Viva Romania

I was asked by my organization to write a little piece on how I felt my first week here... and thought it would help to share a bit of my insight with my family and friends as well. BUT My blog posts to come will be a little more situated around the most recent (as I can manage) photo's and events! I'm going to be a blogging fiend today as I have had a few things I haven't had time to put up yet! Bounds and bundles of love to everyone at home.

p.s. I saw a single tiny butterfly float above my head last night... I swore to my new friends here it was a messenger for spring... and in turn, the weather today is loooveeely...

BUCOLIC- of, pertaining to, or suggesting an idyllic rural life.

VERDANT- of the color green.

Like many others before me, my initial impression of a little country sewn rich in Western altered myth and tucked away on the eastern edge of Europe, laid at the forefront of my short journey from Bucharest to Brasov.

Before I departed from North America, I recycled in my mind, a number of general 'first impressions' of Romania that other students from abroad had written after arriving here. They spoke of high end cars whizzing past horse drawn carriages, technology gleaming against the grain of tradition. They wrote of old buildings once full of character and charm, now sandwiched next to communist era blocks like flowers nestled in thorn.

I curled up in the back seat of a shiny silver Volkswagen as it embarked on the 3 hour commute from Bucharest to Brasov,

and I began to witness the recycled descriptions stored in my mind, coming to life before me. I struggled to keep my eyes from drifting shut, I nodded in and out of a sleepy daze, taking in my new surroundings and all the while thinking to myself...

I dreamt of Romania. I envisioned dark forest floor blanketed in arms of fog, hiding tiny creatures and fairies along moss covered dewy branches. In my dream I held my breath at the sight of a great wolf looming from a bluff above, and in the distance, a mother bear keeping watch as her cubs cooled in a stream.

I imagined horses at plow in hilly pastures, women dawning floral scarves steadily pinning clothes to a line in the breeze, while children played and ran about beneath.

I saw men in fur caps discussing the crops and the weather, and heard a flute playing from a shepherd in the foothills.

Here now, I find myself tripping daily over cobblestone as I weave in and out of narrow winding roads on foot. I browse along streets lined with colorful and radiant 18th century homes, along embankments of scattered gravestones and rod iron gates. I strain my eyes to better see the vast areas of grey in between, marked with scrawls of 'I love you Tesa'. I put my hand out to the lonely haunting canines on my block. I pack an apple for the begging children on the daily transit. Yet, I hold onto this enchanted description from my dream that sounds almost ignorant and surreal, coming from a traveling foreigner. But within the crumbling city blocks and bustling third-world european epicenter that is largely part of the Romania I've been introduced to, I do believe in my dream that lays beyond the concrete borders of Brasov.

I dreamt of a Romania in context, that existed before my time, created by images lifted out of books and films. Moreover, I somehow managed to neglect the overwhelming reality in existence now, after the shattering aftermath of a fallen Communist regime on my beloved timeless vision. Somehow I pushed aside the effects of the Post Communist industrialization and Western influence, that drove my imagined community away from their beautiful farmsteads, and into what is now a meshed balkan cosmopolitan frenzy.

Before I left home, In the back of my mind (very naive to the culture, history and the people of Romania) I had assumed Romanians belonged to a melting pot of heritages comprised primarily of it's neighboring and bordering cultures.

However, as this past week began, I was surprised to learn of the dominant Latin influence and roots in Romanian culture. And, to my delight I hear salsa in the streets. I often walk past blocks radiating latin rhythms, or past candle lit restaurants embracing latin with accent and decor. This makes me smile. Romanians it turned out, encompass this absolutely unique and marvelous Latin/ European/Balkan combination in mannerism and character. I personally see it as the best of traditional Balkan sprinkled with a dust of what I would like to call 'viva Romania'.

Romanians may be intimidating to the foreign passerby.

It's as thought every face tells a story, holds a secret, bares a map; told with a furrowed brow, a distracted gaze, or lines engraved like a chiseled stone.

But with each Romanian I am fortunate to meet, I only find; Behind a story, in the heart of a secret, at the attention of the onlooker and on route from one chiseled line to the next, there is only to be discovered a persevering pride, warmth, love and sincerity like no other.

In this light, I'm almost certain Romania stems from ROMANCE... it's the land beyond the forest, encompassed in fairy tale and enchantment, whispering a language that's a beautiful melody of french and spanish intertwined... a culture derived of latin roots... and so the dark and dreary legend (the Western altered myth) that haunts the region of Transylvania bares no significance to me yet.