The Other Side

Days 39 & 40, Friday 26th & Saturday 27th September 2008 (Cath)

With our bikes safely home, we chose some transport that didn`t rely on our bodies (a taxi) to take us to the nearby town of Sapanta, to see what is known as the Merry Cemetery.

It started off just like I imagine any other churchyard cemetery does, but in about 1930 a local carpenter, Stan Ion Patras, began carving wooden crosses as headstones. He painted them in primary colours and carved on them pictures depicting the person doing things they loved, and sometimes even the way they died. The inscriptions are rhyming, anecdotal, and written as if by the person themselves, often with a touch of humour. These folk art crosses became more and more popular in the village over time, so that we only saw three or four more conventional headstones in the cemetery. After the original carpenter`s death, his apprentices (and probably their apprentices) have kept up the tradition.

I wish we could read Romanian and therefore appreciate all of the inscriptions, but we were lucky enough to hear a guide translating snippets of some of them. Memorable and moving depictions were of a young farmer hit by lightning (which is apparently a relatively common cause of accidental death here, because people working in the fields with scythes are usually the highest conducting point in the area), a little girl being hit by a car, a Communist Party member sitting proudly with his hammer-and-sickle banner beside him, and an alcoholic still clutching his last drink while meeting the Grim Reaper.

Young man who loved his car, and was fatally hit by lightning (note God issuing the fork of lightning), just when `I was ready to be married´:

Proud Comrade:

Three year old girl:

The most common portraits depicted moments defining local everyday life: women weaving or spinning cotton, men on tractors or herding animals, people praying, and families sitting together at meal tables.

It really is a place that celebrates life.

On the outskirts of Sapanta, we visited the tallest wooden church in Europe, still partially under construction (and built on a stone base, so there has apparently been some controversy over its claim to being a true wooden church), but nevertheless impressive.

To get ourselves back to Sighet, we took the plunge and hitch hiked. The driver delivered us there safely for about half the taxi fare and in about half the time, but we did have to put up with his frantic electro-folk music CD the whole way.

At the start of the road we had taken our bikes along into the valley, there is an open air Village Museum, which we visited on our last day in Sighet. Our main aim was to take pictures of the wooden gates, wooden houses and other wooden structures we had neglected to photograph out in the real villages – I think we were distracted by crazy whims telling us to find food and shelter at the time. The Romanian sense of humour shone through in the tiny sign at the entrance to the collection of about fifty wooden houses and other things made entirely of wood:

`No Smoking`

(actually this was probably a really necessary sign and likely disobeyed in this country)

It only took an hour for us to feel we`d seen everything at the museum, whereas the Lonely Planet suggests you should allow half a day, so maybe that was a good sign and we had actually absorbed more of the rural cultural scenery than we thought we had on our bike adventure.

Before leaving Sighet and Romania for good, we visited an excellent museum in town, the Memorial to Victims of Communism. It was a very sobering and informative experience. The museum is housed in what used to be a high security prison, where many Romanian leaders and intellectuals were held or died as political prisoners during the communist years. Exhibits in old cells detailed some of their lives and achievements, as well as the path to power of the communists in Romania after World War II, and then how they were finally overthrown here and in other Eastern European countries.

Days 38 & 39, Thursday 25th – Friday 26th September 2008 (Cath)

(Happy Birthday Mum!)

We arrived in Sighetu Marmatiei, the main town in Maramures, on the overnight train from Sighisoara. Our very comfortable, clean and modern couchette cabin was shared with only one Romanian man, who kindly stepped outside to smoke. So we were feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to be convinced to head straight out to explore the valley’s villages on some rented bikes.

It was beautiful riding through the countryside, overtaking buggies drawn by horses and oxen along the way. We stopped for a little picnic of peanuts and a packet of chips (and a Sound of Music moment) in a field full of haystacks with a view of the valley.

(Sighet is between those two hills)

Days 35-37, Monday 22nd – Wednesday 24th September 2008 (Cath)

Now we’re as far into deepest, darkest Transylvania as we will go. While the old town in Brasov was charming and medieval, its feel was much more familiarly European than we had expected from Romania. Sighisoara is also a modern, obviously European town, but its old town is an elevated citadel – where Vlad the Impaler was born, no less – and at night its quiet, dark, loosely cobblestoned streets have a unique atmosphere, which could get quite spooky if you let it. I let it. It was enough for me to feel that if vampires were real, they probably could live quite comfortably in these parts. There was plenty of red wine and red meat, anyway.

Arriving at our B&B, in a 400 year old house in the citadel, we were met with a warm welcome from the mother of the household, who became even more effusive and gave me a hug when she found out where we were from – “Australian people!” – as it turned out her daughter had married an Australian and had been living in Darwin. We later met her daughter, son-in-law and new grandson, as they were renovating a nearby house, and trying to work out a way to comfortably live half a year in Romania and half a year in Darwin – not the easiest climates and economic conditions to balance. They were very interested to hear what rental prices were like in Melbourne.

Our room (above) and street leading to the house (below)

Exploring Sighisoara itself was interesting, but we had also heard it was a good base for visiting Saxon villages in the surrounding countryside, where cars were still rarely seen. The man who usually ran these trips unfortunately had an illness in the family and so was unable to, but Simon from Darwin stepped in and took us to see Biertan, one of the larger Saxon towns, with a unique fortified church and a door with a really impressive lock:

(First prize at the 1900 Paris World Expo, apparently)

Although charming, Biertan was still not as ‘untouched by time’ as we had expected. Most of its Saxon residents (who were originally asked to move here by the King of Hungary in the twelfth century, to shore up Hungary’s south-eastern defences) left around the time of the revolution of 1989, as they were offered amnesty by Germany. From 900 families, their numbers are now down to about 50, with the rest of the residents being ethnically Romanian. As we stood looking out from the church grounds, we even heard a tractor in the distance! Simon was actually shocked by that, as it had been a few years since he had last visited. It seems that since Romania joined the EU in January 2007, change is the state of things.

On the way back to Sighisoara, we stopped to get our fill of natural mineral spring water (running through the pipe, not the trough where the horse is drinking). We shared the spot with several people doing the same, as well as a lady who had popped down to wash some carrots, and this horse-drawn buggy pulled over for a rest break just as we left.

(We didn’t get sick)

Our original plan was to head straight back to Bucharest and on to Sarajevo via Belgrade. However, we felt that since we had come all this way, we wanted to do Romania justice and step outside Transylvania. The Maramures region, up north, intrigued us with more promises of ‘living history’, so we spent an afternoon researching and changing our planned route. We have now decided to head to Maramures, then straight to Croatia (because we are keen to feel some coastal warmth as soon as possible again) on the train via Budapest. Bosnia will be our last destination before heading to Belgium to meet Hamish and Jen.

Climbing the gothic clock tower in Sighisoara gave us close-up views of the citadel, but we also walked up the hill at the edge of the lower town to see if we could find a panorama.

We did find good views, as well as some puppies in a pile of hay, and a jolly local man on a motorbike who pulled over when he saw us and managed to convey in a mixture of Romanian, Hungarian, Russian and German (unfortunately his four languages and our one didn’t coincide!) that he thought Al looked like ‘English football America’. When Al eventually figured it out and said ‘David Beckham?!’, he slapped his thigh, nodded excitedly, and gave Al his helmet to pose for a photo!

(He does have his eyes closed in the photo, but despite what you might expect, they were actually open when he made the ‘David Beckham’ comparison)