May Days

With Easter, the Juni Pageant, Europe Day, and sunshine, the month of May has gotten off to a good start. Since I got back from Easter break a week ago, I've had a constant flow of friends coming to town (five Fulbrighters, and others), and a constant flow of festivals to celebrate.

May 1 was Labor Day, and the first day of the "Days of Brasov" festival. So throughout the country a lot of people had vacation, and in Brasov everyone came to Piata Sfatului for the music and dancing. The festival culminated with the Juni Pageant on Sunday, May 4. I spent the whole morning at a corner table on the terrace at Restaurant Gustari, from which I had a great view of the crowd and the passing parade.

Yesterday, May 7, was something called Europe Day, which to me sounds just like an excuse for another party. We were lucky to happen upon it as we followed a group of school children—dressed up in traditional costumes—to the main square.

In Vino Veritas

The last leg of my Easter trip took me to a village called Cotnari, in Iasi county. If you've been to Romania, you know the name from the wine. Well, that's why I went.

According to the Lonely Planet, "There are cazare (room) signs in windows throughout the village." I disagree. And so does everyone in Tirgu Frumos who I talked to (about nine people), the people we hitchhiked from Tirgu Frumos to Cotnari with (two people), the Cotnari residents who they asked (a bar full), and the four people we stopped on the road in Cotnari, as well as the two people they called to ask. But by the time we believed all these people, it was getting dark, almost 9 p.m., and we had just walked to the top of a hill. Did I mention that Cotnari is just a little village, surrounded by nothing but 500-year old vineyards?

Out of despair, we walked into a Magazin Mixt to ask the shopkeeper if she could help us out. She ran outside and yelled the name of the store's neighbor, and he popped out to find out what was going on. After a call upstairs, he came to tell us that unfortunately he didn't know of a place where we could stay. He asked us: "Why are you here? How long are you here for?" Probably perplexed that anyone would come to their village without a guide or without someone to visit. The answer to the second question: one night. The first? Vinul.

Suddenly we found ourselves swept into the warmest villa in Cotnari. Dorel, an Italian who's called Romania home for over 40 years, and Maria, his wife who lives upstairs, adopted us. Their children are grown and gone—Mihaela closeby in Iasi, and Daniel off in Venice. They fed us with the treats from their garden and kitchen—cozonac, cherry jam, cascaval, and some meaty treats (which, of course, I missed out on). And the treats from their backyard—a vineyard. Though Cotnari is known for its sweet white wines, Dorel's vin alb was perfectly dry.

The next day, after Maria served us "cafea" (actually tea, coffee, bread, jam, and an apple), Dorel whisked us off on a personal tour of the Cotnari land. In his Dacia, of course. We were chased by a dog who ended up outrunning the Dacia, though the Dacia did make it up a winding hill to the meadow at the top, occupied only by Dacian ruins (the people, not the cars) and grazing horses. We got the keys to a summer palace that is now empty but owned by the Cotnari wine company, and got to poke around the facilities surrounding it with the winemaker on duty.

When it was time to go, we said our pe curand's and our va asteptem's. Maria called me princess one last time, and we promised to send copies of the photos. I promised to come back someday to dance on the third floor terrace and drink more vin alb.

Dorel holds up grapes

The Dacia lacks horsepower, and this horse knows it.

Winemaker

Dorel

Dorel, me, Maria, Chad

With ruins in the background, Dorel, Chad, the Dacia, and a horse hang out on top of a hill.

Ciprian's Bucovina: The Painted Monasteries

Moldavita Monastery

The northeastern region of Romania is known as Moldavia, not to be confused with the Republic of Moldova (across the river from Moldavia). In Moldavia, I went to southern Bucovina (northern Bucovina is just across the other border in Ukraine). The big attraction here is the Painted Monasteries. The churches at these monasteries have painted exteriors in addition to the painted exteriors seen in most Orthodox churches. Most of them were painted in the 1500s.

