also no stairs above the tracks or below them, which makes it hard to cross them. Which wouldn’t be too much of a problem yet, but many stations don’t even have marked ways to cross the tracks.

So you just have to hope there won’t be a train coming while you’re hopping over.

These are the bigger stops, but there are also small stops.

The small stops are – quite honestly – just a sign! Without any platform or a village around. You might even hold right on top of a street crossing and without any sign of a house anywhere, people will hop on and off the trains (literally^^), as if it would be the most normal thing to do.

Und für alle Deutschen: Mir war der Ausdruck “an jeder Milchkanne halten” nie deutlicher

But taking the train isn’t only an adventure for your nerves – seen as we’re used to “German efficiency” and “English health and safety”, but it’s also and amazing experience for your eyes. You (or at least I) just can’t get enough of Romanian landscape. The big forests, the golden fields, the hills, the distant mountains, the horse waggons, the signs of the old communist regime like old burnt out or run down factories (okay, they’re not pretty, but impressive nevertheless), the many small villages with they’re churches and little houses with red roofs, the untouched nature for miles and miles without any sign of human interference.

Und nochmal für die Deutschen: Lisa meinte genau so wie die Wälder hier hat sie sich den Wald bei „Ronja Räubertochter“ vorgestellt und ich kann nur zustimmen.

And the second point, even though I talked about it before:

2)      Money. It’s unbelievable how cheap it is to take the train.

To go to Sibiu by train we paid 9,20 Lei.

For the hostel we paid 50 Lei – this included a bathroom and a TV.

A decent sized Pizza Margherita costs about 8,50 Lei.

4,2 Lei equals one Euro – now you do the maths.

Today

I had my first “own” lesson in a First Year Secondary (5. Klasse) and the children were absolutely adorable! One even came hugging me afterwards. Because the teacher, who wasn’t there today, had given me too little to do with them I let them play the last 10 minutes and they absolutely loved me for it.

Apart from that we started working in the library today and found many old and interesting books. My hands haven’t been that dusty in a long time!

One of our jobs was/is to sort out old files and throw away everything older than 1990, which is slightly dull work, but hey, it could be worse.

We also look after the primary kids in break time. Somehow I already have my own fanclub there and if I’m not just told about the new puppies of one girls or get sung a Romanian song by another, they use me as “Safe house” when they play tag (That is Fangen, right?) – so they all hang on to me in a bulk.

In the afternoons I help the three small children in the boarding school with their homework. They are all siblings, a girl and two boys (even though that’s only three of the seven children of the family^^). The youngest Marcel is in 1^st year primary, the girl – which has I think the most beautiful name – Floarea is in 2^nd year primary and Alex, the oldest of the three in 4^th year primary. Marcel doesn’t speak much German yet, but hes adorable and since Paul taught him to pull faces he spends his days doing nothing else. Floarea is a huge fan of mine since I drew a princess for her and she draws me pictures (even one of myself), hoping I forget her maths homework over it (which I don’t).

Alex hates me during homework time, because he hates doing them and does everything in his powers to get around it, but as soon as they’re over he wants me to play with him and greets me happily whenever he walks past me (which is quite often seen as we’re living in the same house).

That’s more or less all the news there is at the moment,

LOVE from the country, where we have still about 24° Celcius and clear blues skies.

When I wake up here in the mornings it seems like a fairy tale to me. Seeing the big clocktower next to my window and the church opposite.

The days here have been really relaxed. On Tuesday we were taken up to the roof of the school by the artteacher, from where we had the most gorgeous view over the valley. He told us that in a couple of week the leaves of the trees of the forests around would all start changing colour and that it was what he thought most beautiful about this country.

The other days we (we is Paul – the other kulturweit-person here and me btw) sticked to taking care of the smaller children in break times, looking after them so that they wouldn’t kill each other or break legs by falling of things. The people here in general are all extremely nice. There are slight hurdles with the language, seen as I only speak the very, very basics of Romanian so far. I mostly stick to smiling and nodding a lot as well as saying “Hello” (Buna ziua) and “Thank you” (Multumesc) and up to now it didn’t do me any harm.

