Some Traditional Romanian Things

We were working on our tourist info center in the Apuseni Mountains a few weeks ago, and it is attached to a museum of traditional Romanian things. I thought I would put up a few pictures to show what Romanians used to wear and use and such. And also, a picture of the info center itself. We then ate dinner with a family out there, frying up the meat over a fire, which was very interesting.

Rosia Montana

In mid-June, we went for the weekend to Rosia Montana, a very old and famous mining town in the Apuseni Mountains. Currently it is a very controversial place, and much discussed in Romania. It has been a mining town since Roman times, and is one of the oldest occupied places in all of Romania. You can even visit Roman mine there that is 1000 years old. Throughout the communist period it was mined by the Romanian government, but that mine closed down a couple of years ago. Now, a Canadian corporation is planning to build the largest cyanide mine in Europe there, which will displace most of the population of the town. I suppose I am a bit one-sided about this, because my organization is working on environmental issues in the area, but many people are concerned about cyanide in the water, especially because from here it could potentially flow into Hungary and down the Danube. Anyway, there is a lot of information out there about this, if you go to Rosiamontana.org there is a bunch of information. Anyway, visiting the site was a very nice experience, and also a sad one. Lots of poverty exists there and the people don't know who to turn to or who to trust, it seems. The company offers them jobs and some economic support, but also wants them to leave their town and move centuries-old churches and cemataries. Some organizations are working on eco-tourism, but that clearly is not as lucrative as gold mining. A very difficult spot for the people of Rosia Montana. Luckily, they get to live in a beautiful place, for now.

Time for an Update!

Hey, I apologize for not updating this thing for so long. I wish I could say that I have been super busy, but the real truth is that once I got my own internet connection, I lost all discipline about updating it. Suddenly there was no hurry to do new posts or anything because there was no rush or anything to do them. Anyway, I have been doing some stuff for the past two months or so since I have lived in Cluj-Napoca, and the following few posts will hopefully catch up. Anyway, sorry for taking so long, to anyone who is still checking here for any updates about what I have been up to. Here are some pictures of a natural reserve that my organization has custody over, and that we visited a few weeks ago.

First Week in Cluj-Napoca

Well, here I am in Cluj-Napoca, my new home town. I have been here for one very eventful week in the historic capital of Transylvania. (I just discovered, by the way, that this city is mentioned on the first page of Dracula by Bram Stoker, only then it was a German city called Claussenberg - cool huh?) I have been meeting new people pretty much every day and getting to know the city. It is a big city, the third biggest in the country, and a very important city on Romania. It is also the best and most fun city in the country, in my humble opinion - but don't trust me - ask around and people will say the same thing. I think it has something to do with the huge college scene here and all the fun things to do. Robert Kaplan says in Balkan Ghosts that "There is no city in all of the Balkans quite so entrancing as Cluj". Anyway, enough hyping of the city. I moved here last Sunday from Ploiesti with all of my stuff along with five other Peace Corps volunteers (in the same compartment, no less). I moved in with my second host family, and I then spent the week getting to know some of the other volunteers here, several members of my organization, and just generally getting to know the city. So far, I love it. It may just be the most fun city I have ever lived in, which is saying something because Fort Collins was pretty awesome. However, there is three times as many college students here and an old-world European atmosphere that just can't be compared to anything in the states. Anyway, here are some pictures from the train ride and from around Cluj.

It's Official!

I am now an official Peace Corps volunteer. We ended our ten week training period yesterday and rasied our right hand to take the oath as volunteers. It was very impressive with a ceremony at a theatre here in Ploiesti. Our country director was there along with the mayor of Ploiesti and the American ambassador to Romania. The ambassador did the swearing in, and then we had a reception afterwards. So, now the training is done, time to get to work! We had a big celebratory party last night, our last time all together for the next six months. It was all a lot of fun. So tomorrow, I will hop on a train with all of my stuff and move to Cluj. There, I will live with another host family for one month, and then move into my own place. I will just be happy when I can stop having to pack all of my stuff up and move it every few weeks! It is odd, there is not much exciting about Ploiesti, but now it feels like home. We know where everything is, and we can get around well. I didn't think I would be sad to leave it, but I kind of am. Of course, I will miss my current host parents a lot as well, so I will have to come back and visit before to long. It is such an odd experience though, that we all go through in the Peace Corps. We met a new group of friends ten weeks ago, spent every day with them since, bonded, got really close, and now we are going to be spread all across this relatively large country. So, we are left to start all over getting to know a new city, develop a new group of friends, and try to figure out what is happening around us. It is just kind of hard to describe stuff like this to anyone unless they have been through a similar experience of rapid change in their life. Anyway, asta este. I need to pack all of my stuff up (again) and get ready to go. Cluj-Napoca awaits!

Site Visit Part Two: Apuseni Mountains

Ok, so now for the rest of my site visit last weekend. After being in Cluj for two days, we went backpacking for the weekend in the Apuseni Mountains, where I will be working much of the time over the next two years. We drove a couple of hours out of Cluj to some small villages in the country where people still live much as they have for centuries. It was amazing the contrast between the modern city and the countryside. We then went even farther, hiking from a remote village out into the forest. We went to a cabana in the woods that my organization owns and keeps up as part of their ecotourism projects. The cabana is actually an old schoolhouse in a village that now is almost completely abanonded. There are no road for cars to the village now, and most of the buildings are abandoned, so it was fun to go around and see things. Amazingly, the village was still largely inhabited as recently as ten years ago. We stayed in the cabana for the weekend and hiked around, seeing a bit of the mountains. Some other members of the organization also hiked in on Saturday and we had a big campfire complete with mici, beer and palenca. It was a very good time. I could not have planned a better site visit if I had tried, and now I am anxious to move to Cluj next week and start doing more of this stuff!

Site Visit Part One: Cluj

So, this weekend I got out of Ploiesti and visited my new hometown of Cluj for the first time. I met my counterpart, saw where I will be working, and got to know the town a little bit. It was an absolutely awesome weekend, and I could not have planned it any better. This post will focus on the city of Cluj, where the first half of my visit was, then I will move on in the next post to the Apuseni Mountains, where my organization does most of its work. Anyway, on Wednesday night we took the 6 1/2 hour train ride to Cluj from Ploiesti, arriving a little after midnight. I met my new host sister (Roxana) at the train station, and she drove me around the city a bit before we went home. In the morning she took me town to the center of Cluj and we saw a bit of the city in the day. We met up with another volunteer and his counterpart and spent the afternoon with them. Cluj is an amazing city, very old and full of history. It was once a very distant outpost of the Roman Empire and was inhabited by Germans for a long time, and was a majority Hungarian until about twenty years ago. It is now a center for several universities, and is literally crawling with college students. The middle of the city is all old Saxon architecture, but the outskirts are all communist block buildings, which makes for an interesting contrast. Anyway, we went to an animal museum and basically just hung around the city for the day on Thursday. Thursday night I got to meet many members of my new organization and they did a presentation at a school about their activities over the past year, so that was very informative an exciting for me, even though I couldn't understand much of what they said in Romanian. At least there were pictures! Anyway, that about sums up the Cluj portion of my site visit.