I was not expecting Romania to be like this..

I thought I should share with you the previous 5 days I’ve had showing 2 clients around Bucharest and Brasov because it captures well some of the nicer aspects of living here.

For the sake of protecting the innocent (!) I will change the names.  Bob, from Dublin,  has an international software company here in Brasov and as such, he has important clients from overseas from time to time here. He also has a house, which we manage for him, and hence is our client in that capacity.  One of Bob’s important clients is here this week from America. Let’s call him Bill.  Bill is an ex US army Ranger, Gulf war vet and ex chopper pilot. In his spare time, for fun, he runs 160km marathons in 24 hours. You read that right.

I picked Bob up on Saturday in Otopeni airport, one day ahead of Bill, due to arrive the next day. To kill time, we stayed down in Bucharest to await Bill the next day.  We went to visit a new Pipera apartment I have just finished, and meet the new tenants to sign a contract with them. From there, we went into Lipscani for the evening.

It’s funny who you meet! My Brasov competitor and friend was walking through Lipscani with his wife and friends, so we have a few drinks together. Watching the world go by in Lipscani is a fantastic pastime. The bars and clubs here are a match for any top international city I have visited. Places I would say I could easily compare for standard, quality of atmosphere, energy and  just general buzz that I myself have spent time in are:  London (Soho), Dublin (Temple Bar), Krakow, Warsaw, Paris (St Germain), Boston, Riga, Tallinn, Limassol and Barcelona. 

The notable characteristic between Romania and some of the other places listed is a distinct lack of aggressive behaviour or loud, drunken party-goers after midnight.  Romanian’s are calm, respectable and civilised party-goers and image is very important to them. As a result, women make a big effort to dress in the latest fashions and men conduct themselves very well, even in the busiest dance clubs and bars.  All in all making for a pleasant but still lively night and it is very common to party until 6am. When I lived in the UK, the clubs I went to (Kingston, Oxford, Birmingham, Coventry, Leamington, Cheltenham and even the west end for a while) were always defined by one common characteristic. Some of the people raced to get smashed, hammering down shots with pints and often , you could sense an aggressive tension with some of the partygoers. It would not take a lot to start a fight on one of those places. Ask the wrong girl to dance for example. I don’t miss that!  As I write this, I’m in London for the weekend & the news is awash with the ‘drunk tents’ being put together to cope with the forecast alcohol abuse for the Olympics. In Norwich for example,there are SOS panic buttons in town to call for help when parylitic with excess drink on a night out.  Hmm, & people say the uk is socially  more advanced that romania? Not in my book I spend plenty of time partying each week.

So, from the bar area, we went on to Club Muse. Top tunes, great atmosphere, full dance floor, very few binge drinkers, excellent on-stage dance display. Can’t beat it. We left at 5am!  That day, we kicked around Bucharest, which I always find depressing because it is indescribably filthy in many places. There is missing, a national pride for cleanliness of streets I feel, which lets the country down.  If I could change one thing about Romania it would be the national state of litter. A gorgeous landscape is spoiled by a single bin bag of plastic bottles.

In the afternoon, Bill arrived from a 4-stop flight from US for a week of project briefing with Bob and his Brasov team. He had limited expectations of Romania but the project is a very important, expensive one.  So he was preoccupied with concerns that the language barrier between the US based clients and the Brasov based programmers would be significant. He started the project thinking he was working with mainly Irish based programmers and was in a state of concern at the realisation he was working with Eastern Europeans on a project that would involve a massive amount of data-explanation, storage and manipulation.  Its fair to say, many American’s from the mid-west don’t have much travel experience and certainly have in idea how sharp European intellect is in the main, born of the fact we are so diverse and have so many neighbouring but different cultures.

So, I was very determined to blow his socks of this week. Not because he is my client. In fact he is a client only to my client, whose property we manage. But I find you get the best out of where you live by showing it off to a visitor. So, we took the slow drive back to Brasov, through uninteresting flatlands before and after Ploiesti.  I find Ploiesti quite uninteresting. In fact, I heard it was heavily bombed in the war and suffered 20 euros worth of damage! I’m being unfair.

