Two Festivals

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Two festivals
Chris: Taking a break from our increasingly full schedules, Alecia and I speant the last two weekends visiting two very different festivals. The first was the Rosia Montana Fan Fest to raise awareness about a proposed mining project and the second was the Homorodalmas Barlangfestival (read Almas Cave fest in the little village where Agora works).

Rosia Montana:
The Project: the Rosia Montana minig project proposal aims to put Europe’s largest open pit, cyanide extraction, gold mine in place of a mountain in the western carpathians. There has been a gold mine there since Roman times but the extraction techniques proved too costly and the mine was pretty much closed several years ago. There is a Canadian corporation who would like to come in now and use the practice of cyanide leaching to extract gold from the rock. The technique (and pardon me, I am not an expert on this subject) uses cyanide and ends up with lakes of it. A similar project in the northern part of the country ended badly when such a cyanide dam burst and proceeded to kill all of the wildlife for several hundred miles of river. On the bright side, for the people in the village of Rosia Montana, this project would create up to 200 jobs. On the downside, the corporation would build a dam over their several hundred year old town, destroying the churches, homes, acheological sites and everything else.

The Festival: for 3 days an estimated 10,000 people came to the mountainside above Rosia Montana where a village named Rosia Poiana used to be before the mining removed it. Largely it is a music festival but there are some aspects of awareness raising about it. There were 4 tents with the green folk, a Greenpeace van and some art projects. Once in a while one of the rockers on stage would yell something along the lines of „F-you Mining Corporation” to the hoots of the young punkers in the crowd. The concert went from 4 p.m. to about 4 a.m. every day and in the mornings the place was pretty trashed. The volunteers got to pick up bottles, cans, paper, poop and the rest of the detritous one might expect from a fair ground, but I found intriguingly out of place at an „eco-friendly festival.”

Alecia: Other than the music, the highlight may have been the combination climbing wall and hay jump. For a few lei you could climb to the top of a wooden tower and leap aprox. 3-4 stories into a giant pile of hay. I was dead set to try it until the guy coaching the rock climbers went, and reported that the price was a bit steep to break both your legs. Perhaps if the volunteers with the pitch forks at the bottom had fluffed the hay a bit more vigourously bettween jumps I would have risked it...

Chris: Perhaps you can tell I am a bit sceptical about the effectiveness of this extravaganza. On one hand there is a lot of publicity around the fact that there is a big festival here. On the other, I am not sure any of the young rockers left with any real sense of the gravity of the proposed project. Greenpeace sat in the corner and waved a flag once in a while. Some of the old villagers wndered in and out and made money selling beer and playing music. I realize this may be my bias, but I would have maybe asked for some money at the gate to fund some protection projects, maybe to help the villagers fight or at least a petition. It is hard to mix fun festival and educational opportunity but as I hope you see from the pictures, it is a gorgeous area that in my opinion does not need one fewer mountain at costs that may be considered enormous to the environment and the people.

The future: hard to tell. The corporation has been ordered to complete an environmental impact assesment. It has done so but has not released the matter to the public. Many of the folks there expressed their opinion that the government is between a rock and a hard place. The rock being that the corporation’s lobby has been active and the hard place being that they will take a major black eye with the EU should they accept this project. The EU does not favor this type of mining and would not allow it in a member state. With Romania scheduled to join in January 2007, the coporation has little time to make this go through but a lot of money and investment.

The other festival:
The Homorodalmas Barlangfestival, year 3, was a very different story than Rosia Montana. Friday through Sunday, Alecia and I were involved in various aspects of the festival from picture hanging in for the photo exhibition to cooking. In attendence were locals, villagers from the sister village in Hungary, a couple Peace Corps volunteers in addition to ourselves and folks from the surrounding villages in the valley.

Friday involved hanging the pictures of bats and local flora during the afternoon and a bat lecture at night (it was also European bat night). The caves in the gorge have 17 species of bat and we had various activities for kids teaching them about bats and their role in the environment. We also went on a bit of a bat hunt with ultrasound equipment but I skipped most of this in favor of enjoying an array of pig products from the large swine that had been elected for slaughter this year. Fresh blood sausage, liverwurst and regular sausage with mounds of mamaliga, fresh potato bread, cabbage salad, pickles and fruit. Very tasty stuff.

Saturday morning we caught a micro bus out with the freshly arrived Peace Corps friends and my counterpart. The weather was a bit misty as we bounced over the 30km of hilly dirt roads out to the village. Greeting us in town was the local marching band in all of their traditional finery out to wake everyone up. After setting up our tents in an orchard surrounded by pear, apple, plum and walnut trees in fruit, we all made our way to the local Unitarian Church for a nice ceremony including choir. This was followed by the dedication of a new statue in the center of town with band (who despite their best efforts played together most of the time), a group of school kids as recorder band and various officials. The monument you see in the pictures but what you do not see is that the flag stones will be laid in the shape of the Old Hungary. The one that included Transylvania. Ahh the pride is strong out here… Other highlights included a hand craft show with some beautiful local painting, weaving and embroidery.

