The Last Valley

I don't know if you ever saw this fim which starred Michael Caine and Omar Sharif, but where I am in Transylvania is just like it. The Saxon houses are delightful and the area simply brimming with health at this time of year. Geese are being protective of their nests as eggs are due to hatch. Piglets are running around. Lambs and kids are frolicing away. Even the dogs have puppies. The blossom is out and the buds are appearing on the trees. Jenschen violets carpet the hills.
Why am I bothering to go back to Glasgow? That is actually quite a serious question.
The one thing I find a touch tedious is that everything requires a committee meeting - including what time to meet tomorrow morning. As we have met before 8am every day so far, I assumed it would be the same tomorrow, even though it's Saturday. Not a bit of it. After about 20 minutes discussion - all of which was carefully translated for me - it was decided we didn't need to meet so early. Ten past eight would be fine.
I encountered the first hostility today in all the time I've been here. Not hostility exactly, but a sudden realisation that - if I wanted to - I could swamp an existing situation and take it away from a particular person. In one village there are 2 equal powers. There is much that the local mayor wants to sell to improve matters. The other people simply don't have enough money to buy even one hectare of ground, and farm between them about 20 hectares, owned by the town council in another village. We are being offered 115 hectares including the land presently farmed, with a view to the other land becoming economic and profitable again. Naturally there was a certain worry.
What to do? The present rental for the 20 hectares is the sum of 80 kgs of goats cheese, 2 lambs and 2 pigs a year. So maybe in UK terms about 100 pounds - in Romania about 20. The other 95 hectares are what we want some of which is suffering from erosion and requires significant works before it can be brought into use again. So, with Solomon like wisdom, I said that the existing rent would continue, but that I would gift the cheese to the community, and - as we were going to be employing people on the land - we would arrange for the sheep and pigs to be raised in the community. This went down like a storm and we all ended drinking various bottles of liquors made from all sorts of different fruits, potatoes, corn and wheat.
Fortunately both my driver and translator poured theirs into the pigswill, so there are bound to be some pretty hungover pigs tomorrow.