Day One Târgu Mureș 

As I opened the curtains of my eighth-floor hotel room on our first morning here, I was overwhelmed by the beautiful vista of Church spires, domes and red terracotta roof tiles all fringed by the wooded hills as the sun rose over this small City.  

Târgu Mureș also has its fair share of rather unsightly apartment, business and industrial buildings, this is the physical legacy from once belonging to the Soviet Bloc. Learning about the complex history of this beautiful country with its changing borders, changing Governments and the multiple heritage of its now mixed population has been a learning curve that I think will take me some time to complete but I am really enjoying the journey.  

I smiled as I remembered the meal shared at Marcsi and Pastor György’s house the night before, where there had been much laughter and warmth as we got to know each other, and any concerns about language difficulties or cultural awkwardness were all erased, as during that meal we became friends. We had arrived 5 hours late and lunch had turned into dinner. Here we met László  the Cantor turned Deacon, who helped to translate and discussed the programme for the coming week. We also met  György and Marsci’s sons Kolos aged 13, andZalán who at age 17 has excellent English and become our translator on some of our outings.  

After breakfast at the hotel we met György and László   at the newly renovated Office which serves as central base for all of the Reformed Churches in Târgu Mureș, this has been beautifully restored and we marvelled at the newly renovated stone pillars and the uncovered murals of the 15^th Century meeting room, but we were particularly impressed by the tall tiled radiators the like of which we had never seen before…we were to discover that they were pretty standard fit in old Romania… they are everywhere.  

We were taken to meet Pastor Tünde, a female minister of the Citadel Church and along with László and György went down to the meeting hall where nearly 100 older members of the congregation were assembled for a short service of prayer, hymns and a message from Pastor Tünde.  

Much to Stephen’s surprise he was invited to the front by György,  and Liz and I were extremely impressed by his cool and collected introduction of us to the congregation in Hungarian, but not as surprised as he was, I learnt later.   

This was the food bank service and here we learnt about this particular section of the congregation. All were pensioners and all trying to manage on an extremely low monthly income, they carry photocopied evidence of their pensions to the meeting where they are then entitled to a bag of food that must last them a month. Liz inspected one of the bags and saw that it contained some very basic staples: rice, oil, flour and sugar, about 90% of those who need it get this small amount. Stephen and I asked to look at some of the photocopied pensions statements – they ranged from 800 – 1000  lei which amounts to approximately £140 – £175 a month to live on, although rent is paid that still leaves little for food and heating.  The basic British State Pension is approx £140 a week, it gave us much to think about.  

Later back in the Church office, we witnessed a very poor older individual who had travelled in from a village to the town to ask for help in paying for his heating. The Citadel Church have an arrangement with people like this gentleman who they will help out as long as they see a heating bill, and we witnessed them handing him the cash on receipt of this bill. Stephen was shown the financial records and was impressed by the orderly manner in which charitable donations and other business is organised in the Church.   

The weather in Târgu Mureș  is much more extreme than the U.K with hot summers and cold winters, there is snow every winter and in difficult years the temperatures can get as low as -16 degrees. Reflecting on this later, Stephen, Liz and I thought that we had much empathy currently with the need to keep vulnerable people warm when heating bills have spiralled and the cold can be a danger for older members of the community.  

László wanted to let us know about some of the more extreme cases of real need that exist within the community, he introduced us to a member of the congregation who had brought his daughter to the Church service. The young woman Andrea is 31 years old and has been physically and mentally disabled from birth, needing constant care, she was very at home in the service and many people gave her a warm welcome. Andrea has a brother who at the age of 15 was diagnosed with a brain tumour, the community raised a very large sum of money to send him overseas to have an operation which saved his life and now this young man is living independently with a good job. But, unfortunately the story does not end there, sadly the children’s mother recently died of cancer, leaving Andrea’s father no option but to give up work to care for his disabled daughter. The Church is a real help to the family and may be their  only support. There are many, many other cases like this, as although Romania has a basic health care package, from what we could learn there seemed to be a rather unjust system within hospitals and little funding for important operations and costly procedures.  

Later we walked to the children’s home where we met our good friend Tuncsi who visited Market Harborough  in 2019, she introduced us to her co-workers Anika and Marika who are social worker and teacher respectively. The children were out at an event making muffins, so we were able to have a look around without disturbing their privacy, they had given Tunsci their permission to show us around and even tidied up their bedrooms!   

There are a mixture of reasons that children have found themselves at this home, ranging from extreme poverty in a large family, abusive relationships, mental health issues, children living on the street and other equally upsetting and immediate needs.  

Romania is a country of great divides, many professional people make a good living and manage well in a manner that we would recognise as comfortable western living, but there are also many communities who have nothing and are just about managing to scrape by.   

This is home to 8 young people currently, although there is space for 12, the majority of whom are Hungarian heritage.  There are shared and single rooms, areas for the older young people and every room has its own bathroom; at the moment there are 7 girls and one boy. It seemed very comfortable and although it is an older building and nothing is new, Tuncsi had used her powers of determination to persuade local businesses to supply new mattresses for the beds, a charity had donated a new fridge freezer, and some recent renovation work in the kitchen/diner had made a big difference to the comfort and accessibility for the children.   

Most of the children have had a poor start in life and need help to catch up with reading and writing. There is a dedicated schoolroom space which is well equipped and can give lessons in small groups or to individuals.  Marika gives them tuition after school when they get home, but as with any child, this does not always prove that popular! The added complication here is also that the Romanian language is a compulsory element of education which all children have to learn to progress through school, and as some of their children are Hungarian heritage it can be a difficulty.  

During our time in the country, Tuncsi had an incident with one of the latest children to come into their care, a very troubled young girl, she had to be taken to hospital in the early hours and when we met Tunsci the next day she was exhausted. It is a tough job and chatting to these workers about how they had coped during covid lock down made us feel very humbled by their commitment and self-sacrifice. But there are many happy stories here too, whilst walking around the town together one afternoon Tuncsi was able to point out to us some of the places that her children had moved on to once they have left the home completed their education or vocational training and become independent; A cake shop, a beauty parlour and one had left to go to study in Hungary at the University of Budapest.