Dear Lords and Ladies of Movile Castle, powerful project partners, helpful supporters, reliable friends, audible and silent fans,
hundreds of old tiles received a new home, thousands of compliments were exchanged between the cultures, millions of flowers were convinced to donate their nectar for our honey and countless sheep were milked in the whole Hârtibaciu Valley since you received the last newsletter about the curchfortress project development. We finally decided not to clamp you on the torture anymore and are proud to take you with us on another short stage of our sparkling project journey in Transylvania.
Summary
First of all, we look back on an amazingly productive and instructive summer in Movile | Hundertbücheln. All project people are back in their homes now and the village of Movile is preparing for the upcoming wintertime. Our project is still developing faster than expected as it is pushed steadily forward by the energy of remarkably engaged people. We were able to get a lot of things done, i.e. to repair the main parts of the roof (old teachers house), to organise an impressive event called Transylvanian Brunch to highlight the value of local food production, to restore one stage of the new gate tower (neuer Portenturm) at our castle and thereby set the fundament of a first little village museum, to put our project homepage online, to collect money for further subprojects, to survive the annual saxon meeting (Hundertbüchlertreffen) and to step a bit forward into the hearts of the people in Movile.
Construction site I: Roof restoration of our Headquarter / Vereinsheim
The roof of our future headquarter is advancing fast and the most difficult parts are restored. We had a remarkably progress in understanding and learning the traditional craftsmanship of wood. Furthermore, we did a detailed measurement of all building parts. Unfortunately, we will not be able to finish the roof completely in 2016 as our capacities of manpower in situ are exhausted for this year. But, no problem, we plan to get this done by one more construction site in the first half of 2017. We were able to leave the house winterproof and to buy almost all material needed for further restoration so we can just go on with our work next year. Soon you can find our daily construction records (Bautagebuch) on our brand new homepage (see below). You regret that you didn’t have the chance to learn the fascinating traditional handling of wood until now? Do not hesitate to give us a hint so we can inform and consider you in the planning progress of the hopefully final roof construction site in 2017 – last chance!
Secondly, we restored the first stage of the new gate tower (neuer Portenturm) at our castle including windows, the door, ceiling and internal walls and thereby set the fundament of a first little village museum in a cooperation project with HOG. Opening was July 30th, the date of our Transylvanian Brunch. Special thanks at this point to our fabulous friend and partner, the cunningly skilled carpenter and master of the roof chair himself: Sebastian Bethge from Stiftung Kirchenburgen!
Transilvanian Brunch: more than 200 hungry people in Movile
On July 30th, churchfortress e.V. and the people of Hundertbücheln | Movile were hosts of this year’s biggest Transylvanian Brunch. We bravely decided to invite as many people (or even a bit more) as our capacities allow us at the moment. In the end, including churchfortress members, volunteer helpers, village partners and tourists, we had a colorful total of more than 200 happy and impressed people at our castle.
At this point we could tell you some stories about the exciting preparations with endless talks to initially sceptical villagers about unknown food in a foreign language, the shortest night of the year, the unexpected fulminating activities of the major and some 15 workers a few days before the event, the first steps towards our first locally produced churchfortress-products, the amount of advices that can be made in two weeks, the magic taste of local Transylvanian food, an exhibition of the results of last year’s university project (TU München), a market for regional products, historic architect-tours at our fortified church, endless caruza-tours or the arrival of 11 voluntary scouts supporting our castle crew in the fight against dirty dishes and their henchmen. But nooo! That would be too much text. So you can just watch some impressive pictures of photographer Alina Maria Iuga in her amazing blog: http://blog-de-cinefil.blogspot.de/2016/07/brunch-la-movile.html . You can also find a short impression from Romanian television (Yes! We were on TVR1!) on our homepage under the “Impressions” section. As you can see, the Brunch-project was a massive success and we were able to get best experiences in order to realize the idea of supporting, maintaining and grading up the value of local food production.
We want to close the TB chapter at this point with special thanks to our exemplary friends and project partners Cristi Cismaru fom Reky Travel and Jochen & Gabi Cotaru from the old-mill-project in nearby Hozman, main presenters / inventors of the fantastic Transylvanian Brunch idea itself. It was an illuminating adventure for us all and we appreciate your help!
Homepage
After massive work and by sacrificing a painful amount of nice summer evenings, we are finally very proud to present you our fantastic brand new churchfortress homepage:
http://churchfortress.org
The page will be developing in the next weeks, months and years. So make sure to have a regular eye on it in the future – It will be worth it! As international organization we have set our ambitious aim to publish in three languages, i.e. English, German and Romanian. For all those who are able to translate from German into EN or RO, we would be more than happy if you want to help us at this point! The work can be split up and done in small steps, giving something meaningful to the upcoming autumn and winter evenings. Thank you very much at this point to Alex in Lithuania, you made an awesome job and helped us incredibly this summer!
In the course of our new online presentation we also set up some official mail addresses. Feel free to write us at info@churchfortress.org or to directly contact the management under vorstand@churchfortress.org.
Saxons’ annual meeting
We were invited to join the Meeting of Saxons (Hundertbüchlertreffen), which is organized by the Saxons from Hundertbücheln every second year. At least one last man standing survived the impressive three days festival of about 150 Saxons and former inhabitants of our project village. Get some impressions at the homepage of the HOG: http://hundertbuecheln.de/hog-treffen%202016.htm
One more special thanks to all the friendly Saxon people of Hundertbücheln and particularly to Hermann Ongert and the HOG for your open minds, your cooperative teamwork, your patience with our exceptional approach of doing a project and your hospitality in the parish house or even private residences. We know that all our actions are dealing with your physical and emotional heritage and thus appreciate your support of this extraordinary partnership!
Donations
If we are not working at the roof of the teacher’s house in Movile, spreading confidence in the village, increase the value of local products, talk to different project partners or just work in our regular jobs, we also try to receive some donations. Some of us were busy acquiring donations in faraway Neustadt an der Weinstraße during their annual wine festival, others sold their bike or donated their birthday party, and yet others collected money at landscaper meetings. It’s a stringy business and you would help us enormously supporting us with any amount!
Coming up: Winter meeting 2016
Probably at one of the not too far cosy winter weekends, all members of churchfortress e.V. and all friends of Movile are invited to come together at our winter meeting. Beside the bureaucratic duties of an official association we will get together to talk about the next steps and future project development, drafting the project calendar for 2017 and enjoy a good time together with unique friends. The date will be published soon on our homepage!
So far for now about the news and progress of our extraordinary castle project.
The churchfortress project group members thank you for your motivating support and wish you a lot of energy and health for the cold wintertime!
