overdue update

Greetings one and all,
so the big update is that we are staying in Romania post-peace corps. We have decided to take a leap and start some new things on this side of the pond. Alecia will start a small business in wild gathered products, Chris will manage the community foundation he started and we will both do some editing and consulting on the side. More on all that in the next blog but in the meantime, Wish us luck!

Once again we’ve let our blog go into hibernation… I’d blame it on a busy schedule, but who doesn’t have one of those? So, here’s a rough over view of what we’ve been up to over the past few months.

Back in February, we took a break from our rigorous work schedules and attempted to have a bit of fun - Szekely style.

As any of you Catholics may remember, Carnival fell in February this past year. While the festivities in Szekelyfold may be less well know than those in Brazil, Venice or Lousiana - as we discovered, people here know how to get down.

We actually attended two Carnival Parties or Farsangi Balak as they are called here. The first offered a more urban take on the tradition. People in crazy costumes, lots of wine and unicum (a Hungarian herbal liqueur - similar to jagermeister) and dancing until dawn. It was interesting to note, that the most popular costume for the middle aged male set was a nun’s habit. In general it was very similar to most adult Halloween parties in the US - there were hippies, geishas, cross-dressers, monks, oil barons and Chris and I, dressed as a pig and a half-woman-half-dragon (you’ll have to guess who was what - as we have no pics of that night).

This may sound odd, but these costumes were our attempt to be culturally appropriate. Our characters were both based on Szekely characters. The pig comes from the character of Agressziv Kismalac (Aggressive Little Pig) who stars in a very funny series of jokes. The dragon lady or Hazi Sarkan (House Dragon) is what people here call overbearing housewives.

For our second Farsangi Bal, we were invited by our friend Csilla to join her family in Malomfalva, a small village outside our town. Many villages here - especially the Catholic ones have a village celebration to mark what we call Fat Tuesday - or the last night of Carnival and the beginning of Lent. I think the idea is to have a raging all-village bash to get any desire for partying out of your system before the sober period of Lent.

This party was quite a bit different than the first one we attended - first of all, there were no costumes. Well… kind of. All the attendees are supposed to come in traditional dress. The only people who are excused from this are the older generation. I think this is because traditional cloths are now passed down from parent to child and when a child becomes and adult, a parent gives them the final (largest) set of cloths, leaving none for themselves.

To show up in contemporary party cloths is a bit of a faux pa. To arrive without traditional cloths means one of two things - either that your family doesn’t have the pride to hold onto their traditional cloths, or that you are too poor to own a set. I naively asked the price of a new set of men or women’s cloths, and was informed that including the boots, it could run over the equivalent of $2,000! No wonder families pass these things down from one generation to the next!

Lucky for us, we were each able to borrow a set of cloths from Csilla’s family. As you might guess, Chris’ outfit presented the greatest challenge. Prior to the party, we were informed that Csilla’s grandfather had been ‘a big guy’ and therefore it should be no problem for Chris to fit into his cloths. The boots - maybe not, but the rest of the outfit - no problem! When it came time to get dressed, we quickly discovered that a Szekely ‘big guy’ and an American ‘big guy’ are quite different creatures. This distinction is important when it concerns a pair of white wooly pants - that are already intended to be tight fitting. After about 20 minutes of huffing and puffing, and the whole family tugging and tucking and giggling like school girls we managed to pack Chris into grandpa’s embroidered flannel pants, an approximation of the tall black Szekely riding boots, a white button down (that with the sleeves rolled up almost looked like it fit) and a smart black vest. I can’t vouch for his comfort (he sweated and itched all night long), but in the end he looked very nice.

Fortunately for me, Csilla’s sister was kind enough to let me borrow her traditional cloths. She and I are about the same size, so even though red isn’t really my color, I managed quite well. It was funny, the party was great, but the whole process of getting dressed up may have been my favorite part. It was a bit like stepping into an old timely movie. The women’s outfit is rather complex, with several layers, hooks strings etc. It’s impossible to dress yourself, so you end up with all the women working together, laughing, joking, telling stories about past parties and just being women.

You can’t really see it in the pictures, but under the apron, skirt and vest I have 3 layers of starched cotton underwear. All with bits of lace and embroidery. There’s the fitted slip, so when you are dancing (Szekely dancing involves lots of spinning) no one can see your skivvies, then a flouncier over-slip - that to me looked like a nice sundress. Over that is a long white blouse - sort of like a night shirt. Then all the bits you can see, the skirt ties on, then the apron, and finally the vest to hold it all together. The only thing I was missing were tall black boots. In this respect, I had the same problem as Chris, it was impossible to find anyone with size 8 1/2 feet to borrow from.

