Travel – Transylvania

April 12, 2014 – Keepsakes from Transylvania

OK, so it took a while to finish up the Transylvania series. I end with some of the keepsakes Linda brought back.

Red embroidered cloth is very common in the area. These are only a couple examples.

A village hat is the keepsake, not the guy wearing it! Do I look happy like Pharrel Williams?

Delicate bracelets for the girls (shh, they haven’t been home to see them yet).

This is an impressed copy of the Edict of Torda, issued in 1568. It was an important statement of religious freedom when the mainstream church was clamping down on the reformation as nations were trying to consolidate power by merging the dominant religion with the state and creating a state religion resulting in providing a reason to torture or kill those who were opposed to the state-imposed religion. To refresh your memories, Martin Luther’s 95 theses were posted in 1517. The thoughts live on in the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment a couple hundred years later: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

This document is a copy of the traditional Transylvanian blessing, found in churches and homes across Transylvania.

Finally a couple of tapestries, one them a gift from the Unitarian Bishop.

April 10, 2014 – People to remember

It is most appropriate to lead off the wonderful people Linda met with Lajos, the minister at our partner church.

In his trip to Iowa we were able to host him for a meal at our farm.

Linda tagged along on a regional minister’s meeting.

Some spouses waited patiently for the meeting to end.

Here Linda is with Nora, the English teacher at the seminary.

Food

and drink on a girl’s night out with Nora.

Linda also was honored to meet a Bishop of the Hungarian Unitarian Church. He’s my kind of guy as he insisted Linda bring a gift of hospitality home with her for me – some pálinka from his own stock – a distilled spirit of fruit juices – the saying in Hungary is “what can be used to prepare jam can also be used to produce pálinka.”

This is Izalda, she and Linda spent some time working together on her English before a big exam. She passed! Izalda was very kind taking Linda to the Market, walking around town, and generally begin very cheerful to be around.

This woman, Maria, is one of the first women to graduate from the Unitarian seminary in Transylvania.

Finally, Linda whooping it up with the students after hours.

I’ll end the time in Transylvania with this photograph of the good-by supper she had in the seminary.

April 9, 2014 – Teaching at the seminary

One of the primary reasons for Linda’s trip was to teach English to ministers, seminary students, and a high school class.

This is a group of ministers she was able to meet with. As many churches in Transylvania have partner churches in the U.S., an effort is made for the ministers to improve their English skills to be able to communicate with their partner church in the U.S.

Here’s Linda in the classroom with some high schoolers.

In the central courtyard there was a human chess game going on with students acting as the chess pieces.

She spent the most time with the students in seminary.

For one assignment, they were split up into groups.

For the final assignment, Linda had them pretend they were coming to the U.S. and present a U.S.-style service and present it in English.

One of Linda’s favorite shots from the trip – with all the students.

April 7, 2014 – Transylvanian churches

Linda had a chance to visit churches in a few villages.

The church in Tordatfalva.

Linda’s there!

Here’s an inside view of a “typical” church. The minister preaches from the raised pulpit, the minister’s wife sits in the box below the pulpit, then men on one side of the church and the women on the other side.

The raised pulpit for the minister.

The banner the Ames partner church gave to the Tordatfalva church.

After services in the school, parishioners gather for treats and wine hour (we have coffee hour).

Lajos in another nearby village church.

The interior of yet another church.

The parsonage.

Linda with Tunde, the minister’s wife and the church president and his wife.

Chimney cakes are a traditional treat in this part of the world.

Coffee hour is chimney cakes and wine!

Nearly every Tranyslvanian Unitarian church has this imagry of a Dove of Peace standing on top of the world, encircled by the Serpent of Wisdom that is swallowing its own tail, symbolizing the everlasting cycle of life, and topped with the Crown of King John Sigismund of Transylvania, who issued issued the Edict of Torda, the first broad decree of religious freedom in the modern history of Europe.

April 6, 2014 – Images from Tordatfalva

Another of the economic enhancements of the villages is tourism.

This is a small cabin being remodeled for a children’s camp. You can see some of the timber and frame pieces getting replaced. The minister insisted they keep the original structure rather than build new with “modern” 2×4 framing.

This man is the church president in front of another structure with a big bad wolf in the background.

