This was supposed to be a good summer for John and Sergiu.
After all, Sergiu told his pal John, they could earn enough by working in Maine for the summer to buy a car or pay for school.
The two young Romanian men decided to follow the path traveled each year by hundreds of other young adults. For years, summer workers from American colleges, from the Caribbean and now Europeans have journeyed to Lincoln County to work in service jobs for the tourist industry.
The two hoped for a summer in beautiful Boothbay. All they had to do was to work hard, save money and have a bit of fun, too.
It was an easy decision for John Lubsa, 21, a junior studying environmental engineering and his friend Sergiu Berchi, a recent college graduate. The two young men had worked in Boothbay the year before.
As they flew from Budapest to Zurich to Boston, they had no idea the American economy and the damp Maine weather would put a monkey wrench in their plans.
“We arrived in Boothbay and went to the restaurant and were told sorry you came here, because there are no jobs,” Sergiu said.
Suddenly, they were thousands of miles from their home, their dream of a summer job had fizzled, and they had just $200 in their wallets.
“We were concerned and panic a little bit,” said John.
Sergiu called Donna Dill, a friend. It was the only friend he knew in the region. He had worked at Hannaford Brothers Supermarket the summer before.
“She was working at Hannaford in Brunswick and she took us in,” Sergiu said. She also arranged for a part-time job for the pair at the Damariscotta Hannaford market.
Donna also knew someone who knew someone who knew Bob Hardina in South Bristol. He offered to let the two stay in his vacant garage apartment.
The Hannaford job was part time, 35 hours a week. Hardina called his neighbors and friends and they provided additional work.
“We are gardening and painting a fence and cutting grass,” John said.
Hardina also works for a volunteer group that makes homemade storm windows that fit inside the existing windows in older homes. They are made out of plastic sheeting and wooden trim.
John, the budding environmental engineer, wonders if Hardina’s homemade storm windows might become a hit in Romania.
Meanwhile the two Romanians are working lots of hours, and riding bikes to Hannaford.
John will return home in the fall to attend college. Sergiu has graduated and hopes he will have a chance to stay in the United States.
More than 90 percent of the teenagers in his hometown, Arad, attend college, but there are few jobs there. What jobs there are, pay a lot less than their part-time job in the deli department at Hannaford, yet the food and other costs are equal to those in Maine, Sergiu said.
“I want to stay. There is nothing left for me in my country,” he said.
