Cluj and the Merry Cemetery

For starters, anyone who is reading this has probably realized I am not one of those daily, or probably even weekly bloggers. I am going to try to post all of the exciting, wonderful, (not-so-wonderful), and weird things that happen to me. That will be, when it will be.

As for my most recent adventure, I had the chance to go to the north west part of Romania for vacation with two very good friends of mine, Karly and Kevin. (Hereafter referred to as K2.) Karly and Kevin are English teachers, also with the Peace Corps, in a town that is on the north-eastern boarder of Romania called Radauti. We all met at the same time, when we were leaving the states to come here, and they fell in love. They announced their engagement last spring and I am extremely excited for them. They will be getting married the summer that we all come home.

So anyways, getting to the trip. I left Friday morning at 6 am to head up to Radauti to meet up with them and make a battle plan for where we were going to go and what we were going to do. One of my many talents is that I have the ability to sleep in almost any traveling situation. Train, bus, car, doesn't matter, I can sleep through it. It makes the seven hour train ride seem like 2. Its wonderful. So as soon as I got on the train, I did my thing, stretched out on the seats and fell asleep. I woke up at about 10 am, expecting to be over halfway there only to realize the train wasn't moving. We were still in Birlad, a city about two hours north of Galati. The employees of the train company had decided to strike at 8 am that morning and no trains across the nation were moving. Wonderful. Just wonderful. Fortunately the train did get underway shortly after I woke up, and instead of a seven hour journey, it was only nine.






When I finally did make it, K2 and i decided to spend the night in their town and leave the next day for Cluj. Cluj is one of the largest (and most expensive) cities in the country. When it came time to find accommodations, K2 come through with the random hook-up. They had met a woman last summer at an English camp and called her up to ask if we could stay with her. This lady responded, "Oh, I'm not in town this weekend, but you can stay with my fiance." So this guy, who I had never met, totally let us stay with him for free. He was really sweet and tried his best to host us and show us around the town. We got to see several different museums and hot spots in the city. Two of the highlights for me were the ballet; we got to see the ballet of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and I had the best hot chocolate I have ever had in my entire life. Holy smokes it was amazing.

We left early Monday morning for the town of Sighetu Marmatiei which is close to the Ukrainian boarder. The train ride was long, but we finally made it. From there we had to figure out how to get to the village, Sapanta, which was where we were trying to go to. We had to take a maxi-taxi (a big conversation style van that carries about 15 people or so. Correction, has about 15 or so seats. But then you cram as many people as you can in the aisles and such so the van is at twice the capacity of what it is built to carry) to get there. Once we arrived, we stayed at a "pensiune." People here in tourist locations basically open up their houses, a sort of "room for let" kind of thing to make extra money. The lady's house who we stayed at showed us the room, negotiated the price and then disaspeared for a minute; only to come back with a plate full of meat. I use the word meat loosely as one of the items was a pie-slice sized slab of pig fat. Logically I know that's all bacon is, with just a little bit of the muscle from the back, but here they don't have any of the meat, it is just the fat. It also didn't help that it wasn't cooked, it was smoked. K2 were more brave than I was and tried a taste. But we ended up sharing the rest with the local dogs.




We then went to see the Merry Cemetery (which was the entire purpose to going there). The Merry Cemetery is extremely unique in not just Romania, but I believe all of Europe. The wooden headstones are painted in bright colors and depict something unique about the person it represents. Sometimes it is how he/she died, sometimes it was about his/her profession, or even just a portrait. The little blurb on the headstone is written in first person and usually rhymes or is funny.

The next day we went to what is arguably the tallest wooden church in Europe. (Its up for debate right now because of the wooden base.) The craftsmanship and details were absolutely beautiful. We were told that monks and nuns live behind the church, but I didn't see any. Either way, the church was quite charming because of how isolated it is, and how much details went into every single square inch.

Coming home from a vacation is the worst part for me. I hate the ride home because all the fun is over and usually, that's when something happens, like you get a flat tire. This time was no exception. We boarded the train at 5 pm on Tuesday and I got home to Galati the next day at 2 pm. Naspa. Not exactly the way I had imagined spending the majority of my birthday. But the upside was I had a two hour wait in the Bucuresti train station and happened to run into several missionaries who were all coming in for transfer meeting. I got to see one of the elders who used to be in Galati, and meet some new ones.

All in all it was a great vacation and I feel really lucky that I have been able to see as much of Romania as I have.

For my pictures, you can click on the link in the upper right-hand corner of my home page.