Since it's probably the only time in my life that I'll make it to these monasteries, I sprung for the private guided tour. This was entertaining only because the guide was ridiculous. Before leaving Brasov, I read about him in the LP and googled him...with questionable results. I decided to skip on that. But the hostel-arranged tour turned out to be with him. We had a big van, with lots of empty seats, so we picked up hitchhikers. For lunch, I suggested a place that someone had recommended, but he "never tries places [he hasn't] been to." I also tried to take a picture of the monastery painting he was telling us about, but he cut me off and said one of his few rules is that people wait until he's finished talking to take photos. I think he made these rules up as he went.

Later he the day, he asked me to marry him, and told me to say no. I switched seats with Chad so I sat by the window instead of next to the guide.

Moldavita Monastery south wall

Beyond Moldavita Monastery

Humor Monastery

Humor Monastery south wall

Inside Humor Monastery

Sucevita Monastery surroundings

Sucevita Monastery

Sucevita Monastery - Jacob's Ladder

Last Judgment fresco at Voronet Monastery

Voronet Monastery East wall

Voronet Monastery

18 Wheels of Steel Across Romania

Hitchhiking is a fairly normal way to get around in Romania, though not for tourists. But when it's the only option you have, it's one of those things you just have to do. We had no idea how or where to hitchhike, since there was no one else standing on the side of the road. We tried waiting at a bus stop with our thumbs out for a good 15-20 minutes. Clearly everyone saw us, but no one stopped. We decided to walk a little further down the road. Some Romanians with maps asked us if that was the road to Lacu Rosu, and as I answered affirmatively, I asked if they were going there, hoping we could catch a ride with them. They didn't have space. But just then a nice car pulled up, and rolled down the window.

We got a ride with a Moldavian man who is some sort of agricultural engineer. From our conversation I understood that he works with tractors, updating them or programming them. He also told us about his family—I think his wife is Hungarian. Meanwhile, outside the car was the winding road going up into the mountains, surrounded by tree-filled cliffs jutting out over rolling hills. We saw at least one group pulled over at a shoulder to have a roadside BBQ.

As the road reached its climax we started descending into the Lacu Rosu area. Romanians and Hungarians ran around parking lots and down the road, while we got stuck in the traffic caused by attempts to slowly swerve around the potholes that filled every stretch of this road through the mountains. Our new friend asked us where we wanted to be dropped off, and of course we had no clue, so he left us on the side of the road. He refused any payment, even gas money, though I knew this was special treatment for us as it's usual for hitchhikers to give a few lei, so roughly one dollar.

So, we made it to Lacu Rosu despite the holiday. But, it was still a holiday and every hotel and pensiune was booked! Not to mention the steady drizzle. We got lucky and finally found one place with a room, and a heater. Our hostess didn't speak any English, except for the word "money," of which she was very fond. Our next door neighbors had the music pumping in the afternoon, and we joked about getting to know them so we could get invited to the party. Little did we know...

It was very cold and wet outside, but we went to the outdoor food market by the lake to get some grilled (or fried, in the case of my french fries) food and beer, search for a set of playing cards, and be in the midst of all the vacationers. The lake, it turns out, is not red, but green. It gets its name from a myth about a landslide that killed a number of people, thus filling the lake with their red blood. This is why I was happy to see that it was not red.

Back at the hotel, we tried to ask our hostess if she knew when there was a bus east to Piatra Neamt. She understood us but was apparently afraid of answering us in Romanian, so she found some other guests who could speak some English. She showed up at our door a few minutes later with two sweaty, young, fat, and clearly drunk Romanian men. These were our next door neighbors. They spat out a few words in English and informed us that they would take us to Piatra Neamt the next morning at 7 (it was already nearing midnight at this point). Then they invited us over to their room for some drinks.

Their room held a large boom box with speakers, a laptop, a nearly empty 2 liter bottle of wine, some dirty cups, and in 2 corners, beds with a wife under the sheets. One of the women (Caty) was pregnant. The husbands (Dan and Marius) had a microphone attached to the laptop and sound system, not so much for singing as for announcing things, like dedications such including "For my American friends from Seattle..." The men spent the next hour or so drinking and dancing, trying to sing, showing us photos, and making fun of each other with the same repetitive dialogue:

Dan: "He is drinking."
Marius: "It is joke."

