In the middle of August, we drove up to Moşna in convoy. Me leading in the manual Dacia and the Hungry one and Youngest Son in the automatic Skoda (I want a sticker for the Dacia saying, “My other car is a Skoda”!). It was a baptism of fire for my poor son - a lot of firsts - first time driving an automatic, a left hand drive car on the right side of the road and driving among the mad Romanians through the mountains! The Hungry One was going up to stay so we had to pack loads of gear for him to be able to do that. Kitchen gear, clothes, books, DVDs, CDs, bedding. Everything but the kitchen sink really. The cars were full to the brim. It was a long, long drive as usual but we arrived safely, unpacked the cars, went to the Pizzeria for food and camped out in the house. Us on sun loungers and son on cushion for same. Surprisingly comfy.
We only had a few days – four to be precise – and oodles of stuff to do. At first, we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere but we finally managed to get ourselves organised and got everything we needed done.
We decided that we really needed the electricity sorted out – the wiring is a nightmare with old wiring and new apparently working in tandem. There were live wires around as well so we contacted an electrician who came round and had a look. He too was appalled and quoted us a brilliant price to rewire the whole place with extra ring-mains for new buildings and kitchens. As it turned out, he ended up in hospital and his guys came back with a new price which was double! By this time the Hungry One had contacted builders who had already offered to do that so we told them to go ahead. I don’t do business with people who can’t give an accurate quotation or else decide that they might try it on for our so-called English pounds.
Anyway, that was after son and I left. What we had to do was much more urgent.
Alisa (translator) and I still had things to do. The document I needed to organise the contract for the electricity supply still hadn’t arrived so we had to arrange a Power of Attorney for Tom so that he could do it in my absence. We went to the only notary in Mediaş who could fit it in that week and, oh my goodness, the ladies that work in there, including the notary, were so nosy, opinionated and downright cheeky.
“How can they buy a house here if they don’t speak Romanian?” - Why do people go anywhere they can’t communicate? To learn perhaps?
“Well, frankly, love, it’s none of your business and have you heard of the EU?”
We decided that we really needed the electricity sorted out – the wiring is a nightmare with old wiring and new apparently working in tandem. There were live wires around as well so we contacted an electrician who came round and had a look. He too was appalled and quoted us a brilliant price to rewire the whole place with extra ring-mains for new buildings and kitchens. As it turned out, he ended up in hospital and his guys came back with a new price which was double! By this time the Hungry One had contacted builders who had already offered to do that so we told them to go ahead. I don’t do business with people who can’t give an accurate quotation or else decide that they might try it on for our so-called English pounds.
Anyway, that was after son and I left. What we had to do was much more urgent.
Alisa (translator) and I still had things to do. The document I needed to organise the contract for the electricity supply still hadn’t arrived so we had to arrange a Power of Attorney for Tom so that he could do it in my absence. We went to the only notary in Mediaş who could fit it in that week and, oh my goodness, the ladies that work in there, including the notary, were so nosy, opinionated and downright cheeky.
“How can they buy a house here if they don’t speak Romanian?” - Why do people go anywhere they can’t communicate? To learn perhaps?
“Well, frankly, love, it’s none of your business and have you heard of the EU?”
We had bought a strimmer in Bucharest for youngest son to deploy in the wilderness. He got tore into doing that while we made the main house as clean as possible.
Haggis – our labrador-retriever cross – will be joining the hungry one very shortly so we had to make at least part of the garden secure for him. He’s not really a runner but he is a digger and we discovered a huge rent in the perimeter fence behind the pig-sty which was impossible to fix quickly so we bought some ready-made fencing and youngest son put together a surprisingly secure fence around the main part of the garden.
With everything as good as we could sort it in four days, the three of us felt quite confident that the hungry one could camp out reasonably comfortably for the next few months. He has a beautiful purple sofa bed in place of the sun loungers, a proper kitchen table and chairs, a washing machine, television and DVD player, and a comfy chair. What more does a person need?
Youngest son and I came back to Bucharest, he flew back to Scotland and since then I have been slogging through my last year at work ruing the fact that I have to. The hungry one is in touch every day hugely frustrated that things are taking an eternity to happen but happen they will. Eventually. Maybe.
Haggis – our labrador-retriever cross – will be joining the hungry one very shortly so we had to make at least part of the garden secure for him. He’s not really a runner but he is a digger and we discovered a huge rent in the perimeter fence behind the pig-sty which was impossible to fix quickly so we bought some ready-made fencing and youngest son put together a surprisingly secure fence around the main part of the garden.
With everything as good as we could sort it in four days, the three of us felt quite confident that the hungry one could camp out reasonably comfortably for the next few months. He has a beautiful purple sofa bed in place of the sun loungers, a proper kitchen table and chairs, a washing machine, television and DVD player, and a comfy chair. What more does a person need?
Youngest son and I came back to Bucharest, he flew back to Scotland and since then I have been slogging through my last year at work ruing the fact that I have to. The hungry one is in touch every day hugely frustrated that things are taking an eternity to happen but happen they will. Eventually. Maybe.