Categories: phd, places, holiday
Tags: garden, prayer, football, Romania, language, weather, Cluj, snails, holiday, church, PhD, wedding
Date: 03 July 2006 13:21:50
OK, before I start on Romanian adventures, can I just say - bloody penalties AGAIN!!!!! :( Mind you, at least I can be grateful I wasn't in Scotland this past weekend, as the joy at England's demise would have probably been immense! Oh well, we shall just have to carry on regaling them for another 4 years about how we won in 1966. Mwahaha.
This week's lesson from the Romanian School of Surreality: don't go trampolining with wet hair unless "scarecrow chic" is the look you always intended.
So, what's happened this week?
Lots of PhD-related stuff - as I think I mentioned, that wasn't supposed to happen until later on in this trip (next week in fact), and the language school was a separate thing, but anyway information, contacts, coincidences (such as another PhD student at the school going to visit a health NGO in the same town I'll be in next week, hence another new contact) just kept appearing without me asking or looking for them. So I'm very thankful for all that.
I've also managed to do quite a bit of touristy stuff. First up, after a couple of failed attempts I finally managed to visit the alarmingly named "Cock Church", which is actually a beautiful and really interesting Hungarian Reformed church designed by an apparently very famous and noted Transylvanian architect Kos Karoly. The name comes from the fact that the predominant motif throughout (from the railings outside, the top of the tower, through to the light fittings etc) is a rooster, signifying Peter's threefold denial of Christ before the cock crowed (crew? - my English is starting to desert me after all this intensive Romanian). Apparently it is to serve as a reminder that we should not deny Christ. Inside it was really simple (in contrast to the Orthodox and RC churches here) - the guy who showed me round said that they have no altar, and no saints/icons, and communion only at major festivals such as Easter and Christmas. It's a very Calvinistic denomination apparently, but I understand that after the Orthodox it is the largest denomination in Cluj (followed by the Roman Catholics).
I also managed to take a look at a few other churches (photos will follow when I'm back home), including the big RC church in the centre (I went to a service there yesterday as the couple I'm staying with are Catholics and go there occasionally - amazing choir, but the most uncomfortable kneelers I've ever experienced!) and the Orthodox Cathedral. I also this morning took a look at the Uniate, or Greco-Catholic, church in town, and I'm hoping to get to a service there this coming Sunday as although I leave Cluj tomorrow I'm back for one day as I'm travelling over the weekend. They're a curious lot - an interesting mixture of Catholic and Orthodox - they're basically Orthodox, into icons, big beards, no seats etc etc (that's not meant to be disrespectful, just that I can only remember the superficial things right now!) but also accept the filioque (Holy Spirit flows from the Father and the Son, whereas the Orthodox say the Holy Spirit only flows from the Father) and the authority of the Pope. Plus services are less than 2 hours long! As I understand it, the denomination comes from the Austrian (I think) empire persecuting the Orthodox church in the 17th century and making them accept the authority of the Pope, and this denomination is the remnant of that. During the communist times they were persecuted and forcibly subsumed into the Orthodox church, but since the overthrow of the communists they have re-emerged as a separate denomination and many of the congregations have had their buildings returned (though even today in the paper I saw an article on how a group of Uniate churches are still campaigning to have their buildings restored to them. At least, that's what I think the article was about!).
I also took a walk up what is known as Cetatuia Hill, which has a huge cross (raised by the Uniate church) at the top, from where you can see the most fantastic views of the city. Hopefully at least some of the 20 million photos I took will do it justice. The day I went first it was absolutely boiling, so although it's not actually that tough a climb I was absolutely whacked out by the time I got to the top, but a couple of days ago I went up there again at midnight for the night view, which was fantastic. The weather that day though had been quite wet, so the walk up the hill turned into a mammoth snail-squishing session - yeuch! (I don't do snails).
I checked out Cluj's Botanic Gardens the end of last week - very nice and relaxing, although having been to Kew of course any other botanic garden is going to struggle to compete. I like though that relatively close to a pretty busy central area is this lovely calm, quiet green space, if I was here any longer I think I'd have spent some more time there.
