Tree planting reloaded

We volunteered again to plant trees. This time the location was a hill affected by landslides in the village of Ocnita just 80km away from Bucharest. To our surprise the village is quite idyllic. A small house for a weekend retreat seems a good option there, unfortunately the access road is unpaved and consists only of rocks. Also the deputy mayor had an imposing house which made us believe that something was "out of place" because the only way to make money in such remote a village is by selling land. We wonder what the land price may be in that area.

Getting there is quite an adventure, there are no signs to Ocnita Village, just to Gura Ocnitei Village which is confusing. More confusing is having a driver with a cheap GPS, even worse a driver who doesn't know how to use the GPS and plot a route. So you end up driving in circles and showing the driver, GPS functions he never knew he had on his gadget.

Here are some pictures of the surroundings once we managed to find the place:


After admiring the scenery we started to plant trees (150 in all) helped by other volunteers and local villagers. Much to our amazement we were done in about one hour so we were able to enjoy some sandwiches and a little drink (it was very warm, not summer like hot, but very warm).

The hill before the planting:

The hill after the planting:

Cute little forest, eh?
Again we left happy that we managed to help a small but hard working community. We managed to put a smile on the villagers' faces. But again, the mayor knows and sees that the hill is sliding away, he can see the road conditions in his village, he knows better than anyone else the problems facing his community so he should initiate projects in order to access funds from the EU. It's not enough for local authorities to put the EU flag on the village name sign, any village in the world can to that but only those belonging to EU countries can benefit from EU funds.