The Unitarian Church and Other Observations

The Unitarian Church and Other Observations

We’re coming up on two years in Romania. I’ve made a list of things that we’ve become a little more accustomed to over this time. Things that are an acquired taste.

Light Switches. Occasionally one would find the pad like switch for flipping on the lights in America, but not usually, there the toggle switch predominates.

Toilets. Not public ones, we could never get used to those, but the private ones are set a little higher than what we’re used to, and they use a lot less water. After two years we’ve become accustomed to them.

Windows. The homes and apartments that have replaced old windows with modern ones – many people have – are now equipped with a thermo pane window that opens either from the top for a sliver of ventilation or from the side for a full open window. They are really good and useful, and are being adopted nation wide. Window screens though are quite the rarity and these nice windows would be better if they were accompanied by screens to keep the bugs out.

Mineral Water. We still prefer the apa plata, the non bubbles, but gradually I’ve gotten used to the unfamiliar taste and sensation of minerale. It’s everywhere and if you order water at a restaurant, or when being entertained by a Romanian, that’s what you’ll get. One brand in particular has become acceptable to us. Some Americans take to mineral water right away, others never do. Beer is cheaper than either water or soda so perhaps instead of water we should take the opportunity to drink as much beer as we can in the last few months before we go home.

Cheek Kissing. It still seems so strange to us. Nancy doesn’t like it at all but I’ve slowly become accustomed to it. You don’t actually kiss one another cheeks, unless you’re very good friends or relations. You just sort of touch cheek to cheek and pucker up or make a kissing sound, on either side of the face. It is the equivalent of shaking hands and it’s done on greeting and on leaving. Men to men are much more likely to shake hands except for very old and dear friends. Men to women and women to women it is more accepted to kiss cheeks than shake hands. Often times it gets a little confusing as to where to shake hands, kiss cheeks or simply say “Hello”. Kissing a lady’s hand is considered gallant by some – usually an older man toward a younger lady.

Eating a banana from the opposite end. Eating an apple completely, core and all. While we don’t do these, we understand and accept it.

Things we haven’t gotten used to, probably never would:

Spitting on the sidewalk. Many men here take pride in their spitting ability and like to demonstrate it in public.

Hair in an extraordinary range of unnatural colors, hues, textures and forms. Not only young women, but all women, and even avant garde young men have decorated their hair in vivid colors. Latest one I noted was a pale green to match the woman’s blouse. It’s a shame to me for the predominate natural color is black, and when it’s washed and combed it contrasts pleasantly with the light complexion and the often brown eyes of the Romanian women.

House paint and new construction of all kind in garish colors and asymmetrical shapes.

Enough of the list. I wished to add an observation from attending a Unitarian Church service in a small village of central Transylvania on Sunday. Unitarianism was founded in Cluj in the 1700s and was accepted by many of the ethnic Hungarians of the region. There is an active church seminary and an apparent vibrancy to the service that both the Romanian orthodox and the Hungarian Roman Catholic services seem to lack.

We were hosted in our visit to the village of Magyarsoros (it means Hungarian muddy village) (find it under Delenii, Romania if you want to look it up under google earth) by the Unitarian minister. The church is old and built as four rectangles attached to a center square without sign of a cross or icons or paintings. The men sit apart from the women. The men sat in one quadrant of pews, the women were spread out in two sections and that left the fourth section of the square for us visitors. There was no altar but the center of the church was open except for a table with fresh cut garden flowers. The minister preached from the raised pulpit attached to one corner of the wall of the open area where he could look down on us and we up at him.

While there was no paintings and no stained glass window scenes, each center pew and all the railings around the upstairs balcony of the church and the heavy table where the flowers vases stood were covered in hand embroidered stitchery. This was a white background with vivid blue swirls and fern patterns. Names of family members were stitched beneath the formal pattern and in the same bright blue thread and each cloth ran the length of the pew or the balcony. All in all, it made for a most quaint and homey setting and the minister's distinctive voice and delivery of the homily made for an enjoyable hour even though we understood no word of the service except for an occasional AMEN. Then both Nancy and I straightened in our hard pews when out of a jumble of meaningless syllables we hear the word Amerika and we knew that we were being publicly welcomed.

After church we had a fine visit to the little village museum where old artifacts of the life of the town are kept including wooden stilts to walk through the muddy streets of town, and then an even finer lunch of supa and snitzel and dessert prepared for us by the minister’s wife and mother. Which brings up one more thing each to add to my lists of accepted and then unnatural customs. One we've accepted: Soup or Chorba (a sour based soup- don’t worry its good, sometimes great) at least once a day. And unaccepted: the women of the household did not join us at the dinner table, but stayed in the kitchen and cooked while we ate.