Saturday, April 18, 2009

Update, 19.4.2009

Hi my friends and readers,

This time, the update reaches you from the middle of nowhere. More exactly, from the very isolated center of the middle of nowhere. It is the best kept secret of Romania. The region I am currently staying in is called Bukovina (for any of my Romanian friends who might read this: Please do not be offended by me violating the spelling of your language, I am merely trying to find ways of writing down the sounds that I hear).

This time of year, is celebrated as the orthodox Easter. For this reason pretty much everyone I know has left Bucharest in order to celebrate with their families. My colleague and friend Iulian has offered me the great opportunity to celebrate Easter with his family.

“I will tell you what you are enrolling for: No warm water, no shower, 20k from the next city and a bathroom outside the house – bucket technology...” - “Sure, sounds great!”

After that, it was just hopping on the rail (another 7 hours of travelling for about 15Eur) and we were there.

This family is really cool. They have their own chickens, a cow and two mad dogs. Unfortunately, Iulia is the only one I can really communicate with. This is why I am taking the role of an observer, trying to find anything nice and unique.

I goes without saying that the people here are very open and interested. After having introduced myself, it was decided that I would be responsible for dinner that night. So we made Onigiri. First time ever for them to eat Japanese. I think they liked the change and this is what was important to me, as Romanians do not seem to experiment a lot with food. One of the reasons could be that extraordinary ingredients are quite high in price.

Father and son have taken me to see a couple of very cool! Monasteries. Very nice. Just Google for “Putna” and you should find a lot of pictures.

Also, last night, I had the chance to take part in the traditional ceremony which started at 11 and seemingly went on until 0600 or so. We went for the lighting of the candles. (Priests run around the perimeter and everyone lights a candle) A very magic moment so to say. This morning than, we had breakfast (Chicken, Liverballs, Cornpie, Eggs, Bread, Vodka and wine). Sunday is the end of a time of non-eating for the orthodox community.

Two very cool customs in order to end this update in a cultural educational fashion:
On Easter you wash your face with a red egg and a coin (washing means gently rubbing your cheeks). Egg stands for health and luck, while the coin stands for prosperity. If you do so, you are supposed to achieve both during the following year.
Second cool custom is that at the breakfast table and it seems in the days to come, you can indentify people you will meet in the afterlife. It goes like this: While congratulating each other and wishing luck, you gently smack two hard boiled and colored chicken eggs again each other. When two eggs meet (it doesn’t matter if you win or loose) you will meet again after part of your existence has been put a few feet under ground. Some people count how many eggs they can break before their champion egg breaks.

(I am merely observing and taling to people. Unfortunatly not many of them can explain their customs in detail. If you have any comment or correction, please tell me)

With this I will end this update with the most important word this morning:
“Noroc”

Urs

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