Tuesday 20. May 2008 Travel report from Romania
By: FFBChristianANNO 2007
As my travel companion and i went first time to the ground Romania, we were excited. Immediately a car stopped by, without even trying to hitchhike. Previously we heard: „Be careful with opportunities being offered to you.“ We took the ride, at least to the next gas station, where the car driver asked for money to fill the tank. One Heiermann in his hands and we decided to look for another ride. I can remember quite well, those first impressions were exhausting, because not knowing anything about the way they live, what they talk about, was true felt fear. With the next car it went better, and we got to know, that it is daily use to take rides, for a little piece of money.
On the road through Transilvania we saw endless landscapes, foot hills and on their top countless trees. We also saw fields and small villages, and the colours of the old buildings, they were completely different to the one in Gerany. In my memories are other words, to describe the feeling, such as: more mercurial, more vital, full in life, to deal with the way of impressions from those first pictures. You will not find `perfection` and drive in line like in Gerany here, seeing the houses and touching roads. It`s not in favour here and this is what we all need sometimes.
It doesn`t mean that you get use to the Romanian way of life quick. Most of the time it comes opposite side around the corner. The first weeks of work in Hermannstadt were engraved in loosing nerves, result of the fact that it needs a lot more patience to reach goals and to trust, that one succesful working day can come after another. It sounds like a charge, and it tells that there are more strong foundations in life, than to take another ones place. This isn`t here and we don`t have the right, to fight this what we feel lost in our life!
Days and weeks passed by, months. The stress disapeared. „It is worth having aims, but if you wont reach it today, tomorrow stays there to do. Don`t worry, be happy!“ In a way like this i would describe the step in thoughts. It came by itself and it made being there valuably.
More and more time was spend living beside the work, sharing and developing culture. One of the most worth impression was to walk through a field, where you will find four different kinds of vegetables, instead of one! I thought i went into a corn field, but with every step more it turned out to be full filled with beans, zuccinis and pumpkins. And corn. I could imagine what a pleasure it should be to decide what you eat in a field! For days, different kinds of vegetables. NO Monoculture. Where is that?
I was also very impressed be the stoves where old women bake bread, about houses built out of mud, horse carriages to go somewhere in the fields and there are markets, where you buy your vegtables out of the farmers hands. They taste like never tasted before.
In the cities it looked different. You could feel clearly, that visions and goals seem to sink in the mobile life we`re already in. It`s more demand to have a cell phone, then to drink a fresh milk or to find flowers for a spray in your own garden, your own piece of field.
Lot`s of knowledge and tradition is still alive. Matter of fact somewhere behind one mens door. What a special honour it has been, to be invited for a magic show, from the kids of the neighbours!
Beside all the new cultural aspects and novelties, the romanian kittchen thought his life into our hearts! I couldn`t imagine before to eat a tripe soup, until i ate my first Ciorba de Burta. Since then i was eating it everywhere i have been! It`s also the thought of how using the slaughtered animal which brought reflectiveness. The feeling of not killing an animal for the taste of killing, to live with it and then have from it, it was completely new. I`m thankful for that!
Last but not least i have to write about my doubts, about the way global kapitalism and EU laws change the way of the Romanian culture. It`s coming to the villages, when it is forbidden to slaughter and the next generation of plants will be a strong bought one. Time for gen technique mega eggplants and the lost of knowledge and ability for time. The memory remains, Romania, the country which opened first time my eyes for the root of mankind. Something, a city washed stranger is asking once in life...
Category: Berichte