28
November
2006
Glossary of terms:
hu:Nasznagy/ ro: nas = Non translatable, very honorable role at the local weddings, sort of a best man / matron crossed with a godparent. Reserved usually for financially stable married couples that are in very good terms with the newlyweds.
hu:Szekely = Hungarian ethnic group mostly living in the counties of Harghita, Covasna and Mureş in Romania, of which Robi is a part of. The older males are recognoscible by their large mustaches and the fact that they always have a pocket knife on them.
hu:Kurtos Kalacs = see this post
This weekend, for the very first time in our lives, we were invited to serve as nasznagy at a wedding. And not just any wedding, mind you, but Robi’s middle sister, Beata’s wedding. We accepted, left Timi at my mom’s and drove the necessary 200 km to Miercurea Ciuc where the event was taking place.
Friday evening was spent visiting one of the grandmas that is in the hospital for a bad case of neuropathy after Zona Zoster, catching up with the latest news about the family, getting a decent manicure (me) and eating sarmale (Robi)
Saturday morning after we cut into small portions 10 tons of cookies, pies and cakes me, the bride and Robi’s little sister went to the beauty salon. The bride was in for a make-up and getting her hair done, while Csilla (aka little sister) and me surrendered to an unexpected outburst of masochism and got our eyebrows plucked.
Here’s Betty, relaxing while her cleavage is made all tanned and shiny:
….while Csilla is laughing, not knowing that she’s about to be put on the torture table.
Soon after we got back home Csilla’s boyfriend Romeo showed up, looking like a younger and more phlegmatic version of Denis Leary.
….followed by the groom himself, who brought Betty her bouquet.
We got going to the town hall where they said their “I do”s in front of the mayor, who gave them a colorful speech about how this was an important day not only for their families but for the town itself and gave them some DVDs and a book about the county’s spas “for when you’ll get older and need it”. Nutty fellow, that mayor.
We, as the nasznagyok, took a pic with the fresh Kassay couple (it’s not me that’s so small - it’s them that are so tall)
Next stop was the church for the religious wedding. Robi dropped a quiet WTF when the altar server disappeared (she apologized later for that, although I still haven’t got a clue why she left) without realizing that even as an English abbreviation, it’s still swearing.I topped that when I wrote my name wrong on the church papers that certified the marriage. To my credit, it wasn’t on the official papers, just the priest’s reminder, but still … the lack of sleep showed.
The party contained lots of food and dancing (see the brown circles on the table? That’s what’s left of a meter long Kurtos Kalacs after meeting a hungry szekely for five minutes).
A traditional part of any wedding around here is the “stealing of the bride”. A few inebriated youngsters take away the bride when she’s not properly looked after, and release her only after a ransom (bottle of whisky / case of beer) is payed or the groom / nasznagy/ groom & nasznagy perform some idiotic task (strip on a table, carry around the mother in law on the back, shouting that they have the best mother in law on the world, sing a silly song ..you get the idea) In our case, we as the nasznagyok had to dance a Lambada. Robi didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but I convinced him to dance normally and threw in a few hip rotations for the delight of the audience. No one was harmed during the dance and so the bride was returned.
I asked Robi a few times to dance when some nicer songs were sung
……and he accepted every time, although the expression on his face says enough about the suffering I was putting him through. The man HATES dancing .
After midnight, the cake was served ..
.. and people started coming to the young couple to give them their gifts (in Romania, mostly money, so they can buy themselves something substantial from the cumulated sum). After all the money was in the basket, me and the nasznagy lady from the groom’s side retreated to a small room where we counted it and made a list with everybody’s contribution (it’s sort of an investing system - you’re supposed to give roughly the same sum when you go to their kids’ wedding). The lady was fast as lightning with the counting - turns out she used to be an accountant before retirement. After we finished, we told the couple how much they raised and they seemed pleased, so me and Robi made a discrete exit after kissing the newlyweds.
We left Miercurea Ciuc the next day in the afternoon, drove half of the distance in a thick fog which made us to take the wrong exit from Medias. Our luck was that we asked for directions two gipsy peasants that were walking on the side of the road and they were kind enough to tell us where we took the wrong turn in the town and what would be the right one, bless their hearts.
We arrived around nine PM, picked up an extatic Timi (Mamaaaaaa! Tataaaaaaa!) from her grandparents and finally went to bed around eleven, happy to be home.
Posted: on the road
27
September
2006
This weekend, a dear friend invited us to a festival in his hometown, which happens to be my hometown too. Since I haven’t seen it in the last five years, I jumped of joy with an ocasional “Zippin’ up my boots! I’m going back to my roots! Yay!” the whole trip there.
