A talk with George Ciprian Brînzea, biology teacher, about countryside living in the Romanian Carpathians
Two weeks ago, while exploring pine buds in Buzau Mountains, I had the great pleasure of talking to George Ciprian Brînzea, a biology teacher, about how people were living in that area, about farming, the beauty of green pastures, and therapeutic plants. Authentic Romania remains rural. These places stand for the essence of our country, its main real resource. The true wealth is right there, in the eyes of those people who, through good and bad, keep working their land with both joy and humility. I often wonder how would Romania look if their work was supported and valued? What would our country become if we focused not only on large urban agglomerations and we truly gave credit to our rural traditions. Why is it that foreigners are so pleased with the traditions of our villages and we keep dreaming of other countries? Romania is here and now and has so much to offer. When will we love ourselves more? I invite you to read this interview and find out more about life in the Buzau mountains.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: What does the Curbură area of the Romanian Carpathians – namely Păltineni-Nehoiu in Buzău county have to offer?
George Ciprian Brînzea: Nature always has so much to offer, we just need to know how to value and use its’ gifts. Resources are mainly related to agriculture. The area is covered with orchards and pastures, the latter having an incredible compositional and plant diversity. Being quite far away from urban agglomerations, the area has the advantage of being less polluted although modern life has left its footprint everywhere. Even here, far from big cities, we still find quite a lot of trash and degradation caused by human presence. Whether making a stop to have a beer a barbecue or a smoke, people leave their footprint. The area is rather undeveloped economically which can be an advantage on one hand. Less pollution like I was saying. On the other hand, though, it is a disadvantage as locals have only limited income sources.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: How many inhabitants are there in this area?
George Ciprian Brînzea: The town of Nehoiu also covers the surrounding 9 villages and hamlets. Hamlets have fewer houses, part of them abandoned as they are hardly accessible but we still call them villages.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: Why abandoned?
George Ciprian Brînzea: Inaccessibility, ageing population….Young people migrated towards more central villages close to Nehoiu, towards bigger cities or even abroad. As far as I know, we used to have around 11,000-12,000 inhabitants (Nehoiu including surrounding villages), but I think the numbers went down because of that.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: So people around here live off farming?
George Ciprian Brînzea: Well they live off the wood and everything related to the wood industry, especially sawmills, timber. There are also small tailor shops and subsistence farming. There are no businesses here that could process raw materials coming from small family-run farms. Fruit processing and orchards are declining. They are old, and have low yields, animal breeding is not doing great either, rather on the downside, with all the outputs being exported. Live stock is sold to slaughterhouses from larger towns since there are none nearby.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: What is the size of the land you own and work with your family?
George Ciprian Brînzea: Our situation is quite different. We own around 50 hectares. Half of the plots are in the plain area, across from Buzău, in Bărăgan, those are mainly for grains, and the rest (around 25 hectares) are right here, at maximum 5 km from Păltineni, in Fundătura, Curmătura and Bădârlegi hamlets, consisting of pastures and meadows. Working on these plots means clearing, mowing, hay making and animal breeding (sheep and cows).
Ioana-Adina Oancea: I know you don’t only work in farming, you are also a biology teacher. Where do you teach?
George Ciprian Brînzea: I teach in some of the schools in the area: the middle schools from Siriu and Pănătău and the technological high school in Pătârlagele.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: What about your students? Do they come to class? Are they interested in learning?
George Ciprian Brînzea: My answer always starts with it depends. There are some good and less good students, so things are not simple. Being “less good” has multiple causes. Kids are clearly in direct contact with everything that happens around us, but part of them grow up lacking values. In their own world, in their universe, they don’t see values, they are not convinced that working, being rigorous, graduating from as many education levels as possible brings personal success, “accomplishments” like the elderly used to say. Most of the values underlined by our society are, from my point of view, non-values. Part of these kids, given their poor financial situation, don’t do well in school. How can you study with an empty stomach?
Ioana-Adina Oancea: And how do you motivate them?