This was the explanation for everything that they said.


The next day Marius paid the price for his drinking. We left at 7 a.m. sharp as promised, but as we wound our way through Bicaz Gorges, aka "The Neck of Hell," we had to pull over three or four times for Marius to vomit or pee on the roadside. It was kind of gross, but at least I got a chance to take some pictures of the mountains and valleys.


In Piatra Neamt, we said goodbye, as we were heading north to Suceava and they back home to Galati. We caught the bus to Suceava, and there eventually found our overpriced hostel. Getting ready for the tour of the monasteries, I was a little sad to realize I had re-entered Tourist Romania (evidenced by attempts to make money at every turn), having left the Romanian playground in the mountains.

Car ride through The Neck of Hell:

Szekely Land

On the day Romanians celebrate Easter, I packed my bags and headed off to Hungary. Well, actually just the Hungarian stronghold in Romania. But the point is, it wasn't Easter there.

First stop was Sfantu Gheorghe, a city just half an hour or so from Brasov. We jumped off the train because the Lonely Planet claimed that the town would be in the midst of a festival on that very day. Walking out of the train station, we discovered the difficulty of navigating a town that doesn't have a map in the LP. Soon, though, we were on our way to the town centre, passing by the circus that was in town for the week. In the centre, we found the Szekely National Museum, which is basically the national museum for ethnic Hungarians in Romania. Highlights included the animal room...

At the museum in Sfantu Gheorghe

A local informed us that the festival would start during the week, so we had some lunch and made our way back to the train station (on the way we tried to sneak into the circus, but the last of three guards caught us...alas, no circus).

Our destination for the night was Miercurea Ciuc (something like "Wednesday Market"). This is another majority Hungarian town, and considered to be one of the "hearts" of Hungarian Romania. It's also known for the beer Ciuc, so of course we found the castle that inspired the Ciuc beer logo. We also found an infamous hockey statue—ice hockey is huge in the area. We tried to make our way to the Franciscan monastery that (according to our LP) was supposed to be 2 km south of the city. But we couldn't find it, and the only person we asked didn't know about it.

Miercurea Ciuc loves hockey.

The plan was to take a bus the next day, so we went by the train station at night, hoping to find the schedule. We had to take flash pictures through the station windows in order to see what the sign said. With the times noted, we felt pretty confident about our bus the next day. However, given that Monday was also a holiday (Easter Monday, which apparently Hungarians celebrate even though they don't celebrate the Orthodox Easter Sunday), there was no bus that day.

So we had a few hours to kill before our train north, and hopped in a taxi with hopes that he could take us to the Franciscan monastery. To our surprise, he took off to the north rather than the south, and we found the monastery! We got a quick tour (in limba franceza) from a sweet old nun, and some help from the lady selling coffee before heading back to the train station for the train north to Gheorgheni.

At Gheorgheni, we again were told there were no buses because of the holiday. Our next plan was to hitchhike. So we walked down the strada spre Lacu Rosu, with thumbs up and hopes high.

These birds make their nests on poles.

Church in Miercurea Ciuc.

Sfantu Gheroghe. It's blue.

Slujba de Inviere

Last Saturday as I walked to the midnight Easter mass, it felt like it was Halloween. It was nearly midnight, yet the sidewalks were full of people. As I walked past my neighbor's gates, they quietly opened and out popped old ladies linking arms. People headed in every direction to the church of their choice.


Outside of each Orthodox church, the crowds gathered, waiting for midnight, when the priest starts the mass and lights candles. The light is shared, person to person. I was expected the light to spread from the center to the sides in a fluid motion, but instead most parties designated one person to go get the light and bring it back to their group.
After the candles were lit, we listened to the prayers over the loudspeaker. Apparently the mass goes on for several hours, but we only stayed for about 30 minutes. On the way back, we popped into another church, whose crowds had already headed home, and joined the bunice and bunici for the mass.