First stop was my old appartment - see that satellite dish? That’s what allowed me to watch He-Man (and Skeletor) back in ‘88, at the end of the commie era. There was no cooler kid on that side of the street.
The walk around the town was a bit depressing - there are many blocks of flats left empty and destroyed by God knows who into uninhabitability.
We had to stop at a kitschy little shop, just to take a picture of the latest trends in doll clothing…
..and extreme signs of baby doll constipation .
After that, we went to the festival’s site, where young people dressed in the local folk costume were all over the place.
There was also an exposition of Cugir’s finest products (read: guns, ammo, more guns).
They also had a hunting trophy exhibition, which got me angry at whatever hunter’s wife thought that attaching lace to the skin of some dead wild animal would make it, you know, more cute.
There was also a dusty blowfish. No, I have no idea what it was doing there either.
Hungry from all the walking, we went for some balmos (read ball-mosh - polenta with fresh cheese, butter, yoghurt, cream - incredibly yummy)) prepared in front of us..
… and then enjoyed a good show, both on the scene…
and in front of it.
Posted: on the road
21
August
2006
After the night in the tent, we woke up in a cheerful mood around 6:30, ready to continue to the best part of our journey - the three painted monasteries. They’re called Sucevita, Moldovita and Voronet, were built in the 15th -16th century and are part of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. Also, they are breathtaking.
Robi changed the position of the tent’s cover, so that it could dry on the side that was previously in the shadow..
..and we crossed the road to see Sucevita. Since it was 7-8ish, there were no tourists yet, just the voices of the nuns singing at the mass in a lateral chuch and the chirping of the birds. The garden of the monastery was one of the most peaceful places I’ve been on this Earth.
The main church of the monastery matched the garden - beautiful and harmonious, not one broken proportion in it.
The paintings showed Biblical scenes, like the Last Judgement, more speciphically the moment when the angels throw in the flames the damned:
Here’s Saint George killing the dragon (too bad the fresco is damaged by all the dimwits that felt the urge to immortalise their names on the wall):
And some not-so-biblical mermaids:
After Sucevita we went to Marginea, where we bought some black pottery from the local artisan (Gorgeous clay vases made with a technique used only there and in Mexico for under 4 bucks. Beat that.) and then off to Moldovita we were, on a road that had on both sides postcard-like views.
Moldovita was the most degraded from the three of them, but still had some nicely preserved frescoes and a museum (no pictures allowed, as usually) with Bibles, icons and priest garments from medieval times.
The fresco above my head is a religious calendar, with all the patron saints of each day painted in the proper order:
Last was Voronet, home of an unique shade of blue that didn’t pale one bit in the centuries since it was painted, and which cannot be restaurated since its’ recipe is lost and the chemists weren’t able to reproduce the composition. Good grief, to think what the idiots that graffitied their names in that marvel did.
This whole wall was dedicated to the Last Judgement, a theme near and dear to the painters in those times.
The good guys go to heaven..
..while the bad guys (read - heathens and Turks) look rather worried for their long-term future..
.. especially considering the river of fire under their legs and the hungry looks they get from the whale and octopus, giving a whole new meaning to the term “seafood”.
The trip from Voronet to Lespezi was uneventful. We were greeted with joy by Robi’s cousins and spent the evening chatting, drinking and laughing along with the kids at the way they could entertain themselves with our insulating matresses:
Posted: on the road
19
August
2006
It was raining and the air was mid-March cold when we left Agapia. The road was undullating through the trees, nobody behind us, nobody in front, just the car, the (incredibly well-maintained) road and the occasional pile of pebble deposited by the forest after an all-night rain.
We got to Varatec, another nun monastery and the place where Veronica Micle, poetess extraordinaire and tragic love of Eminescu, our national poet, lived her last years and soon after his death, poisoned herself.
Just like in Agapia, there was no photograhing allowed inside, so we took a lot of gloomy outside shots, wondered around a bit, listened to the cries of two peasants trying to wake up a nun (”Maica Modestaaaaaaaa!!”) and went on our merry way.
Next was Targu-Neamt, a small city with awful traffic. They had a fortress which I knew from my schoolbooks (where it is told how eighteen poorly armed peasants stood up for five days agains the siege of Ian Sobieski in 1686)
Yup, it was still raining and we had no umbrellas. But at least there were lots of walls and partial ceilings to protect us .
The medieval toilet looked rather .. erm .. interesting.
