it is autumn in romania and nature is giving abundantly. nature gives and gives and gives and people take the cue from her; the neighbours stop by alina's garden gate bearing squash and mushrooms and alina laughs and adds the mushrooms to the already large pile from our own woodland excursion. that evening we eat with relish a pan full of moist softened salty seasoned mushrooms. we ask the apple tree if we can pluck some of her red apples from her bending branches; she laughs and throws them rolling across the grass and we dedicate the day to eating them, sliced with honey or softened and sugared into compot or soft and halved and boiled and the water spiced with cloves and cinnamon and drunk with honey with gusto, with gusto and honey, with honeyed gusto. gypsy boys from the gypsy village come riding horses and make their horses turn round and round in circles, then gallop off. their fearless voices and laughter ring throughout the woods. they hang around us, asking us questions directly and unabashedly. they ask if i am a priest and call me parinte - father - because of my monkish beard. one gypsy in the street in bucharest had asked me if i was jesus, "you look just like jesus" he insisted, with big open honest eyes; "i believe that you are jesus," he declared, and asked ioana: "do you believe that he is jesus?" "if you really believe that then it is so," said ioana, while i bowed to him regally. cip tells me that for many years gypsies were despised and trodden upon and actually used as slaves by the romanians, before being attempted to be exterminated in the second world war. "these days it is a big question: how to integrate the gypsies into mainstream society?" cip tells me. "they do not want to belong to society. if any problem arises among them, they will deal with it themselves rather than calling the police." it is a question. many people call it a problem, and several people grimly admited to me that they hated the gypsies. all they do is steal and beg, and they are chronically dishonest. the barrier of wariness and distrust can be read clearly in their eyes. of course all groups of people share differences as well as similarities. what cip admires in the gypsies is their freedom, their unalloyed fidelity to a life of freedom outwith the bounds of mainstream society. "i think that the gypsies lead happier lives than most of us" says cip. ioana tells me about the film latcho drom, a purely artistic film, without any dialogue or linear storyline as such, simply showing images from groups of gypsies in india, turkey, romania, czech, france, spain, and, particularly, showing the beautiful music they make. each shot has been composed with a big focus on aesthetic appeal. ioana says that when she went to rajastan, she understood instantly that the people there shared the same roots as the gypsies in romania. one night we watched this youtube version of the film, despite it being kinda jumpy between scenes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weYhYy5u26Y cip asks the gypsy boys to sing a song for him and one of them does so with real feeling, sitting on the grass holding his heart. afterwards cip gives him a coin. the other boy stands apart and remains cocky. he sings a little song but with a tone of aloof mocking in his voice. cip gives him a lesser coin. the boy stands there cracking walnuts open and popping them in his mouth. it is the first time that i see walnuts growing on the tree. they are enveloped in a hard green shell which i thought was an apple when i first saw them. as the days go by, the shell dries up and splits open and the walnuts fall onto the ground. ioana and i spend hours beneath one stately walnut tree near aurora, filipa and claudian's new place; up in the wild and wooded sweeping rolling countryside south of hunedoara. filipa envisages winter hours sitting by the fire cracking them open. she says that during winter it is natural for us to slow down and rest and reduce our activities. i climb up and shake all the branches and we fill three big potato sacks; hundreds of walnuts, probably thousands which the tree gives and gives year after year. he gives thoughtlessly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, shrugging the walnuts negligently from his shoulders, he gives wantonly, abundantly, laughing silently at the wanton abundance of it all. what wealth! how fortunate is the person who wanders beneath those boughs at that time of year. i have the distinct impression that romania is a blessed land where nature prepares extra specially rich things amidst her peaceful old woods. one thing is true about romania, ioana says, :the people eat well. nature is the source of all food and so if she is healthy and happy then the food will be good.
a comment we sometimes heard while hitchhiking was: yes, romania is a beautiful country. it is just a pity that it is inhabited by romanians. a corrupt government, corruption part of many institutions, the cheapest road company is contracted to make the roads; they make them cheaply, yes, and shoddily, so that in three years they will have to come back and remake them and be repaid. it is autumn in romania. we arrived a little too late in the season to be able to wander around the glacial lakes near the transalpina - the high winding mountain road which traverses part of the southern carpathian mountains and, with the pass above 2,000m, making it the highest road in romania. a vehicle with open space at the back stops and tells we can climb on if we really want. "it is cold you know, there is snow at the top of the pass" we are happy just to be moving and feeling the wind around us. it is raining and we cover ourselves with my plastic sheet. as the vehicle winds uphill, the rain turns to sleet. the famous beauty of the transalpina: all we can see is swirling mist; my toes and hands feel incrementally colder. "are you still okay there?" the driver stops and asks. we laugh because we are cold and because all we see of the famous beauty is the swirling mist and because we are travelling on the back of somebody's car. as we go down the other side we feel incrementally warmer and we smile because of the mist parting and revealing the beautiful steep conifer clad hillslopes. it begins to really rain; it turns out that it is not really the day for being outside in the beautiful mountains. we allow our lift-giver to buy us some sweet swirling bread, coated in sugar and spices and baked around rotating bars suspended above the embers by a laughing woman under the shelter of her roadside shelter. it is a traditional hungerian thing. it reminds ioana of the way i make bread wrapped around sticks held over the embers. our lift-giver turns out to be a generous laid-back easy-going easy to be with type who owns lots of local land and who is saluted as "domnul preşedinte" by the sellers of mushrooms and the other people we pass at the side of the road. it is really raining and mr president becomes happy to make space for