Tuesday, September 20, 2005

HOW TO ATTEND A WEDDING BY MISTAKE IN TRANSYLVANIA.


A view of Cluj Napoca, the main city in the region known as Transilvania in the West, but called Ardeal by Romanians. The region complex cultural heritage responds to the presence of a Saxon (German), Hungarian and Romanian community, each with its language still spoken.




After Cluj Napoca I directed my steps towards Maramures, the hilly region in the northern border with Ukraine. There I sojourned in different tiny villages. While hitch-hiking, I stopped a bus full of men and women in folcloric dresses.
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As I didn`t have a destination, I just jumped in. When I asked the driver, he cheerfully said they were all going to a wedding in Breb, a near by village, and that I was invited. It was that kind of wedding, where the bachelor knocks at the bride`s door sorrounded by his orchestra of sax, violins and drums, before ging together to the church. At church there were few poeple. Most waited outside and showed more interest in the bottles of ziuca being passed around than in the wedding. Even inside the church a woman could hardly do the sign of the cross while holding a bottle under her arm...



So there I was... in a wedding in Transilvania. Those people didn`t stop drinking before the following morning, so I just slipped into my tent around 3 a.m.






Some images of rural life, in a place where the concept of economic efficency is eclipsed by reality: women of all ages working hard, ploughing and dragging their karts.

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