Hollyhocks

Looking through the front gate

The City of Floresti

City of Floresti

Each workday I travel from our apartment in the Manastur district of Cluj down to the edge of the city and there find a rogue taxi to ride out to the village of Luna de Sus, a total trip of around 12 kilometers. Between Cluj and Luna there sits an area called Floresti. It’s bigger than a village or town, but has no center so is not really a small city. It lies on the main east-west highway between Cluj and Oradea and there is heavy traffic along it’s main thoroughfare.

The highway is dusty and smoky from the inefficient burning of fossil fuels by the steady stream of trucks, buses and cars. Floresti is a long, thin jurisdiction, most of the houses spread out along the main highway. There are a few concrete apartment blocks in the place but mostly it is small houses each with a private courtyard.

The name Floresti means place of flowers. Upon first impression, the name doesn’t match, but if you sit up high enough and look over the metal gates and cement walls, you’ll see a very high proportion of yards with interesting collections of seasonal flowers. It’s as if people take the name of their town seriously.

Romanians, generally, take a great pride in their private spaces. They have a tendency to let the public spaces fall to ruin, but their private spaces are well maintained. Every day, on my way to and from work, I strain to see over the barriers between garden and roadway. Currently phlox and holly hocks are blooming. The former mostly white but occasionally other colors as well; the latter in shades of red and pink. Window boxes are filled with ivy geraniums. Inside the courtyards what grass exists is trimmed and neat. Occasionally a brave gardener will try and extend their flowers beyond their private confines to the area between roadway and gate, but the dust and dirt from the traffic makes that a task doomed to failure.

My own area in front of the apartment block here in Cluj is planted with impatiens and a few begonias. The area is heavily shaded and just about any other flowing plant would stretch and become scraggily. There are some perennial sedum and hosta in the bed that have filled in green. It’s not up to the standards of Floresti, but our neighbors in our block smile at my indulgences and seem to like the idea of an American out pulling up weeds in front of the apartment.

The Armenians in Gherla

The Rubens

Assimilation

Assimilation

Armenia is a small country tucked into the side of Turkey. For fifty years prior to the nineteen nineties it was a part of the Soviet Union but before that it was an independent state with a tragic history. In 2001 it celebrated 1,700 years since officially adopting Christianity – the first country to do so in 301. For most of those 1,700 years it has been invaded and harassed by its larger neighbors. Successive waves of Armenians, forced from their homes, have traveled around the world. Many successful Americans, particularly in the sports, business and the arts, are of Armenian descent.

In the past week a group of 10 Armenian agriculturalists have been hosted by my organization, the Organic Farmers Association of Romania. What was most interesting about their visit was our trip on their last day to the small city of Gherla. Gherla was established around 1700 by a group of Armenians who had been evicted from their country fifty years earlier. There is a church just off the central square of the city built in baroque style and is Armenian Catholic.

Armenians generally are orthodox but this part of Transylvania was under the Hapsburg rule, thus they were serviced by a Catholic priest. The story is that after several false starts the Armenians agreed to become Catholic but with conditions – that the service be conducted in Armenian, that the church documents be written in Armenian and that the priests could marry.

Today, 300 years after the founding of the city and without significant new inflows of migrants from Armenia the community has been completely assimilated. In town there is said to be only one old man that can speak Armenian, all others have forgotten it. In church, the service is now done in Hungarian, but the hymns are sung in Armenian, although no one knows what the words mean. The family names have all been romanianized and so are not traceable to the original founders. It is said though, that the hair color of the inhabitants of Gherla is different than of the rest of Transylvania and the noses are bigger, both reflecting their heritage.

The church has two interesting paintings. One, a depiction of the first King of Armenia accepting Christianity in 301 and the second, a Rubens, which the church keeps being separated from, but now hangs in a side gallery. The first picture was featured prominently in 2001 as the church celebrated those 1700 years of Christianity with a special service. There were 1,000 people for the mass and the sermon was in Armenian, although no one knew what was said, everyone mentioned afterward what a wonderful sermon it was.

The Rubens spent most of its life in England where it was taken after capture from France - I'm not quite sure what it was doing in France. Returned to the church in 1908, it was removed by the Nazis in the Second World War. Returned to Romania in 1952 it resided in the art museum in Cluj until someone realized that it was the same painting that had been taken from Gherla. It was in 1999 that it was finally rehung in the Church. It is similar to others painted by the master and shows Christ being lifted from the cross.

The mayor of Gherla, population 22,000, came out to greet our guests and the townspeople seemed genuinely pleased to have them visit. The Armenians appeared happy with the reception but I wondered about the loss of the traditions of their cultural outpost, swallowed by time into the larger community. Much of Europe and the world define themselves by their ethnicity, almost as if a tribal notion. In America, ethnicity is more a curiosity than a statement. Gradually even racial features will become blended. Our guide yesterday pointed to his hooked nose and stated proudly, “See, I am Armenian.” He was speaking in Romanian although his preferred tongue was Hungarian.

It took 300 years for Armenian Gherla to become Hungarian/Romanian Gherla. Perhaps another 50 or 100 to turn completely Romanian (provided the boarders don’t switch again). Perhaps it will be 300 years, or 500 years or 1,000 years before everyone becomes what may be called European, but it has been 1,700 years since the country or Armenian adopted Christianity so, it would seem that we have time. One thing I suspect though, that when the world remixes and reblends itself the common language will be English. Perhaps it will not be an English that you or I will recognize, with prepositions altered and phrases twisted, but it will be English, because more than any other language, English adapts.