us inside his car. he is showing his two friends - a happy equally easy-going couple from bucharest - the area, and we end up joining the tour, taking photos of each other next to the big abandoned hotel overlooking the rainy lake and the rainy forest. we end up sharing a meal with them at a rural pensiune owned by a friend of mr president. the owner eats with us too. he is mystified by ioana"s vegetarian choice. i eat the steak and the chips and the local speciality of plump little beef sausages eaten with mustard sauce, while a big plate of fried mushrooms is prepared for ioana. we all drink the local zuica - a clear sweet spirit distilled from fruits - and more than one bottle of wine is opened. we sit around as evening steals over the wooded slopes outside the window. a big noisette icing covered cake is brought out and we say many happy returns to the woman from bucharest, whose birthday will be that monday. in the end we tell mr president that we will be happy to put the tent up somewhere in the woods, that we are used to doing that, but he shows us to a nice room with a nice hot shower and we all shake hands and wave as they drive off. we would have been happy to sleep in the woods, but that hotel room came as a pretty nice surprise. spontaneously offered unto us by the road and the generosity of its travellers. ample scope for good feelings,there, abetted by the funky reggae music, as long as it is done for the love of music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weYhYy5u26Y cip asks the gypsy boys to sing a song for him and one of them does so with real feeling, sitting on the grass holding his heart. afterwards cip gives him a coin. the other boy stands apart and remains cocky. he sings a little song but with a tone of aloof mocking in his voice. cip gives him a lesser coin. the boy stands there cracking walnuts open and popping them in his mouth. it is the first time that i see walnuts growing on the tree. they are enveloped in a hard green shell which i thought was an apple when i first saw them. as the days go by, the shell dries up and splits open and the walnuts fall onto the ground. ioana and i spend hours beneath one stately walnut tree near aurora, filipa and claudian's new place; up in the wild and wooded sweeping rolling countryside south of hunedoara. filipa envisages winter hours sitting by the fire cracking them open. she says that during winter it is natural for us to slow down and rest and reduce our activities. i climb up and shake all the branches and we fill three big potato sacks; hundreds of walnuts, probably thousands which the tree gives and gives year after year. he gives thoughtlessly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, shrugging the walnuts negligently from his shoulders, he gives wantonly, abundantly, laughing silently at the wanton abundance of it all. what wealth! how fortunate is the person who wanders beneath those boughs at that time of year. i have the distinct impression that romania is a blessed land where nature prepares extra specially rich things amidst her peaceful old woods. one thing is true about romania, ioana says, :the people eat well. nature is the source of all food and so if she is healthy and happy then the food will be good.
a comment we sometimes heard while hitchhiking was: yes, romania is a beautiful country. it is just a pity that it is inhabited by romanians. a corrupt government, corruption part of many institutions, the cheapest road company is contracted to make the roads; they make them cheaply, yes, and shoddily, so that in three years they will have to come back and remake them and be repaid. it is autumn in romania. we arrived a little too late in the season to be able to wander around the glacial lakes near the transalpina - the high winding mountain road which traverses part of the southern carpathian mountains and, with the pass above 2,000m, making it the highest road in romania. a vehicle with open space at the back stops and tells we can climb on if we really want. "it is cold you know, there is snow at the top of the pass" we are happy just to be moving and feeling the wind around us. it is raining and we cover ourselves with my plastic sheet. as the vehicle winds uphill, the rain turns to sleet. the famous beauty of the transalpina: all we can see is swirling mist; my toes and hands feel incrementally colder. "are you still okay there?" the driver stops and asks. we laugh because we are cold and because all we see of the famous beauty is the swirling mist and because we are travelling on the back of somebody's car. as we go down the other side we feel incrementally warmer and we smile because of the mist parting and revealing the beautiful steep conifer clad hillslopes. it begins to really rain; it turns out that it is not really the day for being outside in the beautiful mountains. we allow our lift-giver to buy us some sweet swirling bread, coated in sugar and spices and baked around rotating bars suspended above the embers by a laughing woman under the shelter of her roadside shelter. it is a traditional hungerian thing. it reminds ioana of the way i make bread wrapped around sticks held over the embers. our lift-giver turns out to be a generous laid-back easy-going easy to be with type who owns lots of local land and who is saluted as "domnul preşedinte" by the sellers of mushrooms and the other people we pass at the side of the road. it is really raining and mr president becomes happy to make space for us inside his car. he is showing his two friends - a happy equally easy-going couple from bucharest - the area, and we end up joining the tour, taking photos of each other next to the big abandoned hotel overlooking the rainy lake and the rainy forest. we end up sharing a meal with them at a rural pensiune owned by a friend of mr president. the owner eats with us too. he is mystified by ioana"s vegetarian choice. i eat the steak and the chips and the local speciality of plump little beef sausages eaten with mustard sauce, while a big plate of fried mushrooms is prepared for ioana. we all drink the local zuica - a clear sweet spirit distilled from fruits - and more than one bottle of wine is opened. we sit around as evening steals over the wooded slopes outside the window. a big noisette icing covered cake is brought out and we say many happy returns to the woman from bucharest, whose birthday will be that monday. in the end we tell mr president that we will be happy to put the tent up somewhere in the woods, that we are used to doing that, but he shows us to a nice room with a nice hot shower and we all shake hands and wave as they drive off. we would have been happy to sleep in the woods, but that hotel room came as a pretty nice surprise. spontaneously offered unto us by the road and the generosity of its travellers. ample scope for good feelings,there, abetted by the funky reggae music, as long as it is done for the love of music.
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