Both weekends I've seen tons of weddings in the park - as I understand it, as well as the church ceremony there has to be a civil ceremony here, and at weekends in the summer they take place in the park (next to the trampolines, conveniently). I couldn't believe just how many wedding parties I saw, it really was a conveyor belt, but despite that it still felt like an "occasion". The actual ceremony takes place in what is for all intents and purposes the bandstand, with the mayor with his red, yellow and blue sash (the colours of the Romanian flag). The wedding party enter to a recording of "Here comes the bride", the mayor says "We're here to celebrate the wedding of Mr X and Ms Y. Mr X, do you take Ms Y to be your wife?" "Da." "Ms Y, do you take Mr X to be your husband?" "Da." "Congratulations, here's the wedding licence, sign here", and then they sign while a very militaristic sounding recording plays (I thought it might have been the National Anthem but it turns out to be "La multi ani!" ("Many years!") which is their equivalent (though obviously less specific) of "Happy Birthday"). Then the guests all leave the bandstand and form an arch with the bouquets of flowers that they all carry for the bride and groom to walk through, then they have their photos taken by the fountain which has just been vacated by the previous wedding party and the next wedding party (which has been waiting nearby) goes into the bandstand. The whole ceremony is over in 5 minutes, and just sitting there for half an hour I lost count of the number of parties I saw, either getting married or waiting to - easily into double figures. And of course, I didn't stand out at all, sitting on a park bench with all these immaculate people in wedding parties walking past whilst I looked like a scarecrow having just been trampolining.
School finished on Friday, so I meant to spend today (my last day in Cluj) checking out a few museums. However, that plan was slightly (!) scuppered by the fact that most museums are closed on Mondays. So instead I have just mooched round town, and will be going back to a gallery later which opens at 4 as, unlike most of the shops here, it does seem to be selling some half-decent stuff. I'll need to be careful though, as I have bought a number of books (mostly PhD-related - exciting stuff like the laws relating to the reform of Romania's health system) and my rucksack which I have to cart round Romania now weighs a ton.
Tomorrow I leave for the mini-holiday bit of this trip. Ian, your homework (tema de casa) is to Google "Painted Monasteries of Southern Bucovina" for some pictures (the ones I'm hoping to get to are called Humor, Voronet, Moldevita and Sucevita) and then tell me you're not green with envy :) I've been wanting to see these monasteries for years, they're UNESCO World Heritage sites, but I've never got round to it before so I'm really excited about this. I'm not looking forward to 5 1/2 hours in a boiling hot train to get there (it's still really really hot here - the word of the week is "canicula" which means heatwave) but the destination will make the journey worthwhile.
Speaking of the weather, if you have any prayers to spare do pray for Romania. While I'm moaning about the heat, large parts of the country (particularly in the north and east) have been having terrible storms and there's been horrific flooding with many deaths and people missing - the pictures on the TV are just heart-breaking. Here in Cluj we're protected by the mountains so we've largely escaped the flooding, but in particular the poorer villages, with their less-than-perfect roads and building standards, are being very badly damaged. Lord have mercy.
I'm not sure when I'm next going to have internet access, as the town I'm staying in till the weekend is pretty small. I'll try to update again next week sometime, but if I don't (and even if I do!) please could you pray for me the end of next week? (13th-15th July) I'll be in Bucharest those two days, and I'm a bit nervous about it. I've been there before, but don't really know it, and to be honest it's not that nice a place and I don't really feel very safe there (my nervousness is also not helped by the fact that everyone who doesn't live there, ie everyone I talk to here, hates it and keeps banging on about how horrible and unsafe it is!). So just a few prayers for safety would be appreciated :) Also, the people I want to see in Bucharest haven't answered my emails so I don't want the two days to end up being a wild goose chase! The afternoon of the 15th I fly on to Moldova for a few days, so I should be OK then.