After Ploiesti, you start to see some interesting scenery as you climb into Sinaia and onto Brasov. On arrival in Medieval Brasov, the 2 guys stayed in the gorgeous Casa Rozelor hotel. In my book, one of the nicest hotels in Brasov and therefore, Romania.  That night, I took the guys to Bella Musica restaurant. A fantastic restaurant built under the hotel of the same name, in the basement. Great food, even better wine and of course if like me, you like to smoke Cuban cigars, you can smoke here too. In the UK, Ireland, US etc, you can’t do that any more and given that a fine cigar lasts an hour, you have to stand outside for a pretty long time to enjoy them outside Romania.

After that, they guys retired, had breakfast in Bistro D’Arte Monday morning, followed by a long day of project definition and briefing. That night, I introduced both guys to another friend of mine here, a forester and nation archery champion. They guys talked about carbon fibre bows, arrows that travel at light-speed, how to hunt certain animals at night etc. Boys adventure stuff really.  More project work followed the next day, and in the evening, I took them to a traditional restaurant in Poiana Brasov, where they were treated to Palenque (strong spirit) and cuts of wild game meats. A traditional music quartet played at our table to complete the experience and the walls were adorned with skins of various large wild animals.

More project work followed the next day and in the evening, I took them to the excellent Bellagio restaurant on Mihai Weiss to experience the famous steak there. After which I took them to Bamboo, where we had a  pre-reserved table. The stage dancers and the music just added to the first class standard of decor in the club. Brasov is fortunate to have such top rate clubs. That along with Kasho make Brasov a great destination for night life.

Its fair to say, the guys struggled to get up this morning, but Bill went for a run upto the Brasov sign at 8am to shake off the effects of last night. Their story continues & it’s only Wednesday! Tonight, they will go to the Ex-pat meeting in Bar Ritmo before trying Kasho club.

Tomorrow, they will experience Haydn Deane singing in Deanes pub, before revelling in Times Club, an excellent venue on strada Republicii which itself, perfectly captures the spirit of living in Romania. People well turned out, partying, but drinking in moderation, through until daylight, with a packed dance floor & lots of people watching to do.

I’m of to London this weekend but honestly, I’d rather stay here for the weekend.  I do love Brasov!

Recently, we furnished a Citylights (Pipera) apartment then rented it for a Scottish client living in the Middle East and I thought it might be an interesting story to share with you.

The client bought the property some years ago, and through a Bucharest property manager/ rental agent, tried unsuccessfully to rent it for 2 years. We were asked to pick up the reigns in Feb 2012.

I explained that the apartment needed to be at least equipped with a kitchen & lighting throughout. Without that, is like renting a car without wheels. No one is going to imagine the finished article in a positive light.

After years of doing this job, ie dressing property, furnishing, renovating etc. I can say, my most important advice to you is this: remove all doubt, question marks, fears, worries, ambiguity. Make a property all that it can be, for your given budget. Houses sell for tens of millions in London with this approach & a large percentage of the profit is due to a small percentage of the overall cost. A simple coat of paint on a wall might cost 100e, but be the difference in being able to rent it at full price & not renting it at all. one empty month equates to lost rent that could have been invested in the property & had a long term, increased-income effect.

Example, adding 500e extra of furniture might mean 50 euros per month more than without, for 6 years or more. So, 500e now returns 3,600e in the 6 years, in addition to the resale value of that added furniture, or the increased value of the apartment.

Citylights Pipera – Steps to success

• Researched the market to understand tastes, budgets etc for the area of the apartment
• Interior design conducted, offer made for the furnishing. Client was unable to secure credit on the property due to him working overseas & the property being in Romania, in different countries. Therefore, we offered to carry out the work at materials-cost-only, until an income was available through rent. A bit of a gamble on my part, but I thought it better to manage a rented property than an empty one, therefore I was happy to forego any profit until a later date. In fact, out margin is probably the lowest in this business, at around 10-12%. I may well increase that to 15% later this year. In other words, for me to install a washing machine that cost 200e, it cost the buyer not more than 224e, but that includes (intelligent) shopping, overseeing the installation etc. That’s a lot of stress avoided for 24e!
• Designed furniture, installed it, fine tuned the decor
• Carried out the advertising strategy in parallel, including all social & professional networks, friends, colleagues, internet sites, banner fitment, discussions with the developer, large employers nearby, fellow & competitor agents. We were fortunate enough to find some really lovely tenants, a young couple. In fact they said ‘we really wanted a 2 bedroom apartment, but were so taken by this level of finish & good taste, that we would rather suffer the loss of a bedroom for our expected new child than suffer poor living conditions and have the extra room, as determined by our budget’

So now, the owner can finally sit back & relax as his Romanian investment starts to do its job for him, for the first time since he started the venture, instead of struggling to pay the mortgage with an empty flat in a foreign country.

