Christmas with Mariana, the Winter Festival and back to Bucharest

Wow! What an incredible Christmas it's been!

It all began with a night train to Cluj. After a student breakfast of coffee, bread and nutella, we hit the road and made it to Sighet in four and a half hours. Mariana was waiting with a huge lunch (the shape of things to come), heaps of news, and her usual loveliness. Boy, was it cold! The sub-zero temperature hit me with a thwack in the chops - It was even too cold for snow, despite the blanket covering the mountains just an hour away.

Christmas Eve was a quiet day, so Mariana decided to teach me a handful of colinde. As she sang the melodies, I took musical dictation in my manuscript book I had brought with me for that very purpose. At 19h, we set off to church. Very small with a tiny congregation by British church-going standards for a Christmas Eve, we climbed the winding stone steps up to a small space overlooking the altar to join the choir that consisted of 7 without us. It was bitter cold. I could see my breath before me as I sang, but what fun it was harmonising carols so far from home on Christmas night.

The next day, as tradition demands, we went out to do the house visits. So many people, so many homes, so much hospitality. We began with 9 year old Bianca. Bianca was born with a long list of medical problems, is paralysed from the waist down and has just undergone a series of painful operations here in Bucharest to try to free her knee and both hips, fused since birth. She has learning difficulties too. Speech is hard for her and there's a definite problem with her vision and focus. The doctor has said she is two years behind but it seems more than just two years. Her parents were warm, welcoming and festive, proud of their beautiful tree next to Bianca's bed and the table ladened with cakes and biscuits, bottles and glasses. Bianca was lying on her bed surrounded by her Christmas presents, and completely immobilised by two plaster casts that reached right up to her tummy. Unable to bend at the waist, walking, going to the toilet by herself or indeed, doing anything by herself, she is entirely dependent on her parents. Her father has developed a discal hernia due to all the lifting - Bianca is not a small child. It was hard to say goodbye to them. Even knowing that our association 'Enfants de Roumanie' helps the family with funding for Bianca, I still wanted to do so much more. Sometimes you just have to accept you can't and it renders one miserable.

Our next stop-off was to Mariana's brother Peter, his friend Isabel and their three magnificent cats. The little coffee table in the sitting room was overflowing with food - meats, salata de boeuf, cheeses, castraveti, covrigi of caraway seed and cheese, and of course, the ever-present little glasses for palinka. This is dangerous as you never know the strength of what you're about to drink - in Maramures, palinka and tuica (less distilled, so a little weaker) are both just plain 'tuica'! Its pot luck as to how long you'll be able to speak intelligently before you collapse in a heap. With the cold outside, tuica is a very welcome winter warmer, however! Mariana went off to the kitchen to have ciorba and talk to her brother, leaving me with Isabel. We discussed life in Sighet, Romanian music, food, the weather, the cats...

Next visit was to Mara(s family. Mara is an excellent linguist and accomplished pianist, who insisted on playing Bach and Mozart on an old crate of a piano that can't have seen a tuning fork since the Crimea. What a pity she has to practise on such an antiquated pile of junk. She's working on a suite by Enescu that I want to hear next time. As I listened, my tuica glass was regularly topped up...

Mara's English teacher, Simona, was there with her son Tudor and her husband. We hit it off at once, yabbering about pedagogy, tricks for teaching grammar and the ups and downs of EFL training. Her son Tudor is paralysed from the waist down, but unlike Bianca, has full sensation in both his legs and propels himself on all fours to get around. He doesn't seem the least bit bothered by his immobility and is a bright and lovely child. I totally fell in love with him at first sight.

From Mara's, we went on to Ileana's, and were frozen almost solid by the time we'd walked the thirty minutes through town to get there.

The next day, I went to visit Viky who I hadn't seen for six months. I'd expected we'd go and sit in a café for a catch-up, but no, I was whisked into a taxi and sped off to her flat the other side of Sighet. I met her son, Cristy for the first time. Good looking, funny, a trained doctor who can't find work and is desperate to receive his papers so he can leave to work abroad, he passes his time job-hunting and fighting with the authorities. A very frustrating existence. There was also Viky's mum who lives with them. A sweet old thing who flitted between the doorway and her bedroom like a little bird. I wanted to give her a huge hug but she looked like she'd break into a thousand pieces. Coffee and a chat? Ha! Nope! Ciorba, sarmale, salads, vinete (hurrah!) and of course the ever present tuica - we talked for hours. It wasn't until Viky got up to turn the light on that I realised how long I'd been there!

