Making a difference

I'm just back from Romania again, after a series of meetings intended to bring micro-funding to rural areas in Transylvania.
This would be under the banner of possibly the only good thing the EU has ever done, called Leader Action Groups or LAGs. In essence local people in rural areas decide what they want to happen to improve their area. The groups are made up of roughly a third each of town halls, businesses and associations. The associations can be anything from sports teams to knitting circles. The funding is about 50/50 with the EU, so the locals have to provide 50%, and the individual projects are typically Eur 20-40,000.
In Mosna ( it of the wonderful Mayor) we had visiting LAG administrators from Finland, where they have had LAGs for more than 10 years. The range of projects is astonishing - everything from creating bus stops out of old milk depots to bringing business men out of the city so they understand better the problems of rural locations. Although individually the projects are quite small, typically over a 5 year period there will be 80-100 in each LAG area, so investment of up to Eur 4million. Finland's LAGs spent nearly Eur 250million in the last period. For sure they were the first Finns in quite a lot of the places we took them to.
It all went very well and hopefully things will move forward. Nothing is quick in Romania - even making out an invoice takes about 10 minutes - but the LAG has about 40 members, an office, equipment and so on - but no manager yet. He will get about Eur 400 per month - enough to attract a graduate.
Of course, the main object of the excericse was the eating and drinking, and 70 people sat down to dinner after the first day. We had slow food - goat stew cooked for over 10 hours, washed down with copious quantities of the local wine ( neither red nor white and not quite rose either). Utterly delicious. Then wonderful cakes and tarts made with local fruits, and a local liqueur made from forest fruits, almost black and full of surprising tastes. Cost for as much as you could eat and drink? About £3 per person.
Lots of lovely little things. Romania is a macho society. Waitresses habitually pour men their drinks first in mixed company, but the waiters pour ladies' first. A car hire contract specifies that the car has to be returned having been washed. The car hire lady says " You don't need to bother about that - its already dirty." A car with a California numberplate - turned out to be Romanian's who had been working in the States and shipped their car back. Having a meeting in a bar, and an old lady standing outside listening to what was being said. When asked to move on she said" I just wanted to make sure you were doing things properly". Another lady handing a scrap of paper to the mayor of Mosna when he visited a small village in his area called Nemsa. It was a petition about something and she had no way of getting to the Mayor as she could not afford the fare. When he asked her why she hadn't ridden on one of the many horse-drawn vehicles that criss-cross the area, she replied " It would not be right to come to the Town Hall in a haycart" and was quite indignant at the thought. Asking for salad in a village eatery and being told that the boss had said no salads were to be sold as the distinguished visitors could certainly afford something more expensive. We paid the higher price and had the salad, which produced an ecstatic response from the boss.
I just love the area, and it means something to me to be doing something for them.
And now a cautionary tale:
The village of Cris ( Pronounced Krish) is beautifully set in a valley with a proper road to it. The village and its valley are dominated by a wonderful XIV -XVIII century castle. Germanic on one side, it has all the attributes of a Chateau on the Loire on the other. The whole area and its castle was owned by the Bethlen Princes, fabulously rich in their day.
They had fallen on hard times even before WW2, and when the Communists came, they all fled. The castle was looking pretty ropey by then.But even the Red Army understood the importance of the castle, and it was beautifully maintained up until Ceacescu's fall.
Almost immediately the descendants of the Bethlens claimed back the castle, and under the laws of the land, they were handed it back.
Thereafter, with no money to maintain it, it fell into sad disrepair. A French charity ( because of the Loire connection) redid much of it about 5 years ago, but it remains empty, crumbling & dead. It would make a fantastic hotel - but you would need about Eur 20million to do it up, and the Bethlen's have resisted all efforts to buy it from them - er, well actually not, they want Eur 20million for it and the value is probably about Eur 1m.
So capitalism is not always a good thing.