Rural Romania

Suceava - Humor - Voronets - Moldovita - Suceavita – Sighetu Maramureti - Sapanta - Budapest - Pecs - Zagreb

Jo napot kivanok! (Hungarian for hello, quite difficult a language)

FIRST, A JOKE:
European Heaven:
-English Police
-German Mechanic
-French Chef
-Italian Lover
-Swiss Government

European Hell:
-English Chef
-German Police
-French Mechanic
-Italian Government
-Swiss Lover


WILD BEAR WATCHING IN BRASOV
Left Brasov after going bear watching, which involved driving up and down the street littered with garbage bins, the boundary between civilisation and the forest. Eventually we saw what we were waiting for; dogs barking announced the arrival of a mother and four cubs who were looking to scavenge the bins for food. Unfortunately, the bears became frightened and ran off when dogs came running out barking, and everyone’s flash photography went off.


SUCEAVA - JAMES SORDID LOVE LIFE SOAP OPERA CONTINUES
Spent the night in a corn field in the middle of remote Romania with a New Zealand girl under the full harvest moon and the stars. Quite romantic really. We actually first met in the hostel in Sibiu, which Iulia pointed out I was flirting with (I really wasn't - It was annoying how Iulia would not leave her horrible boyfriend for me (Romanians are very apathetic, tending to put up with what they're used to), yet treated me in a way as if i were hers.) It was unexpected to bump into her in Suceava, which is a rural town in the Moldavian region north east of Romania.

Stayed in the "High Class Hostel" run by an energetic enterprising girl named Monika, famous in Lonely Planet. The hostel is just out of Suceava, in a little village surrounded by corn and maize fields, tractors, and hay stacks. Got addicted to her famous home cooking and stayed longer than planned. She gave me the last night and dinner there free because I stayed quite long. I'm going to do a revamp on her dreadful website in return, shouldn't take more than a day to fix up. She's also considering coming to Oz for the winter and I’ve invited her to stay with me in that case but I guess we'll wait and see...

Suceava isn't the most exciting city, there's an old fortress and a few churches. In fact the picturesque journey through the dramatic white cliffed forested Carpathians was more interesting. The main reason for being in Suceava was to see its famous painted monasteries of the Moldavian Bucovina region.


THE PAINTED MONASTERIES OF HUMOR, VORONETS, MOLDOVITA, AND SUCEAVITA
Monika drove us around the Moldavian region to visit the four main painted monasteries in the area. All of the monasteries were covered with painted Byzantine murals, the paint itself containing a substance scientists haven't
worked out how the paintings have remained so well preserved against the elements.

Humor is the smallest and predominantly red, and lacking a bell tower as it is a family monastery as opposed to the royal monasteries of the other 3.

Voronets is blue with a fascinating Judgement day mural containing a scroll of pagan Zodiac signs being rolled up by angels signalling the end of time.

Moldovita is yellow, and is the most picturesque and grand of the 4, with a well tended flower garden looked after by the nuns.

Finally, Suceavita, green, with a interesting mural of the ladder of virtues. All these monasteries inclosed within a fortress courtyard complete with towers, all located in some isolated part of the countryside (which isn't hard to find in Moldavia).


SIGHETU MARAMURES - BACK IN THE 18th CENTURY
Maramures was pretty cool, a rural farming area, they still wear traditional dress, lots of horse drawn carriages, hay stacks scattered in the vast fields, and towns built completely out of wood. Hate to see what happens in case of fire. Here you can see farm animals who are able to walk themselves to the fields in the morning and return back to their homes at night, unassisted and unaccompanied. There's also a status thing about having over the top enormous intricately carved wooden gates in front of their houses.

Anyway, there were two reasons for visiting this remote northern area of Romania, to see the Merry Cemetery, and the see the old wooden churches famous in this region. The churches was as you expect; brown, made completely out of wood, several centuries old, with very steep wooden roofs to ensure snow does not collect and collapse the
roof in. All this usually surrounded by a beautiful peaceful cemetery.

The Merry Cemetery is a cemetery that is famous for it's colourful humorous tombstones depicting a scene of the persons life and death. There are ones showing the person in their trade, also several ones showing how the person died, such as in a car accident. This is part of the traditional Romanian way of laughing at their troubles, even death (though this is probably more older generation, the younger are just chronically depressed).

Anyway, I thought, do I go to Cluj, Oradea, or leave Romania for Budapest? Coin flips and convenient bus schedules and voila, finally made it out of 18th century Romania after a long bumpy overnight bus to Budapest, quite a change being in a big city after such a long stint in small villages and towns.

I've already been to Budapest and seen the sights, so I may just chill out and go to the clubs at night that I missed last time. I'll write about that next email.

Viszontlatasra!