Back home, Mariana was cooking again. I don't know where she gets the energy! Her sarmale is second to none and literally melts in your mouth. She'd also done a cream of mushroom that was just heaven on the taste buds. I'd never had it before. And as for the cakes...oh my goodness. May La Durée drool at her masterpieces. Whatever happens in Mariana's house, whatever the tragedy, however bad things may be, all can be solved with food. In the UK we have a cup of tea. In Mariana's house, you eat. Fabulous!

The next day, ie. yesterday, was the Winter Festival in Sighet - well, in all Maramures and central Romania. Processions of music and national costumes from all the regions of northern and central Romania are there for the gawping. The horses are dressed magnificently, the children look edible and everyone has a great time despite the omnipresent biting cold. Please see more photos in the album 'Datini...' I met the journalist for Sighet and its surrounding regions, Johnny Popescu, who had fascinating stories to tell about this very ancient, pagan and beautiful part of Romania - please see his email to me written after my return to Bucharest at the bottom of this post.     

Later, we went to the travel agency to try to get my return ticket to Bucharest. Guess what? Impossible to leave from Sighet. No place for days. Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!!! As much as I love being with Mariana, I needed to be back in Bucharest to organise my New Year with Lidia - and the cold was starting to get the better of me. Finally, a solution. The rapid train from Baia Mare, leaving at 21h45 that night. Mariana organised my transfer from Sighet to Baia Mare (an hour and a half away across an icy mountain with sickeningly windy roads but drop-dead gorgeous views), and last night, I made the return trip home.

With temperatures in the compartment of nearly 40° ('well, it's cold out' said the controller), I spent the night in the seat at the end of the corridor, where it was much cooler. It wasn't too bad. I had a table, a lamp and could read, until Varry (Vasile) the controller decided to come and join me for about four hours! With an incomprehensible mai-bai Bucharest accent and dreadful elocution, he talked the hindleg off several donkeys despite my completely bank expressions and declarations of not understanding a single word he said. His solution wasn't to speak slower, articulate or simplify his language (ie. dump the colloquialisms and expletives), but to yell as if I were stone deaf. At some point in the monologue he asked if I liked Duran Duran. 'Er, yeah, they're okay' I said. He ambled off for a while and returned with his MP3 where he'd downloaded six albums of his idols and insisted I plough my way through them despite my pleads of 'let me have a nap'. 'Girls on Film', 'Her Name is Rio', 'The Reflex'...memories from the 80's, youth club, school, etc came flooding back. I managed one album and then had to admit defeat. Did I know Sandra? Er, no. So, then I had to listen to a girly Barbie with a wispy voice for about thirty minutes until I'd convinced him that she really was utterly amazing. Eventually he let me get an hours shut eye before waking me to say he'd arranged the kitchen for me with coca cola and coffee if I wanted any. Sure enough, on inspection, he had. Bless him! Annoying, but well meaning! He made me take his email and mobile phone number as he wanted English lessons (I think he'd be better off improving his Romanian first before he gets any more daring) and for the next time I took the train to Sighet. He'd enjoyed our chat (glad someone had) so much he'd like to do it again. Doamne fereste! As soon as the train pulled up into the Gara de Nord, I legged it.

Back at str. Telenovelo, I unpacked, did some washing and fell into bed. I awoke at four with a strange sensation that the room was bizarrely light. Hey. No curtains. My usual ones hanging on the front door weren't there either and neither was the long one on my door between kitchen and bedroom. What was going on? As if on cue, Mandita appeared with her 'Yoohoo! Only me!'. In her arms, were my curtains. She hadn't been expecting me until the 2nd January, she said, and had wanted to surprise me with nice clean curtains. We hung them up again, and then we sat and enjoyed palinka and some of Mariana's superb cakes while she gave me all the news of Christmas here during my absence. Apparently, Nicu had got paraletic, and she, Raluca, the children and the famous Titi had spent Christmas to the sound of his offkey snores.

