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Maramures |
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I had a partial confirmation that this is true when I drove into the first village in Maramures. At the entrance of the village barring the road were several children with bunches of flowers and fruits in their hands. I had to stop and I told them I do not want to buy. “No”, they said, “this is a present”, a present to a guest that first comes to their place. And they refused the money I wanted to offer. After that I received many other bunches of very simple field flowers, or one apple, or several nuts and I learned the lesson that I have to carry with me some candies or chocolates to avoid the embarrassment of not to be able to respond in kind.
People are very religious and they have a very large number of churches. The traditional building material is wood. The architecture is amazing, how such lofty and majestic buildings could be constructed in the absence of stone, steel and concrete. Some of them are very old, as much as 700 years old. Unfortunately, there is a marked tendency in many villages to build much larger churches using modern materials near the old ones. The wooden churches are locked, not used any more and not even the necessary maintenance is done any more.
The real religious spirit you can see if you visit monasteries on saint names. We were very lucky to visit the nuns’ monastery of Barsana on the day of St. Mary, the patron of this place. The monastery is a very impressive architectural complex, a wide expanse of grass on a mountain slope surrounded by what seem to be delicate and fragile buildings. In the middle there is a summer altar. Several priests hold the divine service in the presence of the bishop and a choir of nuns kept the dialog. I was surprised to hear at the end this choir sing some extraordinary folk songs, with beautiful voices. The vibrant green of grass, the azure of the shining sky with just a few foamy white clouds above, the white and purple and red of the beds of flowers, the forest covered mountains forming a giants-built enclosure, the beautiful voices of the nuns and the toll of the bells, all made it a place where you can feel the divinity speaking to you much clearer than even in the most sophisticated bricks and stones church. The religious celebration doesn’t stop with the end of the service. Congregations from each village that attended the service form a column, small children in front, then teenagers, flags, and finally the adults, then this column returns to the village singing different songs on their way home.
I recently saw a Hollywood movie called “Transylvania”. I was surprised to see that the characters of the movie danced Russian dances, when there is absolutely no connection between local traditions of Transylvania and Russian customs. Still, Russia had a strong influence on the region, as it had on the whole of Europe. Sometimes Maramures gives you the impression of a bubble, an island with its own rules, forgotten by the world. The end of the Second World War shattered the peace of the region. Stalin moved Poland several hundred km to the west, German territories were given to Poland, Polish land was handed over to Soviet Union (Ukraine), and for the first time in history Romania had a common North frontier with Russia. Maramures lies just at the border and was taken under administration by the Soviet authorities as part of the new land they conquered. 15000 peasants from many villages marched to the main city of the region, a very bold action at the time, and Maramures was given back to the Romanian authorities.
Nowadays, Maramures is far from a time capsule with frozen habits. From the idyllic and traditional image, Maramures inexorably turns into something different. Wooden houses are scarce. The new houses are built from modern materials, bricks and concrete. Roofs are covered with ceramic tiles or, much worse from the esthetic point of view, shiny metal sheets. The delicate wooden covered enclosures protecting wells is also sometimes replaced with a metal sheet construction. In many villages, a feeling of prosperity floats into the air.
What triggered this abrupt change? How people from a poor region, forced to leave their villages each spring to find some unqualified work in other areas of Romania, are so much better off now? After 1989, when the borders opened, their readiness to go anywhere where there is work to do and accept any kind of job proved to be a big advantage for them. These days their destination is very remote: Spain, to pick strawberries, Italy with its hotel industry, Germany for construction work. Passing through villages of Maramures, we saw that many cars have Italian license plates. Jokingly, I said “ I bet there are more Italian cars than Romanians”. When we started counting, there were 15 Italian cars and 12 Romanian cars in our sample. There were many other cars with French, German and Dutch plates, which make the results startling. Maramures changed a lot in the last 25 years. Still, I love it so much. For its unique folk music and Christmas carols, the friendliness of its people, the beautiful folk costumes, for the green pastures, its thick forests covering hills and mountains, its rivers with fog hovering above the water in the morning and crawling up the slopes like in a Shakespeare play. If you have a chance, go for a visit!
