Paşte Fericit (with lots of pics)

Again, I’ve taken a bit of time to get to this one, but here it is (for some reason the pictures took a particularly long among of time to insert and move around - I'm going to change my method next time around).

I’m back in Bucharest and back at the Ovidiu Rom center. The office was closed on Friday and I spent most of the day walking around and enjoying the sun. In the afternoon I met with a relative, Lidia, and we walked around my neighborhood for a couple hours. We walked along Blvd. Dacia and then to one of the small parks near my house. I believe it’s the one my grandfather told me about, where he used to go with my dad when he was a baby. I also decded to go to see my father’s family’s old house again. We had gone on my first trip to Romania, but I only remembered the balcony and not much else (pointed out especially because that balcony was attached to my father’s room).

Some pictures from our walk:

Park

Balcony
Then Friday night I met again with Monica and Andrei for dinner. It was really nice. Highlight of the meal was probably the theatrics of this one fish dish that encrusted in a salt shell and then set on fire. The strange thing is, the fish itself isn’t actually very salty. I forgot to take a picture though.

On Saturday morning I left for Ploieşti. I met with Cristina, the daughter of a friend of my mother’s, at the southern train station in Ploieşti. We walked to their house, which isn’t far from the train station. There I met my new friend, Poufy.

Poufy likes to bite and scrath when he plays though, so my hands are a little damaged.

Cristina and I spent Saturday walking around Ploieşti. While the city itself isn’t particularly picturesque, they have put very beautiful flower arrangements all around and the weather was particularly nice.

Flower arrangements

Bunnies at the mall for Easter.

Easter in Romania (an abbreviated version from what I saw):

Romanians are predominantly (and I forget the statistics) Eastern/Christian Orthodox, specifically, Romanian Orthodox. Therefore, Easter, is a very big deal here. Those who are more religious keep ‘post’ up until Easter Sunday, which is kind of a form of lent. The whole post is forty days, but some do it more symbolically for a week or even just several days. It involves, among other things, abstaining from eating any animal products besides honey.

The official celebration of Easter begins on Saturday evening, when you go to the church for a service that symbolizes Christ’s resurrection. Cristina and her boyfriend, Catalin, decided that we should go to a

monastery for the evening event, somewhere in the woods between PloieştiBucharest. Catalin drove Cristina, myself, and several of their friends. There were so many cars that after we parked, it was a ten minute to the monastery. When we arrived, we walked through an archway where nuns were selling religious items that led into a courtyard. In the center of the courtyard, there was a small church. There were too many people for us to actually enter the church, but we were close enough to see the priest when he eventually came outside.

The first part of the service is held inside the church, which we couldn’t hear from outside. Then, sometime before midnight, all the lights of the church were turned off and the priest emerged from the church, holding something (couldn’t see) that was then lit on fire. Using a microphone, the priest then continued the service outside. At one point during the service the priest uses his fire, to light candles of the people standing around him. Fire is then passed from person to person, each using their own candle, until the whole courtyard is lit. After more scripture reading and some singing, the priest went back into the church and the crowed headed back to their cars, holding their candles.

The candles are supposed to remain lit until you get home, which proved to be rather complicated task, as there was a breeze that kept blowing them out (and you can only relight them from who peoples’ candles – or so it seemed). There were seven of us in the group with candles lit and by the time we got to the car, there was only one. We then relit candles in the car and then had to stop at each person’s house so that they could drop off their candle.

Afterwards, we met up again and had our first (mini) Easter meal complete with colored boiled eggs, and lamb, and drinks. At the beginning of each Easter meal, each person gets a colored egg and you then ‘knock eggs’ with the person sitting next to you at the table (heads first, then bottoms). Whose egg doesn’t crack, has to then knock eggs with someone else whose egg didn’t crack, so on and so forth.

Before knocking eggs you have to give the Easter greeting, “Christos a Inviat!” and to which the response is, “Adeverat a Inviat!". This basically translates to, "Christ is risen!," and "Truly he is risen!". This greeting is also used whenever you greet someone in the days after Easter.

We celebrated almost until morning and the next day Cristina and I got up just in time to head over to her grandparents’ house for our first real Easter meal. More egg-knocking, more lamb, and more drinks (in moderation).

After a few hours at Cristina’s grandparents’ house, we decided to go for a drive out of the city (Catalin drove again – he’s apparently always the designated driver). The three of us, along with Catalin’s friend Radu, piled into the car. We picked a direction (we couldn’t decide where to go, so Radu spun Catalin in a circle to pick the direction) and then started driving, ending up in Sinaia. Sinaia is one of the few places in Romania that I’ve been before, and although it was extremely crowded, it was really pleasant to get out of the city and into the mountains a bit.

Some Sinaia/Busteni pictures:

Unfortunately, this was the only picture I took of Cristina and Catalin - I didn't realize on the screen that her eyes were closed.

These are from the monastary in Sinaia.

'The cross' which you can see from the whole area.

We also stopped in Busteni briefly, where you have a particularly beautiful view of the mountains, although the area itself was a bit too full of people and litter.

On the way back, we stopped in resort area, where there was a stand selling Kurtosi Kolaci (I was given the spelling by a non-hungarian speaking Romanian, so even she wasn’t quite sure), a Hungarian pastry cooked over a fire mostly found in Transylvania, in the mountains.

When we got back in the evening, we went to Catalin’s family to eat more eggs and more lamb (along with other dishes – the food seemed to never end that day), after which we went back to Cristina’s and pretty much passed out. Well, I did at least.

The next morning I hopped a train back to Bucharest. Went directly to Marica’s house where I had lunch with two of her cousins (unrelated to me) and a friend of theirs from Israel. After several hours of more food and discussions (and yes, even Marica had lamb and a few eggs), I went over to Andrei and Monica’s house and sat in the backyard, Skyping with my dad, my mom, sister, grandparents, etc.

I could go into more detail about Monday’s events, but I think for the moment ‘ajunge’. Meaning, I think this’ll do for now.

Best to all.

M