End of Days - Day Twenty Two

This day, the Friday, was my last day at the sanctuary, last time with the worker, last time with the dogs, the foxes, the wolves, the mules and also the bears!

On the road to the sanctuary

Before heading to the sanctuary, we stopped by as usual to see the dogs at the water treatment plant, this time I decided to get involved and also feed the dogs. I had some left over bread, that wasn't particularly soft when I initially bought it so gave it to them.

The first one I had to say goodbye to after giving him some bread

It was a relatively calm and relaxed day. As it was both Estelle's and my last day at the sanctuary, we had decided to buy them some chocolates to share amongst all the workers and wrote them a thank you card, in English, which was then translated by Marian before we entered the sanctuary.

Walking through the sanctuary I managed to get some interesting shots of the bears in action.

Two bears fighting, one standing up, the other appearing to leap forward at the other one.

Huddled together around the food. The one at the back was warned off later on by one of the other bears. But he still got his food eventually.

Giving the card and then saying a few goodbyes at the beginning of the day to ensure we didn't miss anyone before they finished for the day, we proceeded with the delivery and sorting through the food. They were expecting a large meat delivery in the afternoon and so we didn't use the usual crates but just sorted through the fruit and veg leaving them in the boxes that they came in.

After lunch, Estelle and I started picking up the leaf mounds from previous days and putting them into black bags. It was probably the hottest day I've had the pleasure of experiencing this whole trip which made it a little more challenging than usual, though rather a hot than wet day to do this.

Estelle throwing acorns over the fence for the bears to find later on in the day

Throwing even more acorns over, this was the sixth attempt by Estelle to capture me and the acorns in one shot

The meat delivery then came so we continued for a little while longer with what we were doing until the van was empty. We then took a short break to say goodbye to Ilona (sometimes does the tours and is the daughter of Magaret and Simon/Simeon - we were calling him by his surname Sandor) and Marius (delivery driver). And take some photos.

From left: Mr Sandor, Estelle, Ilona, Marius, Me (Wulf)

Some goodbyes said, Estelle and I headed back up the road to finish collecting the leaves and this time had some help from Birgitta. At around 3pm, we decided to finish and head back to the main building to say our final goodbyes to the workers still around. All but one, Sandor, were just heading off themselves and offered to drive us out of the sanctuary but we wanted to walk through the sanctuary, one last time, say goodbye to the bears and other animals. We packed up our things and then said our last goodbye to Sandor. I spoke to him in Romanian thank you for everything to which he reacted in a pleasantly surprised manner. It's possible I've left him suspecting that I'm actually fluent (I'm not).

As we made our last walk back, we took photos of the bears, wolves, fox and mules (as well as a donkey that was just there roaming free. Saying goodbye to Mia was my final encounter, I stroked her and let her grab onto my foot before heading off, Estelle did the same.

Walking over to say goodbye

Mia expressing her love for us as she holds on to Estelle's foot. She didn't want us to leave

When we made it back to the apartment we soon headed back out as Razvan brought the new volunteer to meet us all, we had a large shot followed by a small shot of Razvan's father's polenka. Pretty lethal alcohol but something you must try as it is a Romanian thing to do. It's alcohol fermented from plums and is usually taken before, as opposed to after, a meal.

Following the usual welcome meal held at Da Vinci, an Italian restaurant, we headed to The Oldies club for a few drinks. This club is a nice small bar, located in the basement of a building. They play what they are named, oldie songs.

Day done, two days left till I leave Romania.