Transylvania

So I just got back yesterday from our first class trip which was to Transylvania.  It was really awesome!! It's a bit of a drive, around 6 hrs (that quickly turns into 7-8 with all the bathroom breaks and problems with our vans) but we kept ourselves well entertained:)  We have three Reformed pastors that organize our class trips and two of them were with us on this trip, David and Robbie. We started by visiting a little village and climbing up to the church. We ended up seeing a lot of churches, many of them fortified because of all the religious war that went on between the Reformed and Catholic churches in this area.  Most of the church had started as Catholic churches and then were taken over and turn Reformed. It was really interesting to see in influence each church had on the buildings. When the Reformed Christians took a Catholic church, they would white wash the walls so as to get rid of all the frescoes the Catholics often created.  For the sake of history (or something like that) some of the white paint was removed so that we could see the frescoes that lay underneath.

View from the first church we visited.

Frescoes uncovered in a not Reformed church.

The first night we stayed with host families from a Reformed congregation. I stayed with three other girls from my group, Tanya, Leesha, and Abby.  Our host mom fed us dinner and it was soo good!!  Amazing potatoes, chicken, and a really flavorful mushroom dish.  Our host family had a 1 year old daughter, Vikki, so we spent some time getting to know her.  She goes to a music school and wants to be an opera singer. Her school has Romanian and Hungarian students in it which, according to her, is unusual for most schools.

Abby, me, our host mom, Leesha, and Tanya.

A little history of the area to explain this separation.  Before WWI, Transylvania belonged to Hungary.  After the end WWI and as a result of the Trianon Treaty, Hungary lost much of it's land, including Transylvania, which went to Romania.  So now in the area of Transylvania there are Hungarians and Romanians and this creates a certain tension.  The Romanians are focused on getting rid of the Hungarian culture, especially in big cities, but I'll get to that later.


So back to the trip.  Staying at a host family was great and then we were off again the next morning. We went to Cluj, a very large city in Romania and the city that Andras Visky (a Hungarian playwrite.professor that was at Calvin last year) lives and works.  We toured around the city for a little with David filling us in on some history.  It is much easier to see the Romanian influence overpowering the Hungarian culture in this city. The cities main square was changed to an area with an Orthodox church and a statue of a Romanian hero (who, unpleasantly, is famous for killing many Hungarian) and away from the old main square with a Reformed church and other Hungarian aspects.  (I should point out that we were getting one sided history since our guides were Hungarian and not representing the Romanian side)  So after looking around for a bit, we went to the National Theatre in Cluj, where Andras works and got to see it and visit with Andras for awhile.  There's going to be European Theatre Festival there in December and many of us are planning on going back for that, which will be amazing!!

After having lunch in Cluj, we drove to our hotel, which was in a small village and really adorable! Our rooms where wonderful looking right onto the church.  We ate another amazing meal and then played some games.  I played my first drinking game (I was drinking orange pop, but others had beer) called King's Cup.  It's a lot of fun.  Throughout the game, people have to pour some of there drink into a cup in the middle and the person who draws the fourth King has to drink everything in the cup.  At one point it appeared that I had drawn the fourth King but we discovered that it was only the third by the time I was halfway through the cup...oh well, it was still fun.

View from my hotel room.

The next day we toured the church in the village, which had a lot to look at. For example, there was a house that the would use if a couple wanted to get divorced.  If such a request was made, the couple was locked in this house together till they figured out their problems.  To make the situation even worse, the house only had one bed, one plate, one spoon, one table, and one chair (no knife or fork).  The longest stay was 3 weeks and there was only ever one divorce in that village.  Maybe we should bring that back?

That afternoon, we visited another church and then went to see what they Gypsy area's looked like.  In this area Gypsies are the lowest on the ethnic hierarchy.  The area that we went to had recently gotten funds to fix up the area so they had a gravel road and housed and a gutter beside the road.  It used to be a mud road and huts, so it is significantly improved. People were very welcoming, especially the kids. They all wanted their pictures taken.

That night we went to a different hotel which was really cozy.  My room even had a fire place! We again had a really big meal.  Just to focus on the food for a bit, I have never been so thankful for my large appetite.  I don't think I have ever eaten so much in one weekend, it was great!

The next morning,  most of us climbed up the mountain that was right by the village.  It was pretty tiring but really worth it.  Some of the areas where just a bunch of rocks that we had to climb over which was kind of difficult going up but really nice going down!  We would just find the areas with the small rocks and just let them slide under our feet and carry us down faster.  I would call it rock skiing, it was so much fun!!!!
Close to the foot of the mountain, there was a farm horse grazing in the grass so a bunch of us decided to go see it.  We approached him slowly and were petting him and he seemed fine.  Apparently though, he was a little spooked and stared to turn away from us.  We all started to get away as fast as possible but I wasn't quite fast enough.  He kicked his feet up a little bit and got me right in between my hip and butt. He wasn't trying to hurt us or anything so it didn't hurt that much but there is definitely a bruise, which I can't even show off to many people due to it's inappropriate location. But now I will never underestimate a horse again and if I'm ever part of a conversation about horse injuries, I get to start mine by saying "Once when I was climbing down a mountain in Romania," which is a pretty sweet opening line.

From the bottom.

From the top. Well...close to the top.

Our last stop was a street with many shops all down it.  We looked around for awhile and then headed back to the vans for the long trip back home.  Overall, it was a really great trip and I'm really looking forward all our other class trips.