The Faces of Maramures

An Entrance to a House in a Village

A Wooden Church of Maramures

Maramures

Maramures

The region of Maramures is located in the northern portion of Romania, across the boarder from the southern Ukraine. All the guidebooks speak of the rustic charm of the county, saying that the folk traditions of the country are best preserved there. What we found on our visit was a very scenic, nearly unspoiled countryside. The traces of the communist era are much less evident here, and the people seemed much more friendly.

The neighboring Bucovina area is famous for its painted monasteries- I wrote of them a few blogs ago; in Maramures many of the highpoints are the wooden churches. Built close to the same time frame, the architecture is significantly different, although much of the interior paintings are similar. Another landmark of the region is the merry cemetery. Here, a bright fellow got the idea that instead of interring people beneath somber tombs, that they’d be better remembered in a lighter vain. So on each headstone he wrote a poem referencing the life work, or in some cases, the non-work of the deceased. He even prepared his own headstone which he now lies beneath.

We stopped for lunch at a Pensiune, what we would call a bed and breakfast, where we enjoyed a wonderful traditional meal, but the most interesting thing was that as we were walking over the bridge to our table we noticed a dead tree hung with fifteen or twenty cooking pots. We were told that signifies having an unmarried young lady on the homestead. We joked with our guide, who was an unmarried young lady, that perhaps her aunt had come and prepared the tree in her honor.

Another custom of the area is the wooden gateways. These are all intricately carved gates and doors to one’s property and a status symbol. The richest houses in the village have the largest and most ornate entrance.

There are very farms in Romania as we know them. People live in villages and walk or drive their horse and wagon out to the fields to work. Nearly all the fields are managed with only hand labor. Occasionally the family horse will be hitched to a plow or tiller and its help with quicken the work, but most jobs are done by hand. Hoeing long rows of corn with the preferred triangular hoe and scything the hay using an unbent handle are a perpetual summer employment for all the family. In other parts of Romania, tractors can be seen, especially in the southern sections of large acreage, but in Maramures we saw very few.

Altogether an enjoyable two days. I’ve taken a good many pictures, but will only share a few here. If you’d like to see more pictures and are not on my picture distribution list, let me know and I’ll put you on the list. Contact me at snowridge2000@yahoo.com

The Merry Cemetery

Parcul Centrul Cluj in Vara

Field of Poppies

Gordon Blue

I have written previously of our trials learning the Romanian language. We are now half way through our scheduled term of service and I’ll give an update of my observations gained in the struggle to master limba Romana.

English is the language of world commerce. When a citizen of the Czech Republic wishes to communicate with a Romanian, English is the language they use. On our trip to Greece with a tour of Romanians, English was the language used to communicate with the Greeks. English is everywhere. It is on the movies on TV, with Romanian subtitles; it is on the radio pop music stations, it is on the billboards. We come from a country that will occasionally run an ad campaign written in French to signify a classy product. Here, English is used to signify quality.

Obviously Nancy and my language skills are sufficient to get by. We’ve been here thirteen months and we’ve managed. However, at no time have we ever felt comfortable with the language. We envy the other volunteers that can speak naturally and exchange more than the simplest of ideas in Romanian. Part of our trouble is that we are older and the mind doesn’t absorb quickly. I have to be told over and over again a word before I begin to remember it. Part of the problem is that we have each other to speak English to. We don’t practice Romanian enough. Part of the problem is that we know, in the long run, it’s a better reward to have the Romanians practice their English than we learn Romanian. Part of the problem is that it’s just a lot easier to let English be the language of choice.

In my mind I’m still translating everything. My ear hears a Romanian word, my mind has to convert it to the equivalent English word. I’ve never been a fast thinker so by the time I’ve understood the word, the speaker has gone on five or six words further. For me to speak, I first compose the sentence in English, translate it into Romanian, worry about the verb form and gender agreement, and then speak it. If I have sufficient time, I usually can make myself understood, but it is too slow a process for convenient conversation.

I do my best talking when I’m working with a speaker of English that is roughly the same level as is my Romanian. I stumble through the Romanian; he responds in slow English. I don’t have to translate what he said, so I can think of what I want to respond back in Romanian.

The director of my organization is of Hungarian extract. That’s his natural language. When he speaks Romanian he does so very distinctly. I can understand him better than many other speakers. For a long time the office conversation was held in Hungarian but for the past five months Romanian has been spoken more often than not. It’s been a help, sitting by my computer listening to dialogue in Romanian. I like to listen to telephone conversations because I have the pauses when the respondent is speaking to figure out what was being said at our end.

Many Romanians speak excellent English and most of them are modest about it, but perhaps, because the ear is forgiving and the eye is not, they do not write good English. Prepositions in particular do not translate exactly. Our word from would be translated as din. But din means other things as well and is used more often. When sentences get written in English there are all these ‘froms’ that look awkward. And try to explain the difference between witch and which. Other phrases get a literal translation which doesn’t match up with the English equivalent. At a restaurant the other evening on the English side of the menu was the item, Gordon Blue (chicken with ham).