A year ago I was living is Siwa Oasis, looking forward to a busy tourist season as there had been no troubles in Egypt for some time. As for Libya our neighbor… well nothing happens there.
I had no idea 2011 would work out completely different to how I had planned. Penny and the kids went through not one, but two revolutions, one one either side of Siwa as I watched from Bucharest; my new home, where I spent the entire year building a paparazzi team.
The kids managed to get back to Romania in March, Penny staying on for six weeks whilst Angus and Claudia lived with me in Bucharest brushing up on their Romanian before heading up to Maramures for the summer.
Penny not happy with building one, built two houses this summer with the help of Maria and Nicu our team in Breb.
I kept going with my projects here in Bucharest. We had 11 front pages in August and www.workintraveller.com, my travel site for people who want to carry on their careers whilst workin their way around the word, is now finally in development. It’s a huge project and will take many years to complete, but for now, at least it has started.
We opened Somewhere Different – Transylvania in October and are staying in the Maramures mountains for the winter to let Angus and Claudia go skiing and to finish of another villa in the village so we have a capacity of 8 for next summer. We have gone from a building site to being a fully licensed Pension.
Bookings in Egypt are now coming through and Ludmila is once again busy with guests and putting up the Christmas (palm) tree in the villa as I write.
Sasha has left home. She came back for three months this summer to sort her blood sugar levels out and has managed to get her self a job, a house and, well maybe this has something to do with the fact that she found herself a boyfriend as well. She’s 19 and living in the UK with her man and all is good.
We went ice skating in Bucharest last night, Angus and Claudia enjoyed it a lot and Penny… I never knew she couldn’t skate.
We were invited by a load of medical students to go for a drink with them.
“ So, Angus, Claudia, what have you been up to this year?” one of them asked.
“ Well we started out in Egypt” Claudia said “and, you know it got quite bad as Mum ran out of booze and had to start making her own and…”
The students and me listened as they told their story. “ Wow, you guys are like travellers” Mo said, a tall black student from London.
Angus replied “ We’re not like travelers…” he looked over at me and smiled “We are travelers.”
And that’s what’s so great about it all, we are till on a journey, still exploring and finding out things about ourselves we never knew before.
Mo was intrigued with Angus’s reply “ So, Angus, what’s your plans for 2012?”
“ We’ll I will be taking my GCSE’s, but apart from that, dunno” Angus looked at me, and again smiled “Dad?”
The plan next year is, whilst all you guys are busy saving the world from destruction, we’re going to sit it out up here in the mountains in Transylvania and the Sahara desert in Siwa next winter where you all welcome to come and join us and enjoy the simple life.
Well that’s the plan anyway… 🙂