On Friday I had two first times.

Firstly, my first concert here with the Gospel choir. I joined the choir on Wednesday and incidentely they had a concert then and just took me right in to sing there too. It was really nice and great fun, I’m enjoying the singing a lot!

And secondly, I had my first proper night out here, where we went to three different bars/clubs. I ended up only paying 10 Euros for the whole night, which I found surprisingly cheap, and still having a lot of fun. The music here is somewhat different to music you would play in German/English clubs, its more Romanian music (surprise) and sort of songs that everyone knows, but knowbody and we felt heavily overdressed – which means litteraly, we wore too much compared to the other girls in the club. In the end we just made fools of ourselves dancing weirdly and singing loudly, but nobody seemed to care and we had great fun.

Today we went to a close by town, where the 19th annual meeting of the Germans in Transilvania took place. It started with a church service, which was sort of pleasant until – in the middle of it – the bench we sat on broke down. Quite litteraly from one second to the other the bench just fell into pieces. After that shock we left church quietly, which was somehow convenient as it was the point all the speeches of important german people started. Only later we found out that the money collected after the service was going towards the “desperately needed renovation of the church”. We could only agree to that. Apart from the service and the bench there were little stands, where people sold food or drinks or other little things and I felt nearly at home when different marching bands played there tunes. After that there was a show of traditional dancing in traditional costumes, which was highly enjoyable to me, even though Paul seemed to have a different opinion of it.

Now another day here in Sighisoara ends and I’m excited about the days awaiting me.

I have so many more things to tell you guys, but I lack time. I try to catch up with you soon, lots of love.

After the introductory seminar the first nine days of September, where I laughed, learned and met a lot of interesting and amazing new friends, I left for Sighisoara on the 10th of September.

We took a night train from Munich to Sighisoara straight and apart from a quite unfriendly ticket inspector and a one hour delay, my brother and I arrived well in the medieval town of Schäßburg/Sighisoara.

The town of Sighisoara consists of an upper part, the Castle, where even now people live – e.g. me – and a lower part in the valley. The whole of the upper part is stunningly beautiful and it is therefore not surprising that all of it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My room is right located right next to the main tower of the castle, the clock tower, which is the town’s landmark.

After buying neccessities like water (as we were advised not to drink the tap water here) in the PENNY market, me and my brother went for a walk up the hills on Sunday. Halfway up one of the parallel hills is a Restaurant from where you have a stunning view upon the town of Sighisoara. To get there however, you have to walk up the roads on which the poorer people live – mainly Romas. I for myself found it disturbing to actually walk through a “suburb” like this and see the tiny huts and sheds in which people live in together with their dogs and pigs and horses. Even though I knew from documentations etc that Romania is a relatively poor country, seeing the poverty these people live in made me sad. I felt uneasy walking through there, even though there was no special reason why I should have done so  apart from a few wild dogs of which one started following us, but soon gave up – luckily.

Right opposite the boarding school is a church, which has a German congregation and I’m thinking about joining their choir. We went to the service there on Sunday and it almost felt like home.
Today  was my first day at school, but there wasn’t much to do yet. We were only shown round the beautiful school, which is located on top of the castle hill. There probably won’t be much going on for me the whole of this week as the timetables and everything aren’t set yet. One of my main working places however will be the library, where there is lots to do and sort out.

After having finished this post, I will go outside and enjoy the sun. We have 24°C here and a gorgeous blue sky.

I’ve given this a lot of thought and I decided to write my Blog about Romania in English. That way, more people will be able to understand – as I think my German friends are more likely to understand English that the other way round and both of them are very dear to me.

If however someone or anyone has trouble understanding anything, do’nt hesitate to ask for help or translations. I’m doing this as much for you as for myself and critical comments or questions are always welcome.

I want to use this Blog to share with you my experiences in Sighisoara, Romania. I’ll be going there on September 11 and won’t come back for a long time (a year), so this is also a chance for me to keep you up to date.

I apologize for spelling mistakes I will definitely make and will also try not to mix up too many languages in this  blog. This won’t always be possible as some things – like word jokes – only work in one language, but as I said – I’ll do my best.