Saturday night was also the harvest ball. This event is organized by the 18 year olds and involves every teenage from any reasonable disatnce coming in search of their to be spouses. There is dancing, young wine, fist fights over girls (half of which are in traditional dress, half in mini skirts and stilletos… My counterapart said it is exactly how he remembered it. We missed most of the festivities however as the micro-regional director had us over for dinner. Grilled sheep, chicken and of course everyone’s favorite - - grilled smoked bacon fat. Really, come visit, you will see why it is lovable. While there we met their resident hedgehog. After shedding a tear for Petunia (thank goodness she’s in good hands), we learned that their name here also involves the word pig. It is more understandable than with the African variety hedgehog we had. This one was not only larger, but actually made grunting noises that sounded quite piggish compared to the dainty Ms. Petunia (barring when she had respiratory infections).

Sunday dawned quite early to the next door neighbor begging on his knees for us to come over for tea and coffee. This was in some ways quite reminiscent of many of our Mongol experiences as we had no clue what he was saying 80% of the time in his toothless Hungarian. He and his wife were sweet and treated us very kindly to coffee and palinka. He repeatedly kissed Alecia and Monica and motioning that they had big hearts and we were always welcome. After this carried on for an hour or so, we had to catch the bus to the gorge for the cooking contest. Amazingly, said relic of mass transport, made it without getting stuck. Until we arrived. Then there was a bit of work to get it out of the mud, all the better to whet the appetite.

As head cooks for team Nappoli Denevir (the day bats) Alecia and I had been charged to come up with a main dish. Craving burritos it was only a small step to the creation of the first known local foray into Szekelyi American Fusion Food - - the Szekelyi Burrito. What, you may ask, is the secret to a Szekelyi Burrito? Cabbage. Sorry it wasn’t more exciting. Though maybe not revolutionary cuisine, the fresh salsa, tortillas and beans led us to a Grand Prize finish and an interview with regional television. Sometime in the not to distant future, if you tune onto Duna 3 on your satellite TV you will see us revealing the secrets of our fusion food to a 5 country area. Watch out taco-bell, I smell a movement.

That pretty much wrapped up the festival. Late that night we made our way home after a final feast on what was left of the communal pig and when we got up the next morning, our peace corps friends had fled home on the early train.

Alecia: Well, after that rousing narrative, what can I add? The days following these festivities have been fairly normal and domestic in focus. We’ve finally moved into our new place. It’s working out quite well so far (other than the minor leak and plugged drain our first night). Oh and the paint job, - imagine florescent peach in the bedroom and toothpaste green in the kitchen. This week has been spent trying to balance work duties with furniture shopping, food shopping etc. I’ve also been trying to get into the hills a bit to scavenge the last of the tea plants for the season. We’ve got a nice assortment of chamomile, red clover, yarrow and mint right now - but at the rate we consume tea I’ll be begging the old ladies at the market for herbs by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a small sauce/jam making project set for the weekend. If I can figure out how to can that without major catastrophes, I may undertake salsa and pickles - provided I can find enough jars. I’d kill for the drawers full of jars we had in Minneapolis! Moving into our own place has also gotten me thinking about all the little things I miss. Granola bars, cheddar cheese, cumin, unscented or natural soap, brown sugar, good coffee, fitted sheets, peanut butter, movie theaters, cast iron pans, sharp knives, restaurants, good quality shoes. Luckily there are plenty of good things here, some of the highlights are village charm, abundance of local businesses, farmer’s market every day, good bread with seeds and nuts, fresh cheese, crazy language, beautiful wild flowers, cows in the streets, cheap crafts, lots of bikes, jazzercise (I never thought I’d say this but it’s super fun!) friendly folks. Incase anyone was curious about the little things I think about every day - there you go.

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Photos

AleciaAndRozie
Alecia and her counterpart

2onhorse
Kids at Festival

painted wood
Almas Traditional wood painting

Comments

[Maraty]

Yeah!
It is always so nice to hear your updates! I miss you guys :o( And Alecia, I love hearing your every day thoughts. In fact, why didn't you include a picture of you jazzercising? Hmmmm?? Is their aerobic garb similar to the US? Some spandex, maybe a leotard and leg-warmers?

[california dude]

mailing list?
Hi there, i've enjoyed tremendously reading your blogs of life in the old country. I was a teen when i left Romania a year before the collapse of communism. While i have read and seen a lot of images of the more idyllic and rustic part of the country, i have never had the chance to visit the places you two have. Additionally, i agree with Chri's sentiments of the racism and cultural divide existant between the Roma/Gypsy, Hungarian/Szeckely and Saxon/Saci minorities and Romanain populous. For future weekend getaways, I would recommend the Maramures area (NW), Bucovina area (northern Moldova), Danube Delta, Siebenburgen territory (seven saxon towns area) as a must. For an relaxing weekend, check out Baile Herculane ancient roman thermal baths town (SW). And for more castles, check out the roman and medieval ruins in the "tara Hatzegului" (Hunedoara, Sarmisegetuza, Deva, etc.).\ Some questions about the Peace Corps: did you request to be assigned to Romania? And where can I find more info on P.C. work opportunities there? Also, do the Peace Corps provide a stipen or salary. If you have a mailing list to notify your friends of a new blog, I would appreciate if you can add my email address: [e-mail]. Thank you in advance and Mult Noroc! a california dude