După Gard: your bear-foot holiday

După Gard is a Bio- Retreat (B&B) using ONLY sustainable & renewable energy and local bio/organic products (food, drinks & cosmetics). It is located in the heart of Transylvanian mountains (Romania). Despite its excellent plane-connections (the international airport in Klausenburg / Cluj-Napoca is only 70 km away), the village community of Poşaga – where our project is based- lays in a fairy-tale wilderness which (trust us) is nowhere to find in Europe. Rugged mountain-chains, soft & voluptuous hills, and miles and miles of Europe’s last standing virgin forests. The bio-diversity can be best experienced when our guests visit Poşaga’s natural reservation: untouched by human aggression, here live and grow animals and plants--
from which the healing plants can easily make a small encyclopedia. One should point out that the wolves-packs, Europe’s largest remaining brown bear population, the lynx, the mountain roaster, the black grouse, the stag beetle are just to name a few of the protected species that the nature-enthusiast could observe. Quite the opposite from the plants’ and animals’ paradise, the number of locals living in Poşaga has dramatically decreased in the last 27 years as many of them went to live abroad; a lot of those remaining still live just like 100 years ago—meaning that the manual (traditional) labor is used on a daily basis and that the observation of traditions is quite strong. Last, but no least, the architectural details are amazingly beautiful in their simplicity (some houses still have straw-roofs while most houses are made of hand-carved wood).
Back to the core of our running project: last summer (2017), thanks to our older and newer friends & fans, we managed to build a (we call it) Lego-House as it was built somewhere else, then dismantled only to be put together again on our location. The house is made exclusively from wood (even the nails are wooden) and it respects the proportions and the local traditional architectural style. More here: www.dupa-gard.com/index.php/sample-blog
Despite the fact we managed to build the house, there are loads remained to be done in the summer of 2018. To name just a few, we need: doors & windows, insulation, furniture, functioning bath & kitchen, a septic tank, chimney, water drains, solar panels. Etc., etc.
This being said, it is pretty obvious why we’ve launched this campaign. Why and how YOU can support us? Please continue reading / scroll down!

The main purpose of our project is to offer our guests an accommodation that breaks the boundaries of a mere visit of the countryside; the means to our purpose can be either specific workshops, guided tours or the simple look-around the surroundings. Regardless the methods used, we promise this will be no ordinary blitz visit as we kindly ask all our guests to stay a minimum of 3 nights. This decision is directly connected to the fact that the locals – mainly because of their primitive, traditional living – still maintain a very close bound to the surrounding nature and, hence, no blitz visit could proper introduce anyone to how these people work, celebrate or simply enjoy any given holy Sunday.
As instruments of trying to make our guests becoming natives (yes! natives!) we chose not to have any conventional electricity in our Bio-Retreat (only what our solar panels will provide), consequently also no electrical heating (wood only), no Internet, TV, not even any direct car access. What one will realize, only after a few days with none of the above, is that the mere walks through the mythical forests or just sitting & watching a sun-down (for instance), will help them start rediscovering their inner center. The modern times with their permanent stress & aggression city-life will start to diffuse—and the more one will stay, the more they will not need any daily connection to their life left behind. The yoga-sessions, open air massages, home made local dishes using 100% regional bio food, the fresh, unpolluted air are of course not to be ignored in the process of rediscovering oneself. We will try our best and offer also a vegetarian menu- despite the fact that in Transylvanian, as a current joke, people call the pig their favorite vegetable- and, if necessary, an Ayurveda breakfast.
Those who think that there can be more to our health & wellness offer, we are happy to tell you that the region has a variety of activities to offer. Not only that our După Gard Bio-Retreat is located in a national park (Parcul Naţional Apuseni), but only 10 kilometers away starts a unique natural reservation (Scăriţa Belioara) with a variety of protected plants, amazing rock formations and mysterious caves. Given its generous scale (around 140 hectares) and the fact that the access is a bit concealed, the guests who decide to visit the reservation will discover a sea of silence ‘disturbed’ only by the breath-taking wildness; some of the plants found here are long gone from Europe, the variety of birds and butterflies can fascinate even the ones that are not experts in these fields. Another possibility is to visit the traditional blacksmith/ carpenter: after crossing a suspended wooden – metal bridge, the guest will end up in a more remote part of our location (a small village lost in the forest). There, our traditional craftsman will demonstrate how to make horse-shoes, how to stretch the metal edge over a cart’s wheel or how he (only) manually carves wood in order to make small furniture. Furthermore, the guests can visit the local monastery (national landmark), the 18th reclusive tiny church, the waterfall, the wooden washing machine and the water-mill, the Roman-way, the singing rocks etc. etc. Last, but not least, we can also organize a trip to Scărişoara-cave (Romania’s biggest underground glacier) or to Roşia Montană (a rainbow of religion diversity, a Roman dated site and Europe’s biggest gold & rare minerals reserve).
To sum it up, a holiday in our Retreat will be an unforgettable experience that will equally mix a nostalgia time-travel into the past (untouched customs and traditions), a wellness joy for the body & spirit and a nest for rediscovering the <joie de vivre> (cheerful enjoyment of life) in the simplest way possible = reconnecting to Mother–Nature. Of course, the local schnapps and the late bonfire dinners can also be an enhancer in this unique adventure :)

