searching for the rainbow, romania

it is so Beautiful here

mmmm

i really like this Place

there is a water supply, plenty of spots for camping, space for organising workshops

what we need to find is a spot that is big enough - and reasonably flat - for the main circle.  we are talking about two thousand, potentially three thousand, people.  lets talk to the villagers.

"cautam o poiana unde putem sa facem o intalnire mare in agosto"

key words are poiana (meadow) and mare (big)

we are looking for a big meadow.

one shepherd met on the meadow said:  you want to sleep outside?  No!   too dangerous.  the wild animals will eat you up.  there are bears in these woods you know.  yes, they eat up the cattle and they attack.  stay close to the village! come down with me and watch us milking the cows and drink some fresh milk!

we tell an old woman in a village that we want to find a place big enough so that we can all eat together in a big circle.  "eat together," she says, "invite us too!    yes, please come.  everyone is dying in these villages; there are only old people left.  

i like the way jakub manages to get photos of the interesting country people.  i would feel uneasy about snapping a stranger; it wouldn't be their soul i was stealing, it would just make our brief encounter somehow less genuine.  or maybe not.  jakub manages it.  he just pulls out his camera and his disarming smile and says: pot sa fac o posa, da? the old man first protests, saying he is in his working clothes, but presently buttons up his shirt and adopts a dignified posture.  the old woman says, "what do you want a photo of an ugly old woman for?" but jakub protests, laughing, "no, you are still beautiful!'

i got quite a good photo of jakub's turkish coffee pot standing on the floor of the cave illuminated by a shaft of sunlight.  why do you use that pot to make coffee instead of just boiling water in the pan?  i asked jakub.

i don't know, he said.

it is the way the turks do it.

it is a turkish coffee pot

the cave was chilia lui dionisie - dionisie's cell - chiseled into the soft sandstone rock and reached by a four metre ladder.  it was inhabited by dionisie for thirty years in the sixteenth century.  the informative plaque inside, next to the alter with the icons and the candles, said that dionisie lived a life of extreme asceticism, only eating one meal per day, which was passed up to him on a stick, and only descending once per week to attend the church communion in the neighbouring valley.  all of his days and his nights were spent in earnest prayer to God. 

walking in the woods in the next valley, we came across a massive block of sandstone, green with moss, whose interior had been carefully hollowed to make a little chapel, while the exterior had been carefully sculpted into smooth walls.  there was also an informative plaque inside which i carefully studied.   the centuries of monastic occupation of these wild woody hills north of the town of Buzau was characterized by hermitages and lives of solitary devotion.  the community at the stone church was particular in that it was used by a community of twelve monks who gathered to eat around a massive beech trunk, sculpted into a table.