Blogs from Transilvania, Romania, Europe - page 29

Part five of my Transylvania series. There is something about getting to know a place. The more often you visit, the more you learn of its web of life and death. I have been to the the village of Szentpeter four times now in 8 years. Over those eight years I have seen many small changes in the village. During this visit I became more acutely aware of the circles of life and death in a small village. In 2005 I interviewed a young man named Arpod, he was 31 then, and he still lived with his mother. During our interview I asked him about his dreams for the future. He talked about getting married...about raising children....and he had a sparkle in his eyes when he shared. This time when I visited, he had a wife ... read more

I climb one of the lush green hills surrounding a small village. I am on one shoulder of the Homorod valley in Romania and looking either way I can see a necklace of small villages stretching out for many kilometers. There is an order here you don't see in many places anymore. Each village sits tight and compact on the land. Each is surrounded by fields that sustain the people as they have for hundreds and hundreds of years. You can be lulled into thinking this could never change. I am in Transylvania; an area of Romania surrounded by the Carpathian mountains and populated by a nationalistic Hungarian minority. Things are peaceful now but for decades the brutal Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu threatened to destroy this beautiful necklace. His plan was to bulldoze these tiny villages. ... read more

I am back and just settling into life again at home. My visit to the Homorod Valley and Switzerland/Italy was exceptional and I have a story or two to tell for sure. But first I must do a bit of catching up around home. Sigh....just because we go away on vacation and forget all our work and worries doesn't mean they aren't there when we get back. Just a few tidbits though, to bring you back to my blog in the coming days.... ....once again I participated in a bit of wood fired bread baking in the village....but this time it probably won't show up on U-Tube. ....I touched base with a lot of old friends including an 89 year old wood carver who has already carved his own Kopjafa....Hungarian grave marker. ....Village ... read more

Our first impressions of Bucharest, capital of the former Eastern European state of Romania, on walking out of the airport terminal was that it was a bleak, foreboding place where you had to watch out for yourself and your belongings at all times. Having been warned about airport taxis preying on new arrivals, we decided to take our chances on the public bus. Once on board, the locals regarded us and our backpacks with attitudes ranging from complete indifference to mild amusement. About halfway through the long trip into town, it began to pour with rain - not ideal considering that we had to walk some distance to our hostel once we arrived in the town centre. Sensing our concern, a friendly, twenty something year old woman struck up a conversation with me and helped us ... read more

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 ... read more