I would like to stress, we at White Mountain Property do what we do, because we love what we do & are very proud of our commitment to our customers, rather than seeing them as merely means of making money. I personally install the furniture in every single apartment we have renovated or furnished. Every single detail to me is as important as the next, from the colour of the wall to the dead-level of the curtain pole, pictures or washing machine feet. Last Saturday night I was seen driving through Bucharest with a mattress & a fridge on the roof of my car. Locals thought I was crazy & I got plenty of looks. Note to self: must get dark glass fitted to save embarrassing of looking like a nomad refugee.
If you need free advice or help turning your Romanian investment around, please, exploit the fact that we are here, we care & we know what we are doing. In this, arrogantly perhaps, I sincerely believe we have little competition, for price, for quality, for taste or dependability or transparency in Romania, but I am open to any challenge to that.

White Hot Property Bargain number 2012/2

http://whitemountain.ro/blog/white-hot-deals/sibiu-apartment-march-2012/

Every spring on March 1 people in Romania, celebrate Mărțișor in Romanian. They celebrate the rebirth of life after the hard winter. On this day men offer to women (mothers, sisters, lovers, friends, colleagues and so on) flowers and martisors (the symbol of serenity and happiness); buying the most appropriate one for every person on the “list” it is a genuine struggle for them. Most of the women wear nearly every Martisor they are offered pinned to their blouse on this day and up to two weeks.

The tradition’s origins go back to the times of Thracians (also called Dacians or Getae, who are Romanians’ ancestors).  It was previously called “dachia dragobete” – the end of winter.  The pin-charm could only be made during the winter months and worn after March 1st.   In earlier times, the Trachians would hang little coins from a thin, twisted black and white wool rope.  The coin type – gold, silver, or metal – dictated the individuals social status or wealth.  The coin charms were originally used to provide both luck for the future and protection from the environment to the wearer. The ropes stood for the advent of summer, warmth, and regeneration (white), while intertwined with the constant presence of winter, cold, and death (black). The amulets were also believed to enhance fertility, provide beauty and prevent sunburn in women!  Young girls even threw the amulets toward the sun to prevent freckles!  They were worn on the wrist or pinned over the heart.  Many wore the pins until trees began to bloom, hanging the amulets in the tree branches after that point.

In modern times, the pins lost their talisman properties and became symbols of love.  The black ropes were replaced with red, possibly influenced by the Valentine practice of the western world.  The delicate wool ropes are still a “cottage industry” among the country people today. They still comb out the wool, dye the floss, and twist it into thousands of tassels.  In certain areas the amulets are still made with black and white ropes – for warding off evil!

There are a few legends that explain this beautiful tradition. Here are two I selected for you.

One of the old Romanian legend says that once in a fight with the winter witch, that didn’t want to give up its place, the beautiful lady Spring cut her finger and few drops of her blood fall on the snow, which melt. Soon on this place grew a snowdrop and in such a way the spring won the winter.

Another legend tells that there was a time when the Sun used to take the shape of a young man and descend on Earth to dance among folk people. Now a dragon found out about this and followed the Sun on Earth, captured him and confined him in a dungeon in his castle. Suddenly the birds stopped singing and the children could not laugh anymore but no one dared to confront the dragon. One day a brave young man set out to find the dungeon and free the Sun. Many people joined in and gave him strength and courage to challenge the mighty dragon. The journey lasted three seasons: summer, autumn and winter. At the end of the third season the brave young man could finally reach the castle of the dragon where the Sun was imprisoned. The fight lasted several days until the dragon was defeated. Weakened by his wounds the brave young man however managed to set the Sun free to the joy of those who believed in him. Nature was alive again, people got back their smile but the brave young man could not make it through spring. His warm blood was draining from his wounds in the snow. With the snow melting, white flowers, called snowdrops, harbingers of spring, sprouted from the thawing soil. When the last drop of the brave young man’s blood fell on the pure white snow he died with pride that his life served a noble purpose. Since then people braid two tassels: one white and one red. Every March 1 men offer this amulet called Martisor to the women they love. The red color symbolizes love for all that is beautiful and also the blood of the brave young man, while white represents purity, good health and the snowdrop, the first flower of spring.