George Ciprian Brînzea: It is a case by case answer. I cannot give you a universal recipe. Part of them are interested in studying, in school. I even had the pleasant surprise of hearing one the girls saying this semester, “Sir, I want to go to the biology school competition, I really want to!”, but now, given the Covid-19 situation we had to give it up. We will do the work for next year. There are also kids who really aren’t interested in learning, you just cannot make them study because they simply don’t care for it.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: They’d rather do the farming work?
George Ciprian Brînzea: Well, let’s take these kids from Siriu, starting with the 5th and 6th grade they go to work the stones, the paving stones. They tell me “I make 100 to 150 Ron every day working the stones”. Very often, my biology class has also a more general education side. So I talked to them and I asked them if they see themselves doing this work their whole life and they said “I don’t know” but “for now I make good money”. It is just a short-term choice and since their families cannot see further than tomorrow because of the situation in our society, then they don’t know either how to see things differently, which leaves us, the teachers, quite helpless.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: Has the Covid-19 impacted the people living in this area?
George Ciprian Brînzea: There hasn’t been a major impact up to now. But we are all feeling it, one way or the other, yet at least in our area there are no big effects. Circulation is restricted and the downtrend of the national economy can be felt here too.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: As a biology teacher, what does your area offer in terms of therapeutic plants?
George Ciprian Brînzea: Oh, it has so much to offer! It depends on your interests. You will find shrubs such as rosehip, hawthorn and sea buckthorn and herbaceous plants such as St John’s Wort, yarrow. There is quite a variety of wild plant species because of all those untouched meadows and part of these plants really expanded.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: And in terms of forests?
George Ciprian Brînzea: This is a transitional area from hills to mountains and we have mixed broad leaf-resinous forests, dominated by beeches and pines.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: How about the Siriu dam? I know it’s of the outmost importance for the community.
George Ciprian Brînzea: The Surduc-Siriu hydropower project was supposed to include, besides the Siriu dam, another dam on Bâsca Mare, in Surduc. The works for the Siriu dam started in the 70s and it became operational in the 90s. It considerably minimized the flooding risks downstream of Siriu, so from Siriu towards Buzău. Especially in springtime, when it rains a lot or when big amounts of snow melt, floods occur in Sita Buzăului-Întorsura Buzăului area. For us, this dam is very important because it is our source of drinkable water. Most of the inhabitants of Nehoiu (except for some surrounding hamlets and villages such as Curmătura, Fundătura, Bătârlegiu de Sus) get their drinkable water from here. There is an EU funded project to expand this water supply to the other downstream villages.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: Does this area attract EU funds?
George Ciprian Brînzea: As far as I know, not really. Because of the lack of information of the potential beneficiaries and also of their reluctance to kick off such projects, myself included. I had a project idea but it remained just an idea because of my previous experience with EU funds, on a different kind of program, human resources training. I could see for myself how difficult it is to run such a project, mostly because of the sometimes exaggerated requirements of the management authorities.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: And what about tourists, what attracts them, what is there to seen?
George Ciprian Brînzea: There are very nice places to visit in the area. First of all, Lacul Vulturilor (Eagles’ Lake) or Lacul fără fund (Bottomless lake), in Siriu area. Mălâia, Penteleu mountains. In Colți there is the Amber Museum. In Berca, not far away, the Mud Volcanoes. The Living Fires in Lopătari. The Concretions (growing stones). Unfortunately they are not promoted enough and not easy to access either, there is no appropriate signaling although tourist information centers exist. Then we have several monasteries on Buzău valley, and other highly spiritually charged places in Colți, Aluniș, Bozioru, with the cave settlements and churches.
Ioana-Adina Oancea: What do you want to leave behind for your family? I know you have two boys, a wonderful wife and two dear parents. What about your students?
George Ciprian Brînzea: They say parents don’t give life but education. I hope to educate Luca, my youngest son, who is currently discovering the world, to just be a good human being. He will turn 3 on the 1st of June, and my oldest, Iustin, will turn 15. I told my students and I keep telling them that they need to learn how to work with information. We live in times where information is so accessible but we need to know where to look for it and what to do with it. This is what I want to teach them. And also maybe a bit of love for Nature, for all that is living. Biology is by definition the science of life.