Romania

Of course I wanted to know if that School of Carpentry and Organs was still existing and running well. I contacted the Stiftung back in Switzerland and got in touch with Barbar Dutli, an organ biulder from Switzerland and head of the school. Only for this year because the firm is running on its own with Romanian taken over and the school will be run by them next year. What a successful story! I went by bus to Harman, it’s always a bit out of my comfort zone taking buses here, but it’s acutally very fine. Barbara awaited me and showed me around, explaining the concept, how organs are built and the story of that project. What an adventure. Organ biulder hasn’t been a profession in Romania since 1945. So they opened up a school for a non existing profession! That was of course a big problem. They actually had the idea when they were asked 1996 by an association of a German church in Targu mures to renovate the organ. Then they had another job for renovation, a small organ in the black church in Braşov. Then the people there asked them to clean the big one (4000! pipes). That was made within 4 years and that’s how the idea came up to teach young Romanian how to build and renovate organs. As explained, it wasn’t a profession anymore so there was almost no way to be accepted as school. Luckily with entering the EU Romania was forced to teach more people handwerkliche Professions. And they were working with the University of Braşov before and they were able to get a license to teach adults only. Then they were trying to get support from money coming from the EU to get machines. That needed so much time and effort - and tons of paper work. It took years, every detail had to be correct. It is ridiculous, for example, it takes so many years that the machine they wanted initially doesn’t exist anymore when the money would be there. Then you have to fill out new papers and explaining why you have to get another machine. In the end, they didn’t get the money (150’000€) at all because they pretended that the machine was not standing at the right place! First of all this is a incredibly ridiculous reason and second, the machine is exactly standing where she was planned for from the very beginning! Random. Unfortunately it is highly aleatory who gets the money and where it goes to. Many people in Romania were starting projects, invested money to be supported by the EU, and got nothing in the end because of this randomness. Very sad. Corruption is still a big issue here. People are very disappointed. Paying taxes and knowing that this money disappears somewhere in Bucharest is very frustrating. Luckily the society had money from Switzerland and could survive. Nowadays run by Romanian it is very successful and Organ builder have a good reputation in this country. And since only 60 out of 1500 organs are renovated, there is still a lot of work for a couple of generations to come. The organ in the black church is the best kept in Europe. Being also the biggest, it was built in 1836-1839 in Berlin, shipped to Brasov and rebuilt there, the longest pipe being 11m long. Incredible achievement if you imagine how they traveled back then.
With lot’s of information I got back to Braşov and went swimming in the Olympic pool. That was renovated, too, it looks pretty now and rain isn’t dripping in anymore. I didn’t take my cap with me, a mistake, it is just allowed to swim with cap. Learnt something again, they still let me swim. In the evening I was again invited for diner at Gica’s. I had Mamalita (a sortmof Polenta) Palinka, Visinate (a liquor) and red wine, everything saute di saute naturale, 100% homemade. Yummie!Read more