Literally Martisor means little March: a small trinket pinned on the lapel by which winter is parted and spring is welcomed.

The same custom is found in Bulgaria (called Martenitsa), which were the lands of the Trachians tribes, south of Danube, thousands of years ago.

Courtesy Valentina Simbotin

A production team from the US film production company Warren Miller Entertainment will spend two weeks in Romania to shoot a film promoting the Carpathian mountain and winter tourism in the country. Romania’s Tourism Ministry will spend around EUR 18,500 showing the team of producers around, to areas like Sinaia, Brasov, Azuga, Balea Lac, the Peles Castle, the ministry has announced. The visit coincides with the end of infrastructure work on the Prahova valley- the area the Americans will visit – , as Romania will host the European Youth Olympic Festival in 2013. “The presence of the production team is an excellent opportunity to promote internationally the fact that Romania will host the event,” writes a statement from the Tourism Ministry.

The film produced by Warren Miller Entertainment will be distributed from the fall of 2012 to cinema halls across 80 metropolitan areas in the US and in 88 cities in Canada, UK, Germany, Austria, Australia and the New Zealand, as well as broadcast on TV and on the Internet. The film producers are known for films dedicated to ski and snowboard lovers, presenting a new winter sports destination at the beginning of every winter season.

The country’s Tourism Ministry is currently organizing public tendering procedures for the products and services included in the EUR 18.500 budget for this promotion project.

Romania has started to promote its tourism in recent years, struggling to become more visible internationally, while also working on improving domestic tourism infrastructure. The Tourism Ministry invested in new ski slopes and winter sport equipments, the most recent being the opening of two new slopes and an artificial snow installation plus a night lighting system in Busteni mountain resort, at a cost of EUR 850,000, most of which covered by EU funding.

The largest ski area in Romania was also recently opened in Poiana Brasov mountain resort in the country, following an investment of EUR 25 million. The ski slopes in Romania’s Poiana Brasov currently have a total length of 24 km and spread over an area of 85 ha. Former Development and Tourism Minister Elena Udrea said she signed EU-funded contracts worth EUR 5 billion, when handing over the helm of the ministry to her successor, Cristian Petrescu.

Qk

Yesterday was still excellent skiing much to everyone’s surprise, for this time of year. With only 8-10 people on the slopes at midday, the place was a ghost town, yet there was really fresh snow on the upper slopes. The last 500m at the bottom were a disaster & you had to walk, but apart from that, the going was good.

Damian & cleint Steve from the UK doing the last black run of the year.

Just to update people thinking of coming to Brasov, skiing here is the best for 20-30 years currently. Stacks of new snow, snowing every day heavily, & new & lifts runs open. Also with the french store, Decathlon open on Calea Bucharest, it is possible to kit yourself out completely for as little as 100 euros with basic but decent stuff & accommodation should be available on all the usual sites both in Brasov & Poiana Brasov.

Despite living here, I haven’t been skiing for 4 years & the last time I went, I hated it with a passion. I bought myself some new Carvers & almost trashed them first time out on the rocks & ice, enough for me to sell them immediately for half the price & never go back. But today I went back & I was glad I did. Poiana is a very different resort in 2012.

Use this link to find cheap flights from the UK to Romania as well as some other countries. http://wizzair.com/cheap-flights-from/GB/?language=EN

If you are looking for an excellent villa & don’t mind a 30 min drive, try this one: www.craiasabranului.com. Its very nice. I know, because I built it!

Happy travels & enjoy your skiing!

Click for weather forecast

Please click the above icon to see todays weather conditions in Bucharest and surrounding area.

Click for weather forecast

Please click the above icon to see todays weather conditions in Brasov, Bran, Poiana Brasov and surrounding area.

This is a snapshot of the weather this week in Romania. Getting anywhere is a challenge with most of the principal roads in the country either shut, or about to be.