- because you will, of course proportionally to your generosity, be rewarded as a king of queen. Our rewards (see right side) are thought to cover a broad variety of tastes -- touching all your 5 senses and covering all 4 seasons’ typical local activities for our location (Poşaga)
- because, once completed, this project will help not only our little family, but the whole Poşaga—a community which is, officially, declared as being part of a disadvantaged area (people daily living under a minimum subsistence limit). Hence, Tourism might be the only practical method to help the local community to thrive since there are no other work-possibilities
- because, once existing, După Gard Bio-Retreat will be a spiritual harbor. Our critical mass target are the overworked, over stressed categories of people who cannot wait to have a short sabbatical / digital rehab away from their daily routine. Moreover, given our specific workshops (biodiversity & nature preservation, architectural preservation & restoration, slow food cooking), young people (students) are invited to fulfill their summer practical part of their studies here. Last, but not least, we are family-friendly and strongly encourage anyone having wee children (even babies) to step into our world and let their children know how real milk tastes like or even how the domestic animals are called & look like.

As in our previous, successful campaign, we are ready to establish various funding-objectives. We decided to divide these objectives in such a way that, even if we will not raise all the necessary funds, we will still be able to accommodate our first guests – gained mostly thanks to our first campaign. In this way, we leave the door open for positive funding surprises ONLY!
Funding-objective of €800: this is, obviously, the MINIMUM we wish to raise. We guarantee that, at latest end of summer 2018, our Bio-Retreat will be ready to welcome its very first guests. One way or another, we must accomplish our mission!
Funding-objective of €4000: a much better sum, a way more optimistic end for our project. To detail, with this money we can shape up our bath & kitchen, provide windows & doors so that the house feels like…a house! In addition to this, we will be able to equip our camping-place with an open-air shower & and a cool bonfire-corner.
Funding-objective of €6000: a much-much better sum :) Additional to what we can achieve with EUR 4000, we can also kit up a septic-tank, a better equipped bath & kitchen. Last but not least, there will be a door to the property (traditional wooden one), solar panels, and a proper built bio-organic garden & orchard.
Funding-objective of €8000: now this is the REAL sum we are ideally aiming to raise with this campaign! To all of the above, please add a proper insulation of the walls and roof (100% natural materials, for instance rush); the installation of a central heating system gives the Bio-Retreat the chance to also function during cold months. IF, after all these, will be some money left…then we will definitely build a tree-house from where, while enjoying a glass of wine or bio-cider (local recipe), our guests can admire the fantastic sundown—glowing its last rays over the natural reservation Scăriţa Belioara.
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IF it happens to go beyond our maximum funding-objective (the 8.000 euros), then we will invest the extra money into our garden / orchard (our priority are the pear-trees), into a second water source (because 2 is better than 1), a children-playground and, of course, our very own buried-in-the-ground wine cellar :)