Grape arbors are very common and part of nearly every fence and porch.

Thirsty?

Linda swears by the naturally carbonated spring water.

Finally, her home for her days in the villages.

April 2, 2014 – Transylvanian Agriculture

Linda got a chance to spend a few days near in the Carpathian Mountains and experienced a chance to see some agricultural enterprises while visiting the site of the Ames Unitarian Fellowship’s partner church in Tordotfalva.

The region has an abundance of fruit trees and pastures, so beekeeping is an important enterprise. This couple cares for the bees. The smaller boxes on the top rails are to raise queens to sell.

This is some of the foundation inside the special queen boxes.

This is a homemade bee waterer. Bees need lots of edges to safely land and drink water without having to land on water. This piece of wood has an upside down jar of water and it is positioned over a newly planted apple tree so the water that escapes waters the tree.

Getting ready to plant potatoes. The villagers still use horses, one of the arguments being, once you buy a tractor, that tractor isn’t able to reproduce itself!

The potato planter follows behind.

The ministers in many of the villages take responsibility for the economic well-being of the area and often manage many acres of land. Here Lajos shows off one of the orchards.

They have a machine which takes raw apples and converts them into “Naked” brand like apple juice. The apples go in here.

Here’s another part of the crushing/squeezing.

The screen takes out the big chunks.

The vat pasteurizes the juice.

At the end, the juice is squirted into bags that are put into…

boxes, like Americans use to buy wine.

Other fruits like plum can be bottled as well. It’s a great way for the people of the region to take raw fruit and make a value-added, non-perishable product.

March 30, 2014 – Transylvania, Dracula, and Segesvár

For Linda’s two weeks in Transylvania, I might as well start with the most famous (for Americans, at least) of all Transylvanian icons – Dracula. Of course, the “inspiration” for Bram Stoker’s Dracula was, in part “Vlad the Impaler” who lived in this place in the 1400s. Here’s just a line telling what kind of a guy he was from a publication in the 1500s: “He roasted children, whom he fed to their mothers. And (he) cut off the breasts of women, and forced their husbands to eat them. After that, he had them all impaled.” The city is named Sighisoara or Segesvár (the first is the Romanian name, the second is the Hungarian name; Transylvania was part of Hungary until the borders were redrawn after WW1 when it became part of Romania).

The fortified city was built in the late 1100s or early 1200s when the King of Hungary invited German craftsmen to settle and defend his kingdom.

This place is one of the best examples of a preserved small medieval fortified city. It is considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The approach to part of the city.

These buildings are all inside the citadel.

Linda in front of one of the bastions – each bastion was occupied by a separate guild where they would practice their craft and be on guard. A guild in medieval times according to Wikipedia is ” an association based on trades, confraternities of textile workers, masons, carpenters, carvers, glass workers, each of whom controlled secrets of traditionally imparted technology, the “arts” or “mysteries” of their crafts. Usually the founders were free independent master craftsmen who hired apprentices.

February 15, 2014 – Linda Named Transylvanian Scholar!

Linda was selected as her seminary’s inaugural “Transylvanian Scholar.” It means a couple weeks in the Transylvania region of Romania – a description of the trip is below:

“Under the direction of Meadville Lombard’s English teacher at the Protestant Institute in Kolozsvar, the Transylvanian Scholars’ primary duty will be to introduce theological and colloquial language to the Unitarian seminarians in various conversational and classroom settings. This may include holding discussion groups around issues of ministry and/or religion, conducting discussions about sermons, assisting the English Teacher with her classroom curriculum, etc. Again, these duties will be directed by the English Teacher.”

Seminary is triangular building in this google map.

Additionally, in coordination with the Unitarian seminary faculty at the Institute and The Hungarian Unitarian Church, the Transylvanian Scholar will be asked to deliver occasional “lectures” to students, ministers and faculty on various elements of North American Unitarian Universalism. Topics to be addressed might include ministry, theological education, international Unitarianism or other topics of interest to the students.

Finally, the Transylvanian Scholar may be asked to assist faculty with English texts. He/she may be asked to proofread publications, web pages, etc.

During the stay, the Transylvanian Scholar will have opportunities to travel throughout the region of Transylvania becoming acquainted with Unitarian culture, history and practice there.