După Gard - the Eco-Retreat in Transylvania

There can be all kinds of torture in this world, but ~ if you ask me ~ the worst can be is the psychological one! The Chinese knew it better than anyone else when they invented the ‘Chinese Water Torture’ 
It all came to the same form of torture and it had to happen during the very LAST day we needed to complete the Phase 1 of the Project, namely the Foundation Phase.
Let me be clear about some aspects: Transylvanians are not Chinese, but they know to work hard when they must—not to mention that, given the historical background, the Transylvanians can survive torture and reborn from it like a Phoenix. The time we spent since we started the Foundation (Day 1 was on the 6th of June) until the last one I am writing about (28th of July), Faith or God or you name it sent us all kinds of obstacles: the access road being a filthy mess we had to wait about 30 days to dry off so we can take up the building materials; the shitty weather (heavy rain and thunderstorms) stopped us from working (mostly) with cement; then, there were the religious holidays (so many of them we forgot, but we can still remember that most of them were during the week); electricity gone for hours with no official explanations…and, to top it up, when the weather was good, materials were up and there was allowed by God to work and enjoy the electivity…well…some things just went kaput so we either had to improvise a primitive method to replace the machine’s work or (worse) wait for days to get things fixed. And, as we all know, time is money and money does not grow on every fence, right?
But let me get back to the day in focus, the very last day of work, the 28th of July (namely a Friday).
Work started under positive auspices (good weather + electricity) at no less than 6.30 AM (yes! that is bloody early!). People were fresh, but still a bit pale from the previous work-day when they had to stump the ground with a primitive method (a log hold on both ends with wooden pallets) in order to even the ground mixed with sand and stone. No incident until lunch-break except from the fact that exactly 45 minutes before disaster struck we were let known that from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. there will be NO electricity! In a day during which electricity was crucial for the 2 existing mixers praying to be used to create many-many cubic meters of cement.
The telephones, the twist & turns, the 2 hours waiting during Lunch so that a FINAL decision can be taken and a definitive answer to a simple question (i.e. “Should we pour the final cement today? The cement for, you know, that plaque that will hold in the future the whole house.”)…well ALL these created a monstrous work-delay. We restarted at about 2 PM and, guess what, at exactly 8.30 PM we realized we have NOT enough materials (namely cement and sand). People were more crawling than working after (already) 9 hours of work; the perspective to make phone-calls to get the missing materials (of course, at this late hour, at a spicy price), to go get the tractor’s tow, drive to collect the materials (namely sand), and ~ the horror of all ~ transport it up the shitty road that was (after only 1 day of rain) again almost ineffective. On top of all, people were too tired to make quick decisions, too hungry and thirsty, the night was falling in about 90 minutes and (let’s be honest) the perspective of working as a form of (both) physical & psychological torture appealed to nobody.
But miracles do happen: as the hard-workers took a break, I & our main-worker (called Lupu or the Wolf) went down and bought the sand; my beloved (Andreas) carried all the hill up, on his shoulders, no less than 60 kilos of cement my mother had in her backyard; our neighbor (a warm thanks to Grigoras Cremene) allowed us tractor-access through his property so that we could avoid the shitty road.
“Shit happens” to quote the motto of our workers. There were only 30 minutes left of daylight and we got stuck on plain land trying to tractor-drive up the hill the sand. Shock and Terror! What to do, what to do? The tractor was coughing hard and spitting black trails of oil. Situation seemed to be desperate, we experience some brief, but very intense moments of losing any faith. Then, with a last desperate attempt to defeat ill-faith, we unloaded some good kilos of sand; then, all the existing men (5) jumped on the front of the Tractor to create counter-weight and beat the mean steep curve that made the tractor’s agony. WE MADE IT!
We restarted the concrete-mixers, we switched on the bulldozer’s lights so we do not work blind, we didn’t even unload the sand using it directly from the tractor’s tow…And guess what? The water-pump stopped working in the last moment! Thanks God for the rain from the previous day—boys used the last buckets to create cement by taking rain-water from around the foundation. Moving like zombies on broken batteries, with Lupu on his knees still measuring that what we pour is even, with Grigoras carrying on his back through darkness 2 sacks of cement from his home… hallelujah, at exactly 23.15 we finished!!!
And, can you believe me if I tell you that, we still had the power afterwards to make a grill and drink some beers at the mere light of a modest camp-fire? The night surrounded us and brought us the peace of mind we were all longing for ever since we started on the 6th of June. Did I mention that, along all this process, we were constantly ONLY 3 team-members (me, Andreas & Lupu)?
~ GAME OVER for the first phase of Dupa Gard (the Foundation). Let phase TWO come our way = building the actual house.
And friends!? You have no idea how much work it is to build a house unless you built one. Read my words and mark our pictures ;-)