Everyone wants to hear that I had a revelation. That one morning, stuck in traffic, I understood the meaning of life and let go of the wheel. The truth is duller: the landlord wanted to sell the flat, and a house in my grandmother’s village, 40 kilometres from Cluj, cost as much as three years of rent.

The trial month

I told myself I would stay a month, in June, with the laptop, to see what it was like. The internet worked from day one (fibre, in a village of 400; yes, I know). What did not work: me. The first week I woke at 6 because of the rooster and stayed up till midnight because I did not know what to do with the quiet.

What nobody told you

• Neighbours are not scenery. They see you, they comment on you and, when you need it, they come with the tractor. All three, as a package.
• Firewood is ordered in July. In October it is twice the price and wet.
• “Quiet” is a whole village of sounds: bells, dogs, chainsaws on Saturdays, a wedding a month, with speakers.
• A car becomes compulsory, and so does a neighbour to share the drive to town with.
• Nobody is alone in the countryside, but loneliness is different: not the absence of people, but the absence of people who talk about what you used to talk about.

Three years later

I am writing this from the kitchen with the stove that smokes when the wind comes from the east. I have 14 hens, a freelance contract with an agency in the Netherlands and a blog you are reading. It is not simpler. It is more mine.