Ladies and Lords, Helpers, Project Partners, Supporters, Movilians,
via this newsletter you get a simulcast of the project progress in Movile / Hundertbücheln. First of all, we have an amazing and productive time and are able to advance our project vision step by step. Below you find a summary of all the things that happened in the last three weeks in Movile. Enjoy!
1. Our construction site at the teacher’s house is running since one week. The house should develop in the near future on the one hand into our project headquarter and on the other hand to a semi-public space for knowledge transfer (including the library/ Büchelei). As it is one of our aims to learn and use traditional building methods from local experts we received support from carpenter Sebastian Bethge, our “neighbor” from Trappold / Apold and construction manager of Stiftung Kirchenburgen, our most important supporters for the Churchfortress-project. We already restored 2/3 of the roof, learned how to work with traditional methods and materials, bought wood for the roof construction, 2000 old tiles from a house in Movile, transported them ecofriendly with a caruza (horse waggon) and stored them in the cellar of the teachers house.
2. We tried to integrate into the village community as much as we can and had good talks to many people. Special thanks to Rainer, our communication talent, who speaks to almost every Movilian even without professional language skills. So 17 of us watched the football match GER – SLO in the village pub and the following ones with Tante Friedi & Willy Martini in their Saxon house. Moreover we had a football match with the village guys, when we decided to build up two new goals for them. Project for one of the next evenings! We visited an orthodox mass in Movile and some of us had the chance to look beneath the priest’s coat, definitely a special experience… We were also invited to take part in a local funeral feast! Summing up, most of the villagers know us and our project. We want to keep this approach alive in the upcoming weeks and work on the social duties as hard as we can!
3. We finished the posters for our call for donations! You can find the posters here on the website, please feel free to spread the words as we currently work mostly voluntarily. Special thanks at this point to our first donators! We could not have made all this without your help!
For those who are able to translate the poster into proper Romanian language: Please help us, as we necessarily want to involve Romanians wherever we can. Moreover, we have some more translation works to do, please give us a sign if you want to help us with translation stuff. It would be a pity if we just publish in German and English due to our reduced language skills… We urgently need help regarding translations!!
4. We started the first landscape maintenance measures in the castle yard, as nature started to take over the fortified church and even endangers the construction of towers and walls.
5. The first Movile art products are on the way, see the photos of the first Büchel-Tiles.
6. We met Johnny, our new project cat! Johnny just appeared here one day, he’s integrating by hard-working and catches almost every morning one mouse to save our and sometimes also his food. Good guy, Johnny!
7. We had a dinner with Nat Page, Christi Gherghiceanu and other nice people from Fundatia Adept, a foundation working on landscape development and biodiversity here in Transsilvania for many years. We discussed several ideas about possible cooperation between us, for example they are currently starting a project about mapping Transsilvanian villages and their setting in the landscape where they would appreciate our input as Landscape Architects very much.
At the moment we are also trying to arrange a meeting with John Akeroyd, a botanist working for Fundatia Adept who is a specialist in Botany of Transsilvania. He is very interested in studying the hills around Movile and their special vegetation patterns.
8. All together we already brought more than 40 people to Movile this year! Most of the villagers are happy with this, as Movile is one of the few villages of the whole country that cannot be found on google maps easily. Imagine growing up and living in such a village that nobody knows about and that hardly attracts any visitors to come by (in contrast to many other villages in the region). With the necessary sensitivity we hopefully can improve the mostly negative self-perception of Hundertbücheln / Movile and open some local eyes for the uniqueness of their home!
9. As you read in the last newsletters, we will be hosts for a well known cultural event of Transilvania, the so called Transilvanian Brunch. For this, we want to work together with the villagers to cook and present the traditional local food and almost lost traditional cooking recipes for more than 170 tourists. The preparations for our first regional event are thriving! Our plans so far include a concert (Padre and his band “cetate”), a public area, small market stands with regional products, a painting and handicraft table for children, historical architect-tours with Sebastian Bethge, maybe Caruza-Tours through the Büchelfeld (those hills around Movile), exhibition of university results of 2015 and the history of Hundertbücheln / Movile. They will be available here one the homepage soon.
If you can translate them to English and/or Romanian language within the next to weeks, you would help us enormously so we can also present it to not German speakers (which is very important!)
We look forward to the newcomers this week and during the whole summer. Contact us if you want to visit our fortified church and also if you want to offer us a helping hand and learn more about traditional craft methods or ecological land use development.
So far until now, we need to get back on the roof construction site, find people in the village who want to prepare food for the Transsilvanian Brunch, draw a detailed construction plan of the Teacher’s House for further planning steps, meet with local authorities to get our faces known, talk to the Saxons and Romanians in the village, enjoy the delicious food and drinks and the beautiful summertime weather here in Movile!
La Revedere!
The curchfortress e.V. project group
