13 Jun Suceava
Because our driver is coming at 8 am, we have decided to splurge on the hotel breakfast cafe. Lots of meats, 4 kinds of cheeses, Cappy brand orange juice, all sorts of cereals (but no apparent milk to go with the cereal), and eclair like sweets to go with our coffee.
Our drive, Bogdan Constantin, arrives before 8. He speaks English, French, German, and Italian, in addition to Romanian. He mentions that has driven guests on the monastery circuit maybe 90 times a year. We are scheduled for a standard 4 monastery tour (Humor, Voronet, Moldovita, and Sucevita). Their representative colors and famous frescos are:
Humor: red and brown
The Annunciation, The Life of St. Nicholas
Voronet: blue
Last Judgment
Moldovita: yellow
The Siege of Constantinople, The Life of Jesus
Sucevita: green
The Geneology of Jesus, Ladder of Virtues, The Story of the Life of Moses
. . .
and for good measure, we will see a synagogue at the end of this circuit.
We entered the sanctuary at Humor as a priest and two nuns are finishing up an Orthodox ceremony that is performed 40 days after a burial. We think it is called Kolleva in the Greek Church and Parastas in the Romanian Orthodox Church. A decorated cake of boiled wheat and other grains is prepared. At the end of the service a little red wine is poured over the wheat. The ingredients remind us of the good old Jewish biblical sacrifices. After the ceremony one of the nuns distributed small cups of the parastas to people visiting the church. It looked and tasted very much like the Turkish Noah's pudding served on Ashura. Guess that what goes around comes around, ritually speaking. The tower at the Humor complex was being repaired by workmen and was therefore closed.
As we drove away from the Humor Monastery, we passed a number of stork nests. Bogdan pointed out one nest with three baby storks. According to him, this is a traditional sign of good luck and prosperity.
At the Voronet Monastery we saw a map of all of the Orthodox Monasteries in Romania from 1177 to 2008. We also took a picture of a map of Romania in 1938. It included the present day country of Moldova, which the Soviet Union forcibly annexed in 1940, and also parts of southern Ukraine. At this time, Bucovina, which includes Suceava and the Chernowitz region of Ukraine, was called Bucovina, and it was all Romanian. At one point the northern border of Romania actually abutted Poland. To the west there was Czechoslovakia; to the northeast the Soviet Union, and as we are discovering right now, national borders can still become rather amorphous.
At Moldovita we met a group from Chicago that was touring Romania.
At Sucevita we picnicked next to the church, and ate a quick lunch of bread, cheese and sausage. To summarize, more biblical stories than you can count were depicted on the exteriors and interiors of these monasteries. Depending on the year they were created, there were different conceptualizations of Jerusalem - some looking very much like Romanian towns. Lots of depictions of suffering martyrs (a favorite was a detached head surrounded by a halo, usually lying at the feet of a "Turk brandishing a sword"). Damnation was suggested with images of dark imps with pitchforks awaiting those who fall from the path to Heaven.
After the monasteries, we headed to Radauti, where we promised a visit to the cemetery at the town center. Before we reached Radauti, we stopped in Marginea, famous for its black pottery. Some of the pots reminded us of the face pottery in Georgia. It is a very famous place, and the pottery is very nice, but there is no way to carry pottery in a backpack without creating shards. We arrived in Radauti at 2:05 pm. Posted on the door of the synagogue: 11 - 2 M W F. So there we were on this Friday afternoon. The place was locked up tight. We waited for 10 minutes while attempting to find someone with a key, but no such luck. It must be said that the synagogue was a large solid building in a prime location in the town.
We asked Bogdan to drop us off in the center of Suceava. He pointed out where the buses to Burdujeni leave. We tried unsuccessfully to find an internet cafe, before being dropped off. In the end he dropped us off in the town center, to our great gratitude.
It was a little after 3 pm. At the nearby patisserie we ordered two teas and two pastries: an eclair and a tiramisu. In the restroom of this pastry shop, "rules for behavior" were posted. The basic message: Keep it clean, no hanky-panky.
Then we started exploring Suceava. We passed the Biserica (church) Sf. (saint) Nicolae Suceava, and headed on to the Ethnographic Museum of Suceava at 4 pm. The museum is housed in an 18th century inn. The exhibits consisted of a room for each town in the Suceava region. Different modes of dress and different folk arts in each one. Lots of carved wooden spoons in each one.
Out on the street we passed a small store, with an ethnographic map of the Bucovina region, showing the demographic composition in 1910. Each town had a pie chart showing the population of Romanians, Hungarians, Jews, Poles, Germans, etc. Quite a lot of interesting data. Most of the larger towns were 40% Jewish in 1910. We could have purchased a color copy of the map for only 12 lei, but it was just too big to carry.
Up the street there was a huge crowd of parents and kids in various costumes. Apparently, a dance academy was having its big recital downtown, and we were about to be in the middle of it. We have put in enough time at dance recitals, so we quickly left the scene after snapping a few photos of kids in ethnic dress.
A block away was the Suceava synagogue - the G.Ch. Synagogue, where G. Ch. is an abbreviation for Gemilut Chasidim. Closed. (Lonely Planet and Wikipedia call it the Gah Synagogue, but that is wrong.)
So twice today, we have found substantial synagogues in the middle of town. Carol sees this as proof that the Jewish communities were not hidden, but Mike wonders if they once commanded a greater presence that has been lost, e.g., adjacent school, rabbi's house, mikveh, etc.
The Autogara (bus station) was a couple of blocks away. We found the bus company that goes to Falticeni and learned that the buses ran every hour. We now know what we need for our trip to Falticeni (home of Carol's maternal grandfather) tomorrow.
We walked back through the Biserica Sf. Dimitriu, which turned out to be a church in the more formal French style.
We rode the 4 bus to Brandusa Restaurant and ordered two of the menus for the day. Today the soup was different, but the main dish was the same. The food itself was not as good as yesterday, maybe because the staff was busy preparing for a huge party (wedding?). This was going to be a great party, because each table of 6 had set on it a bottle of Smirnoff vodka and three bottles of Feteasca Alba wine.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel. We worked on the laptop and finally got a day written and posted. We also researched our lodging in Cluj. Booking.com, we discovered, is the way to reserve.
And so to bed.
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