We are in the far north of Romania in the Maramures region that is considered the most isolated in the country. It is beautiful mountain country with large hills and small valleys. Because of this it has a slower life style than other places, many of the people still wear traditional clothing, and farm small plots of land by hand.
The region is also known for wooden stave churches. There are over 100 in Maramures, and several of them are considered UNESCO sites. These churches can be 450 years old and are large and tall given the construction material is logs.
The first one we tried to visit was almost a disaster. It was only supposed to be about 15 minutes from our camp. We got to the location I had programmed and no church. We found a place to pull over and park and got out and walked the village looking for the church, but we did not spot it. We decided to give up and head on to the next church.
As we were leaving town I saw a sign pointing to the right and saying there was a church 200 meters down the road, so I whipped into the road thinking I had found it. Roads in Romania have generally been pretty wide, if sometimes rough so I was comfortable doing it. This time the road was one lane wide and looked to be narrowing. I saw a place to pull into a side road which was probably someones yard but it was going to be a tight turn around. By now we had started to attract quite an audience to watch the French/Americans turn their motorhome around. First three little girls of about 10 came running up, and shortly after that a couple of grandmothers came out to see what was going on. They joined in helping Ton with directions with one of the grandmothers warning Ton that a tractor was coming down the road so I could get out of the way. After a deftly executed six point turn we were pointed in the right direction. Ton waived good bye to our audience of helpers and we were on our way.
We were more successful with the next church and located it without any adventure. It was the first of 6 we would visit today and they were all quite beautiful.
At our third church of the day we saw the wooden church and the more modern stone church. These days the wooden churches are preserved more as historical sites, and the day to day church is of modern design. All of the churches we had visited up to now had been closed but as we were walking away from the modern church we saw someone walk up to the door and look at us, so we returned and he welcomed us in. We tried to talk but he spoke Romanian and we do not. We did communicate a bit but I am sure we missed out on a good tour.
After we looked around for a few minutes and Ton snapped a bunch of pictures we were ready to leave. We left a small donation in the donation box, the caretaker thanked us and then pantomimed that he was there to ring the bells for the church. As we walked away the bells began tolling away, I looked down and it was 12:02. We had inadvertently caused the noon bells to be 2 minutes late.
We went to the monastery at Bistra. This monastery had been in place for hundreds of year before falling into disuse. In the 90’s the monastery was reformed and though they looked quite old all of the buildings on the site were built in the 90’s.
We stopped at one more church in the valley and then decided to move on to the main stop for the day, “The Merry Cemetery”. The cemetery is famous for its elaborately carved headstones with poems about the lives of the people buried there.
While it is called the Happy Cemetery the poems and stories on the headstones are often sad tales of lives cut off in their prime, or lives of missed opportunities. It would be nice to have been able to read the stories, but I have to say the artists who carve the headstones do a great job of having the images tell the story of the persons life.
All of the wooden churches we had visited today had been locked. Usually you have to call ahead to arrange a visit and we had not done that. This church gave us a good feel for what we had missed as the interior was also quite striking.
We had spent several hours driving across small valleys and hopping over passes to the next small valley. We had enjoyed seeing a life style we had never seen, and wondered about the value of living at a pace like this. The one fear I have is that nearly everyone working the fields today appeared to be in their 50’s and 60’s we saw very few young people as we moved around. I hope they can keep it going and find a way to keep the young people around. Maria at the campground confirmed finding workers is a real problem in the area as everyone is moving to the cities for a more exciting life.
Our drive back to the campground was quiet, and we had one long last look at a life style that may not be around for much longer, unfortunately. By the way as I was writing this I looked at the map of the area we had covered and on the way to the Merry Cemetery we had passed within less than a mile of the Ukrainian border without realizing it.