After we got back to the car, hopped in, waited patiently until we got out of an intersection where everybody claimed they had the right to go through first and honked accordingly and ate some breakfast, we got to the memorial house of Romania’s biggest childrens’ stories writer, Ion Creanga.
The interior was arranged to show the way it looked during the writer’s childhood:
Next to the house, there was some kind of Creanga theme-park with scenes from his memories and tales, reenacted by an army of stuffed animals (and I’m not talking about plushies - it was all carcasses, baby). My stomach revoled against the idea of entering, so we left.
We had a stop at the Veronica Micle museum (you know, the lyrical lass from a few paragraphes ago) - again, no photographing inside.
After that, we left for Suceava, where we were greeted by SUNNY! weather. There was no place to park the car in the center, so Robi snook it on an alley clearly marked “only for residents” and parked nonchalantly. We went to the local history museum, where we discovered that the Moldavian kings used Ninjas as part of their regular army…
…and Elvis lived in Moldavia after his American dissapearance.
Next on the list was the citadel of Suceava, where a medieval festival was held (souds familiar?). There were commercial banners and billboards everywhere, so we were more interested in the people that entertained the audience, like this fair beauty, narrating the introduction to a commedia dell’arte play:
Out of Suceava we went then, stopping only for a short visit to a Lukoil gas station ( “Probably the best toilet in town”) and headed for northern Moldavia, also known as Bucovina. The sun was shining, the air was hot and we were singing our hearts out until we saw that a hurricane was coming. No, really. There was this perfect blue sky with no clouds until the middle of the firmament, and from there until the horizon it was all black. As in lack of white. People, it looked friggin’ scary and we were heading right that way. 50 km later, we were in the ugliest storm I’ve ever seen, completed with thunders and lightnings. Figuring that we didn’t need our battery recharged by a jolt of electricity or the car’s shape remodeled by hailstones we parked under the roof of an abandoned gas station and waited. And waited. Then we waited some more. After almost an hour we got too bored to be cautios and left.
We didn’t have to go for too long until we saw that the ditches were full and water was all over the road . Saying a quick prayer we drove through it, hoping it won’t get so high that it’ll stop the car. Fortunately, a few kilometers later the terrain started to be shaped in such a way that water was back to the ditches, and we managed to get to Putna.
Putna is a monks’monastery, the place where Moldavia’s most revered king (Americans - think George Washington, substract some height, add more fighting) is burried. His name is Stefan cel Mare (”Stephen the Great”)
The church looke graceous, like a ship on the sea
and was in the middle of being painted with frescoes inside for the first time.
It also contained the cranium of some saint, put in a box with an opening where people could touch and kiss said cranium. Somehow, I didn’t feel the urge to immitate.
In the courtyard, we saw a lot of very heterosexually looking guys walking around in long skirts. We scratched our heads in amazement, until I remembered that you’re not supposed to visit dressed indecently, and that included men’s shorts. You could still go in if you put on one of these, given to you at the entrance of the monastery:
It was getting late, so we went to Sucevita where we were hoping to find a place to camp or a room at affordable price. Unfortunately, the prices weren’t exactly for Romanian pockets where they still had rooms, and where the price was fair, they were fully occupied. We managed to find one pension (”Casa Traian” by its name) where prices were low and only one other car was in the parking. Full of amazement, I wanted to pay in advance as a gesture of good will. After which, we stepped in Twilight Zone.
“Why do you want to pay in advance?” said the lady that shoved us our room.
“You know, in case you are not around tomorrow when we leave .. isn’t this the custom over here?”
“No .. moooom?”
Her mom appeared, and she explained what I wanted to do.
“No. What do you take us for? Who are you? What kind of people are you? Are you looking just for a sleazy place where you can fuck?” said mom, while angrily cutting some mushrooms.
“What?” said I, not being quite able to comprehend the sudden burst of hostility.
“I don’t think you are a married couple, at all.”
“But lady, we’re very much married, we even have a three years old” said I again, starting to lose my temper in the polite Transylvanian way.
“I don’t believe you, and I think you should leave. My house is not a place of perdition”
Meanwhile, Robi finished to park the car in the dark and approached the porch.
“What’s happening?”- him
“Craziness. She’s not believing that we’re married and wants us to leave. ” -me
“Yes. You should leave immediately” -the mom
“Ok, we’ll do so. No wonder you had spare rooms” -me
“I might be thought crazy, but.. ” - the mom
“That’s not a possibility, lady, that’s a fact” - me, not so sotto voce, while leaving .
“You have no shame!” - the mom
“Whatever, crazy lady” - me, getting in the car.
