Prince Charles

And the 59-year-old royal’s interest goes beyond family links. He has been instrumental in injecting new life into the area – buying several properties in the 12th-century Saxon village of Viscri, 250km north of Bucharest. He’s also involved in several ecological farming projects and in the regeneration of the historic centre of neighbouring Sibiu city.
sursa:  Hellomagazine.com
Both communities were on the Prince’s schedule for this trip – his sixth in the last ten years. After checking out progress in areas he’s been working hard to preserve and protect, Charles travelled to the quaint Transylvanian village of Miclosoara, where he stayed in an 18th-century manor belonging to a representative of one of the region’s oldest families.

Count Tibor Kalnoky, who has been supervising the restoration of Charles’ properties, opened his family home as a series of guesthouses in 2004 to help the region’s development. Visitors, who frequently include European diplomats and aristocrats, arrive by horse and cart at the lodges nestled at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains.

Count Kalnoky began restoring the estate to its former glory in 1987 after returning from America where his family had fled during WWI.

A mature automotive market

Romania has seen rapid economic development since joining the European Union in 2007. The gap with Western Europe has narrowed to the extent that this market is now considered as “mature”. Annual output now exceeds 300,000 units and demand is driven not by first-time purchases but by renewals.

Dacia, an expanding brand

Renault started working with the Dacia brand in the early 1960’s. After a long interruption, Renault took the company over in 1999 with a majority stakeholding. In the space of a few years, Renault turned the ailing company into a driving force for the Group. Specializing in robust, economical models, Dacia designs vehicles primarily for new markets.

Pitesti (120 km from Bucharest) is the main production site for Logan, supplying 47 countries. Logan is sold in all European markets, as well as Turkey, Algeria, Ukraine, the Middle East and Central Africa. The plant also makes parts and powertrain components.

The Pitesti plant has ISO 14001 certification and also holds the SMR (Renault Management System) label. It currently has more than 10,000 employees. The site has been extended to boost production capacity (up to 400,000 vehicles/year in 2009).

Logan, an international success

The Logan saga started on June 2, 2004 with the official launch of the first sedan. The car was an immediate success and the range was extended: Logan Prestige and Logan MCV (estate) in 2006, Logan Van in 2007 and Logan Pick-Up in 2008. Today, Logan is manufactured in seven countries: Romania, Russia, Colombia, Morocco, Iran, India and Brazil. It accounts for one car in every five sold by the Group.

The Group has taken the Logan program another step forward with Sandero, another vehicle with global ambitions. Launched in early 2008 in South America and mid-2008 in Europe, this new hatchback will pursue its development into new markets in 2009.

With the Logan program, Renault is able to position itself on high-growth markets.

New installations

In 2006, Renault set up Renault Technologie Roumanie (RTR). This regional engineering center works primarily on the development of Logan. With bases at three sites – Bucharest, Pitesti and Titu – RTR expects to have a workforce of 3,000 at end-2009. It will also gain a test center, currently under construction in Titu. The center will have nine types of track with a total length of 30 km and around one hundred test benches designed to test the resistance of vehicles and spare parts in cold, heat and rain.

In 2007, the Group also created a styling center to design the Logan vehicles of the future. The opening of Renault Design Central Europe (RDCE) has strategic importance for the Group, given that growth is stronger in regions outside western Europe. Renault’s success in increasing its competitive edge will depend on its ability to remain close to local customer bases and to reflect fast-changing tastes on new markets.

Renault has invested €1 billion overall in the Pitesti plant, RTR and RDCE.

Romania in brief (2007 figures)

• Capital : Bucharest
• Area : 238,391 km²
• Population : 22 million
• GDP: US$ 165,980
• Roads: 153,359 km

Dacia : key data

• Romania’s leading vehicle manufacturer, with market share of 29%.
• 99.43% owned subsidiary of Renault.
• Workforce: 14,811, or 11% of the Group total.
• Production: 222,891 vehicles, or 8.7% of the Group total.
• €2 billion in turnover.

This chronicle of life in northern Romania, a place mercifully free of cars and television until very recently, is a jewel. It is a portrait of a complete world, with its glorious landscapes, its squabbling villagers – and above all the gipsies, whose main activities seem to be singing, fighting and procreation, and not necessarily in that order.

written by Robert Fox
sursa: telegraph.co.uk

Meeting William Blacker today seems like a polite first encounter with his celebrated fictitious namesake, William Boot, the nature correspondent of The Daily Beast mistakenly dispatched to cover the Abyssinian war in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. It is said that Waugh modelled Boot on the late, great W F (William) Deedes, whom he met in Addis Ababa.

The three Williams have much in common. Underneath they are men of steel, with a devastating reporter’s eye and pen. Blacker not only sets the scene but he sets it in its historical context with easy elegance. And what a context it is. The peoples of northern Romania have been ripped up, transported, tortured and persecuted by a succession of invaders and brutal home-grown dictators like the ghastly Ceaus¸escus, the Macbeths of the Communist East Bloc.

When Blacker arrives, the oldest residents, the Saxons, are fast disappearing. This German colony was established about five centuries ago. With the end of Communism, many just went, and others died, leaving their massive fortified farmsteads and churches all but empty, though full of treasures such as wonderful carved altar pieces, which have been swallowed up in the antiques roadshow rackets of Mafiosi art dealers.

Left behind are the glorious survivors, the gipsies, into whose lives our hero falls head over heels. The adventures with the sloe‑eyed temptresses, the beautiful sisters Natalia and Natashka, are among the most wondrous episodes.

Enchantment is the key word, a quality this little masterpiece shares with the writings about the same region by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Carlo Levi’s extraordinarily powerful Christ Stopped at Eboli – another sojourn in Europe’s wild places, full of witchcraft and superstition, marinated by incanto – the enchantment of spells. One wonders whether this might be the book of a lifetime, with all its youthful vigour. Every page and paragraph says Blacker is a natural-born writer and teller of great tales.

Along the Enchanted Way: a Romanian Story

by William Blacker