By the time we’d negotiated the muddy roads (imagine a cross between the grand canyon and a swamp filled with quicksand) the party was already going strong. The musicians pounded out traditional tunes on a violin and synthesizer and we did our best to join the whirling couples on the dance floor. Lucky for us, there were a few less traditional dances that could be enjoyed by all - most notably the ‘chicken dance’. Yes, the one where you make chicken clucking motions with your hands, then flap your wings, then boogie down and skip in a circle with your partner. It was great fun, and much more appropriate to our skill level.

The traditional number I enjoyed the most was the men’s dance. All the men in the village who are under 40 or so get into a sort of a conga line holding onto the backs of each others’ pants. The guy in front brandishes a big traditional twig broom. They then snake around the room to raucous music, stomping kicking and kissing women. From time to time the man leading the line swats at the men behind him. The point of this abuse is to try and break the line, everyone behind the break then is ‘out’ and stands around clapping and laughing while the shorter line continues the dance. At the beginning this seams innocent enough, with just periodic wallops to the backside. But as the dance goes on it gets faster and much more aggressive. By the end the guy in front is really whaling on the poor bastards behind him, dust is flying, and belts are breaking as the conga line swings out of control. If there’s some point to the dance, beyond macho strutting, it was lost on me, but it was a hoot nonetheless.

In general that night was one of the best experiences I have had here. Part of that may just be my love of dancing and playing dress up. There are a lot of times though, even in at home in their own country, one feels isolated. Politics, upbringing or our overpowering American individuality separates us from our neighbors. It’s nice sometimes to dress a whole village in their grand parents’ identical outfits, not worry so much about conversation, and do the ‘chicken dance’.

As winter ground to a close in Transylvania, we finally had the chance to partake in one of Romania’s most famous - or perhaps I should say infamous traditions. The pig killing. This is exactly what it sounds like - a family kills a pig, butchers it, and enjoys every last bite. Usually this happens around Christmas, especially in Orthodox areas.

The reason this particular tradition has gotten so much press, is that it was initially banned by the EU (the EU is not enamored with barnyard slaughter, or anything which might be misconstrued as cruelty to animals). Fortunately, Romanians retaliated, and at least for the present, have the practice recognized as part of their religious/cultural heritage.

So, you’re wondering, what really happens at these pig killings? My answer - a hell of a lot of hard work! (Though, if you’re very squeamish, you may want to skip down a few lines.)

First, the pig is escorted into an open area (quite happily I might add). It is then rolled over and held by several family members while the major artery in the throat is cut. The blood of course is caught in a bowl for making blood sausages later on.

This process, while obviously dramatic, was surprisingly quick and less upsetting than I’d anticipated.

Once the pig was quite dead, and the bleeding had stopped, they brought over the blow torch. The butcher then proceeded to burn off all the hair and blacken the body of the pig. In the past, this was done by piling hay on top of the pigs body and setting it on fire. The blow torch is a modern time saver (even with it, this process still took almost an hour). Once the pig had reached the proper state, it was scrubbed all over with a stiff brush to remove the char. Once it was squeaky clean, one ear was sliced off, rolled in salt and shared among the group of us. Mmmm delicious…

The pig was then moved to a table to be butchered. Before that could start though, we had to test the pig. This meant balancing it on it’s stomach, and attempting to balance a row of shot glasses full of palinka along it’s back. If this is accomplished, the pig will be good. After downing our palinka, the real work began. The butcher and a skilled neighbor began dismembering the pig, and everyone was assigned a task. This included cooking, intestine cleaning, and sausage making. And of course eating! Our afternoon meal consisted of scrumptious brain soup, a traditional dish called letchi-petcsi (pork in a paprika cream sauce) served with polenta, fresh bread, pickles etc.

This whole process started at about 8 in the morning, and by the time we left at 10 pm there were still another 30 kg of sausage to be made. Whew! Talk about a full day.

We had a great trip to Scotland and England in April. There we saw a couple friends who joined us here in Transilvania last year for the Summer Experience and spend about a week with Janet and John Hazle who are relatives of Chris. We started the journey with a couple days in London exploring Kew Gardens, the Tate Modern and walking around the downtown area enjoying English. Funny enough we managed to get our first sun burn of the year in England after a long and wet spring here and found that after 2 years in non-enlgish speaking countries, the respite of native tongue was delightful.

The next week was spent visiting the best of the Edinburg area with Janet and John. We began with a visit to the coast in Fife where we found our only bad weather of the trip hanging around the Scottish Fisheries museum. Other highlights included a trip to John's model rail-road club, hiking in the hills, visiting Edinburg, eating lots of great food and enjoying hours of conversation with Janet and John.

We came back to a beautiful spring here in Harghita county and have been enjoying the first of the spring produce as well as some long walks. We will be moving into a new house soon and we should have a garden there. So, lots of new beginnings on our end. We hope you are all well and drop us a line if you have time!

Cheers and love,
Alecia and Chris

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