12 Jun 2014 Iasi to Suceava

12 Jun 2014 Iasi to Suceava
We were up and mostly packed at 7 am.  Went to the same little bakery/restaurant as yesterday.  This time we ordered another cheese pastry for Carol and a similar piece of cheesecake for Mike, along with two coffees (19.50 lei).  By now we have given up on asking for lattes.
Back to the Hala.  We buy 350 g of a salty version of cascaval de oi (sheep milk) cheese.  We also buy apricots, cherries, raspberries, radishes, carrots.  Maybe a little too much fruit.  The raspberries were 30 lei per kg, so we purchased 5 lei ($1.60) worth, packed in a plastic tray.  We ate them on the spot, and gave the tray back to the vendor.  We would spend at least $3 for a similar amount of raspberries in the States, probably grown far away.  The bananas sold here are from Cote d'Ivoire.
We go to the Jewish community center.  Open!  Men are davening in a closed room, but we have to juggle our hotel checkout time against the rest of our morning agenda.  The matron at the center's eatery wants to serve us food.  No time for that either.  Should have flipped our schedule.  Oh well.
So we head back to our hotel room, pack, and checkout by 9:30 am.  Then we store our bags at the front desk.
Time to go to the Great Synagogue for World Monument Day.  We pass "Sfantul Sava del Sfintit," a church built in 1583.  It is one of the best painted churches, with paintings depicting the creation of the world and icon after icon.  This church was restored in 2013 and was in perfect condition.  It is a good introduction for our planned churches trip when we reach Suceava.
We pass the community center, which is now closed, and head over to the Great Synagogue.  Outside, high school age students are busy sketching and painting their visions of the structure.  Some are literal, some add black-hatted congregants - very talented artists.
We walk in to the barely restored building, and grab good seats in the third row.  Smart move, because the first two rows eventually crush load with dignitaries and honored guests.
The synagogue dates from the 1600s and was built of stone.  It must have been a solid building from the start.  The current reconstruction of its roof and cupola make that evident.  About the only details remaining of the old synagogue are the ark and the metalwork around it and in the front.  The floor now is clay (?) on concrete.  It looks to be either 5 feet too high over a filled basement, or 3 feet too low.  As presently constituted, you would have to be apx 11 feet tall to take a Torah out of the ark (if there were any Torahs in the ark).
A local group is playing klezmer music.  2 male singers and 4 instrumentalists.  They played their hearts out with no breaks: folk songs, liturgical music, Israeli favorites, even Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.
The first speaker is a young woman from the World Monuments Foundation in New York.  Then local dignitaries, from Iasi government, from the Jewish community, the Romanian Orthodox Christian community, and others.  There were Jewish visitors from the US and Israel.  Architects, academics, etc., were all there.  Rabbi Shaffer [remember him from Bucuresti] absolutely knows how to say the right thing at the right time.  Shaffer spontaneously grabbed the two singers for a freilich hora, as the cameras were rolling and the local media was recording.  He liberally quoted Hebrew in his comments, salting them with jokes, as evident by the appreciative laughter.
The ceremony finally finished around 1 pm.  The dignitaries headed back to their fancy hotel for lunch.  They then had a scheduled afternoon of more education sessions and an invitational party at 7 pm.
Here is the history of events, as we understand them:  In 2000 the roof of the Great Synagogue was leaking, plaster was rotting, and the interior was falling apart.  A fourteen year campaign led to the listing of the synagogue as a World Monument.  The money then was found for a new roof, and removal of most of the plaster, exposing the underlying stone.  Today's celebration is a starting point for (1) fundraising, and (2) architechtural/historical groundwork to decide what to do next.
Iasi is campaigning to become the Cultural Capital of Europe (whatever that means) in 2021.  The Jewish community of Romania is filming everything that everybody is saying today.  After all, fulfilling promises requires a long lead time.
After schmoozing with the guests and finding, believe it or not, an Atlanta connection, we left about 1:35 pm.  To our hotel - actually past the hotel to purchase a nice small loaf of bread for 2 lei, and two other Schweppes beverages, bitter lemon and mandarin orange.  Verdict: bitter lemon is terrific; orange is nothing special.
A final trip back to the hotel, retrieve our bags, call a taxi, and take the 6 lei ride to the Gara.  Much more sensible than braving the tram, which would cost 4 lei.  We arrive about 2:30 pm, well in time for our 3:15 train to Suceava.  The train originates in Iasi, so we can board early.  Well before it departs, we have demolished the mandarin drink, a couple of cheese sandwiches we have cobbled together, and some carrots and radishes.
Our journey takes us through pretty countryside.  We get into Suceava at 5:15 pm, and walk the 150 meters to the Hotel Residenz.  The posted price is 49 euro, which includes a nice buffet breakfast.  Our booking.com price is 31.2 euro (137 lei) which will not include that 5 euro breakfast.
The staff here is most accommodating.  There is no internet cafe in town, so they loan us a laptop (WiFi enabled) for free during our three day stay!  While we are waiting, we request ice, and drink down our bitter lemon soda.
We inquire about a monastery tour.  15 minutes later, Ciprian from Hello Bucovina arrives.  He suggests a 4 monastery, 7 hour tour, with the Radauti synagogue thrown in for us special, all for $110.  We will have a taxi ride with an English speaking driver, but no tour guide.  Per our choice, we will leave at 8 am, and probably finish about 3 pm.
He claims to be able to provide Jewish records that even Jewish Gen does not have.  Note that we have written that the train station was in Suceava.  Actually, it is across the river in a suburb called Burdujeni.  Carol's maternal grandfather's father was from Burdujeni.  It is rather more complicated than that, because historically (e.g., 1910) the river was the boundary between Bucovina and Moldavia, and Suceava and Burdujeni were completely separate.
Ciprian offers to drive us right now into Burdujeni, and show us where the original Jewish community was.  He points to a housing style: "railroad cars," a row of 8 - 10 one-story dwellings attached to each other.  They remind Carol of the semi-detached homes in Queens and the shotgun houses of Atlanta.  Before he left us off, Ciprian recommended the Brandusa restaurant for our evening meal.  At the restaurant, we ordered 2 menus of the day, and shared a 50 cl Ciucas light beer.  The dinner consisted of soup and a main dish.  The yummy soup contained a chicken leg and vegetables.  The meat plate was pork belly with sauteed potatoes in a very liquid sauce.  Our meal was excellent, and the price was right (27 lei total for the both of us, or $8.40).
We found a small grocery on our walk back to the hotel and purchased 250 g of salami for the next day.  The Residenz offered us quite a television feast: BBC News, CCTV (Chinese), CNN World, and national stations, both Romanian and Magyar. And best of all, Mezzo, the French all music channel.  Somehow in all of this we were too busy flipping channels, and missed the opening ceremony of the World Cup.  End of the day.