We found a camping spot where two other tents were put already, set up our tent at the light of the flashlight and went to sleep. Our faces were frozen by morning, but at least our bodies were more-or-less warm, dry and rested.
Posted: on the road
17
August
2006
This trip has been on my mind for a few years now. I never went to Moldavia before, but I’ve heard a lot about what’s to see there and why, so the idea of seeing it one day sat patiently at the back of my mind, until we bought the car. Then, when planning this year’s vacation I realised that it can finally become reality. I asked Robi, who was interested in visiting some terra incognita himself and so it was settled.We were going where the yellow counties grow (and an orange one, too):
We started from Miercurea Ciuc (also known as the capital of Harghita county), on a sunny Thursday morning, after we picked up Robi’s cousin - Gabor, the cousin’s wife - Katalin and their 7years old - Lorand. The trip over the mountains was uneventful, but then we reached Comanesti, Lori got sick and we weren’t able to stop fast enough for him not to throw up all over his mom and the backseat. Lucky for us, it was only water. Not so lucky for him, he threw up another 4-5 times before we reached his uncle’s home where they were to visit for the next three days. However, after the initial burst of vomit we learned to stop at the faintest sign of cough, before his neurons were even starting to signal for the mouth to form the word “stop”. We were fast, but, by Golly, so was his stomach. Final score - backseat vs Lori - 0-1.
Jus before we got out of Bacau, we noticed this monstrosity. Yes, it’s a real Audi. No, I have no idea why the owner decided to incorporate it in the house.
Gabi’s brother, Jozsef (or Joska, as everybody calls him) married a girl from the ellusive population known as Csango. They live in Bacau county, speak a medieval form of Hungarian, practice Roman Catholicism and are fierce keepers of their traditions.There are less than 10 000 of them left. The village Joska, his wife Monika and their daughter Sidonia live in is called Lespezi.We took some pics of the merry family gathering where you can see, from the left to the right: Moni, Sidi, Joska, Robi, yours truly, Gabi and Kati.I have no idea where Lori was.
After depositing relatives and luggage safely at Joska’s Csango Palace, we continued on our way north, until we reached Agapia monastery,in Neamt county. The sunny day changed into a rainy mess by the time we got to the gate of the convent..
as you can very well see here.
The candles burning for the souls of the living (”vii”) and the dead (”morti”) couldn’t care less, since they had an iron roof above them..
but the “toaca” (a piece of wood hammered a few times per day to call the believers to the Orthodox mass) looked really sad.
After visiting, we thought it would be a good time to find a place for our tent, so we asked a nun we saw sitting on the porch of her house
if she knew about any good camping spots nearby. She offered to rent us a twin bedded room for the lowly sum of 20 RON ( around seven dollars) and we gladly accepted. The room was full of icons and pictures of monastic people..
..including herself, in a much younger version..
than today, when she’s 82.
Her mind was still young though, and she was witty and talkative, so we stood up until midnight listening to stories about running away from home to become a nun, being an apprentice, going to the Theological university, surviving second world war, being a nun during commie times and going in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Too bad she considered Catholics “sectants”.
We went to bed while the rain was pouring outside and woke up an hour later to the sound of the bells tolling from the monastery tower. In the sleepy confusional state I was in, I thought there’s a flood and the bells are singnaling for the good people outside the walls to take their cars and run for their lives, like last year in Voronet. I woke up Robi and we went outside, only to be greeted by the calm sight of the nightrain and nothing else, We went to bed, managed to sleep until 5 AM when the bells started to sing again, and did so for almost half an hour. Around 6:30 we gave up on resting, and packed our bags. We had a long day ahead.
Posted: on the road
16
August
2006
I’m back. I’ve got about 650 pics on the camera so it will take one or two days to select and start uploading from them. But rest assured, I’ll show you what I’ve seen, because it was beautiful.
Other than this, we’re fine, healthy and tired. See you tomorrow, and thanks for all the very, very nice comments and letters.
Posted: on the road
5
August
2006
Tomorrow we’re leaving for a short stay at the in-laws and then we’ll see most, if not all of these:
Bacau, Agapia, Varatec
Neamt, Humulesti, Ipotesti, Arbore
Suceava, Putna, Sucevita,
Moldovita, Voronet, Humor, Bicaz, Lacu Rosu
I’m curious just how much of my reader base will be intact by the 22nd of August, when this blog will resume, and how many mails will I receive here:
(keep them coming, they keep me blogging)
See you in two weeks, if all goes well -and thanks for reading and liking this weblog.
Posted: on the road