Dorel Jurcovan 2006 |
25 years
ago I made a trip to Maramures, a remote valley between the mountains in the
North of Transylvania, Romania. Like frozen in an amber bubble, the
community spread in a cluster of villages along several river valleys
preserves its ancient values, traditions and beliefs. People are kind,
proud of their roots, welcoming and talkative. The Council of Elders still
solves the important negotiations and moral issues, like one or two
thousands years ago. This is what I knew before the trip. 
Recently, I
made another trip to Maramures with my family. How much has the region
changed? It certainly did change a lot, but the basic values still remain.
I knew that when I heard the story of a young couple from New Zealand that
we met at an inn. While walking to their car in one of the villages, they
passed a bench on the side of the road where six women were chatting. The
young couple wanted to be polite and they nodded to the women. One of them
stood up and started to talk to the foreigners, but they could understand
nothing that was said. They thought that the woman wants a ride, and they
said, why not. So they motioned her to come with them. The woman in turn
made a sign to the other five and they all headed to the car. “No, no”,
said the frightened foreigners, “we cannot all fit in the car, it is not
large enough”. After some intense dialogue where not words but hands,
fingers, and mimic carried the message, three of the women got into the
car. The foreigners followed the directions and they stopped in front of a
house, where they were invited to go inside. There they were treated with
food, cakes and lot of drinks. After a lot of time and smiles exchanged,
they could leave the house. But, to their stupor, all three self invited
passengers got back into the car. They made another stop at another house
and they were invited again to come inside. This time they stubbornly
refused to go, in spite of very insistent invitations, and they were very
happy that one woman left them here. The scene was repeated at the house of
the third woman. They continued their trip in the village with the first
woman giving them directions where to go and they got at the end of a dead
end street. The foreigners stood there looking totally confused and not
knowing what to do. The woman showed them to turn around and they returned
to the first house where they could get rid of their passenger. Finally,
the foreigners understood that very probably the woman didn’t need a ride,
but she wanted to be friendly and show them the village and the beauty of
the places. The problem with the people in Maramures is that they are very
welcoming but it is difficult to escape the hug of their hospitality.
The region
of Maramures is a poor region, the agricultural land is almost non-existent
and the only natural resource is the forest. I still remember from my
childhood the covered horse-driven wagons of “moroseni”, as the locals are
referred to, passing in front of our house, carrying barrels, ladders,
wooden spoons and many other wooden objects that they offered for sale on
their journey around Romania in the hope of making some money. Their
experience with wood is unique and it is no wonder that they turned wood
processing into an art. Their houses were made of wood, the houses had
elaborate carved doors, the clearings in the forest were adorned with carved
sculptures and the road crossings had a small house with a cross in it to
protect the voyagers. Especially the sculpted doors are treasured here and
a master carver has to show the real measure of his talent in small details,
like chains made from one solid bloc of wood and not from separate parts
glued together. 
It is no wonder
that such a surrounding creates out of ordinary funerary rituals. A master
carver in the village of Sapinta started to make grave wooden crosses on
which he depicted significant scenes from the life of the deceased. He also
added color and verses to tell the story of a life. The villagers loved
that and a unique “merry cemetery” exists now in this village. The original
artist disappeared, but one apprentice of his continues the business.
In villages, in
front of some houses we saw an odd dried tree with the branches adorned with
pots and jars. The tree tells the lads in the neighboring villages that in
that house a girl is “on the marriage market”. Boys can come uninvited in
the house any Saturday and have a drink and a chat with the girl and her
parents. The pots are part of the dowry of the girl and the parents begin
the preparations when she is a child. The dowry is kept in a separate room
where over the years all kind
After the Second
World War, a Communist regime seized the power in Romania, thanks to the
support of the occupying Soviet army. Their power was based on terror,
several hundreds of thousands of Romanians were killed during this time.
One of the most feared prisons of the time was in Sighet in Maramures.
After the Revolution, this prison was turned into a museum and we visited
it. It is a really shocking experience to see the cruelty of the methods
used to curb any kind of resistance, the refined torture procedures that
would make the Middle Age envious and the scale of the genocide. People
around the world are appalled by the Holocaust, and on good grounds. What
very few know, or care to know, is that a similar number of people
were killed in the attempt to impose communism. A visit to the museum in
Sighet could be rather painful, but how else could we learn to avoid the
tragedies of the past? 
