This past weekend was spent in the South-Eastern portions of Transylvania with my hosting Rotary club. The first day of the trip was spent driving about 8 or 9 hours on a coach bus to a tiny village around Slobozia. The people greeted everyone by leading them across their newly build covered bridge into the village and to the town house/church for food and drink. They told us that the village had about 100 inhabitants but that 40 of the were gypsies, leaving 60 true Hungarian inhabitants (this is just to show you how everyone feels about the differences between people here). The reason for the club going to this village was to see what their donations had done to help them rebuild their village after a flood a couple years ago. The town was also able to save enough money amongst themselves as a farming community to have a paved road created leading to their town. This is what the villagers were most proud of saying it would open new doors for their community.
The village is self-sufficient and I saw one car there that wasn't one of the Rotarians', which I'm pretty sure belonged to someone who did not live there. They used horses and carts to get around and wore clothing that we would consider outdated by fashion standards.
After walking around the village and the Rotarians talking to them, they all started singing Hungarian songs and cheering that they were Hungarians, not Romanians. The political split of Hungary has left both sides unhappy and seeing the pride of these people who refuse to wave Romanian flags or adopt a new language is a rare and amazing thing to observe.
The next day was spent touring Southern Transylvania by bus and viewing the famous old churches and monuments from Hungarian history including the Catholic Church which holds the largest statue of the Virgin Mary. After, we went to Cheile Bicazului, which had amazing mountains, cliffs, and lakes. The roads to the lakes were absolutely incredible, bus or no bus. The roads were all very narrow and were made of straight passages followed by sudden 180 degree turns. On-coming traffic was always delt with carefully. In the mountains, we had a chance to get off the bus and walk down the road which had random vendors in shacks trying to sell souvenirs. I was a bit disappointed when I saw the mass-produced Native American and Asian trinkets as opposed to traditional Romanian items.
The third day we went to what I was told was an inactive volcano. When we got there, we all walked through some trees uphill on a narrow wooden bridge. Suddenly at one point the guide stopped, pointed something out as he spoke and then all of the Rotarians stepped off of the bridge onto the ground and proceded to hop around. I stood there for a minute or so looking at all of the 50+ men hopping and stomping in the forrest as their wives walked around or stayed on the walkway as well. A lot of the time, such as this, my not having a clue turns out to be more amusing than frustrating.
As it turns out, this inactive volcano had filled with water and then was covered in a layer of ash. This resulted in some plantlife to be able to grow (trees were no taller than 6 or 7 feet at the top) and the ground to always be saturated and bouncey due to an abundance of moss. Later in the walk we saw to open parts where the water could be seen which looked like small black ponds. Each were over 100 meters deep and people were advised to not step off of the bridge while walking close to these. The plants which grew around them were also very interesting. Wild Venus Fly Traps and strange looking mushrooms or mosses grew all around. I would have taken a picture but they were very small. The colors of it all made it look very strange.
The last day we spent about 15 hours in the bus, stopping to see a small town for it's church and mill and another to see the home of Elek Benedek, a famous Hungarian fairy tale writer. The village that we stopped at to see the church unfortunately wasn't allowing visitors in at the time but a lady had told us to see their local mill. It turned out that a cat with her three kittens was the biggest attraction of the town, though the mill was interesting. The next stop was to see a church which had been build with a giant wall around it, about three stories high, to protect the church during times of war. We had all gotten in our Sunday service here as the pastor went on for literally 2 and a half hours explaining all of the artifacts and artwork within the church. After this, many of the Rotarians were not as interested in making further sight-seeing stops.
As we were later told on the bus, the homes in this part of Transylvania did not have the common style of roof. They were build with a higher slope and wider so that food and supplies could be stored during the war. As I learned throughout the trip on the many stops, there is an extremely high number of stray dogs. Every town we stopped at had at least two or three which would come up to you to beg for food. There were sadly many more that you could see on the sides of the roads as well. Many didn't want to be near the dogs and frowned upon the other exchange student trying to pet them, though a few would feed the scraps of what they had left from lunch. It was sad to see how skinny they were and I felt bad that I didn't want to touch them for fear of getting ill. This was also probably why the cats were so popular.
The rest of the ride back home was filled with viewing the rolling tree-less hills and sharp mountains with farmers harvesting their potatoes and shepards waving to us as we went by. We left at roughly 8:30 in the morning and returned home at about midnight. The many people trying to get back into Hungary mixed with those commuting back to the large city we passed in Romania and car accidents made for a slow ride back.
As for any other updates, I am still slowly learning Hungarian and I have met more people and I am able to communicate somewhat in what they call "Hunglish". The next step will be to get my broken-Hungarian point across completely in their language. Though my teacher loves our half and half conversations as it helps out their English skills. This weekend is a Rotary food competition between Rotary clubs across Eastern Hungary and some neighboring country's clubs such as Romania. Next weekend I may be going to Austria if it doesn't snow on the mountain -ahh snow!. I'll be sure to post more pictures and updates if we get the okay for that trip.
