30 km East of Timisoara in Stanciova village

See Ecotopia's Own Website

On my way out of Romania in early August I biked through the afternoon and early evening East from Timisoara and north into the hills there following a single narrow dirt road as it wound its way over the wooded hilly contours of the landscape. After a while I spied a woman on the road and with her half understood directions came around the bend to the sight of Stanciova village’s one small church on a hillside marking the town’s position. The town is on both sides of floodplain now only housing a little seasonal stream flowing through it. It is very sunk down in respect to the high hillsides around and looks to have a few hundred residents, most of them from Romania’s Serbian speaking minority. There are a few horses sitting idle by the church and far more horses grazing on the flooplain. I cross the floodplain with my bicycle, geese scurring and honking out of my path and reach the small cluster of brightly painted buildings which is one of Romania’s few active ecologic living/ sustainable development projects, Ecotopia.

I found Four people living on site; a 70 something charming fellow named Na Ion (or “uncle Ion), a young idealist named Paul, his partner and co-idealist Christina, and a friendly English volunteer named Emma. All were having a go at living ecologically as possible, while yet surviving on the same local resources as the other villagers and thereby providing an alternative development model the more destructive development paths popular in villages across the globe as the sudden leap from tradition to “modernity” is made with grossly shortsighted thinking and factory farming methods (including toxic fertilizing and pesticide use that cause widespread damage including poisoning the water table, creating erosion, killing native fish, insects and wildlife, depleting the soil, making the farmers dependants of seed, fertilizer and money lending organizations).

Stanciova is a village located at the edge of the former dictator’s large, undeveloped (few or no roads of any type) hunting reservations which today create one of the few locations in Europe where a family can live on the edge of true wilderness full of game, berries, mushrooms and mystery.

I found the people at Ecotopia working hard to support the free daycare that they run, constructing a modest civic center using a run down public building and recycled materials, maintaining and expanding the organic garden, and just managing the household while brainstorming about turning the center into a conference location for the summer. The main man here is Paul who Emma accused of having formed this whole project to feed his ego. While his project management style might support that image I felt that the project was sincere and both this team and its Urban-based organizers Capy and (another) Christina were even planning on moving out to the project once living space ther could be created.

In my four days there I worked on the garden, experimented on dishwashing methods using ashes instead of the expensive and difficult-to-obtain Ecover biodegradable soap they had been using, fixed & stabilized various pieces of broken furniture.

The interesting things I learned from the team there included:

- Using onion tea made from the red outer skins to spray on the tomatos as a natural pesticide.
- Making home made compote by putting fresh fruit and sugar in a glass bottle 75% full, water, cap on then the whole thing gets placed in a pan with fifty centimeters of water on the bottom and a cloth layed over the top. The water is brought to a boil then removed from the heat. The bottles are removed from the pan when all is fully cool, a bit of asprin is put in each bottle before it is recapped and labelled.
- The projects strong points is its involvment with the village as a two way information exchange where the project also learns from the village.
- I learned the 12 Bar blues on the guitar from Emma. This is the second to top string E pressed down on the second strut, the third string A pressed to the second strut and played with the string above it, the fourth string D. Thus: A-4 times, D – 2 times, A-2 times, E – one time, D – one time, A – one time, E – one time.
- The menace of the village (often the case in rural Romania) is the sort of mafia of thugs represented by the shepards in the area. They are not armed with guns but rather a pack of loose brutal attack dogs and use this power to intimidate and control the villagers. In this village being a shepard makes you a big man.

cricarbusters@yahoo.com Christina
dp022@yahoo.com Paul
veganspesh@yahoo.com Emma