And that's it my dears. The latest update. My first taste of a Romanian Christmas has been gloriously unforgettable. Everyone who made it such a memorable and fantastic time I thank from the bottom of my heart. And now I'm back in my beloved Bucharest again.

Time to close. I'm falling asleep and my hot water bottle is calling!

Keep well and warm, and thank you for all your Christmas e-cards, snail-mail cards and good wishes. It goes without saying that my thoughts are with you.

Sarah xox

Please find below an e-mail from Johnny Popescu, the journalist I met in Sighet. He gives a very interesting explanation of the masks worn by the 'Draci', what they symbolise and the reason for such an unholy row. Please read it and learn more about this traditional pagan festival across Central Europe. It really was an incredible sight:

Dear Sarah

I promised you to write a few words about the meaning of the mask and the festival you attended. So, here you are (I hope in good English to be understood)!

Masks appear in the most dark and cold season of the year, around the winter solstice, because this is the period when the activity of the malefic entities is at its peak. The Latin called the winter solstice „Ianua Coeli” (i.e. „The gate of the Heaven” or that of „the immortality” or „of the secret keeper”). These images are due to the fact that, between the two extremes of the sun, the first inaugurates an ascending faze towards the light of the annual cycle, the other, starts a descending and dark faze. In Roman mythology, Ianus – with two faces, one turned towards the future and the other to the past – was designed by Gods to open and close the gates of the year with two keys: a gold and a silver one. This is why the month of January – the beginning – was dedicated to him. And furthermore, his „ianitor” (gate keeper) role made Ianus the God of Initiation and that of the guilds, whose members celebrated him during the two solstices.

The spreading of Christianity in Europe, identified Ianus with the two saints named John. „John of the winter” (The Baptist) appeared as patron of the guilds and corporations which are responsible for the perpetuation of  winter traditions and festivals: the rites are kept even today. The noisy disorder which characterizes the winter festivals expresses the war between gods and demons, between the old genies of the year who are to go and the young ones who are to come, both represented by the „nice” and the „ugly” masks, masks symbolizing the two fazes of the annual cycle and – at an other level – the lower (dark) and the higher (light) sages of „being”.

Different anthropologic schools agree upon seeing the winter festivals as remains of old rites of exorcising and going ahead, whose origins – previous to the Christian ones – should be looked for in indo-European antiquity. Their goal is to chase away evil, „the demons of winter” and to gain the blessing of the benevolent powers of the gods. For some, these masks and festivals had only one goal, to ensure the prosperity of the entire community in the year to come. For others, it was about the cult of ancestors, and their spirit. And for the third category, the masks are related to the ceremonies of initiation.

In many old communities, there is the tradition of incinerating the masks: destroying the image of evil, making the entity expressed by it disappear. One can say that the mask „personnifies” the evil, that it appears as a mirror that shows the human defects asking for repulsion. Showing the low manifestation of the human psyche in a funny and ridiculous way, the mask diminishes its latent powers. As such, the mask has no right to existence only for a limited period of time, limited to the „carnival”, when the „worlds are open” (Mundus Patet). When its role is fulfilled, the mask is hidden or destroyed in order that its influence be neutralized and chaos is stopped. This may be one of the explanations for the little number of masks older than hundred years kept in the European museums.

The mask reveals as much as it hides. One of the Latin terms for mask is „persona” which – besides the meaning of „noise”or „sound” (per sonare),means that hev who wears a mask is temporarily personalized, he becomes „the person” with all his qualities and defects. For the community, he who takes the features of another person, takes the role, character, rights and perhaps the powers of  that person. Not only the features, but the voice and the language is changed as well, and his behavior – dictated by the new nature – doesn’t obey community laws: they steal and rob without being punished, tell people lies or, on the contrary, bless and offer gifts. Their judgement is law. This is why they are despised, feared, respected and worshipped at the same time.

Far from being simple occasions of joy and cheap debauchery, the winter festivals are lucid and coherent visions of society, in a chronology governed by the profound understanding of human nature and its subtle correspondence with the universe.

Besides a few insignificant interdictions, the Christian church tolerated and sometimes even recuperated these manifestations of pagan spirituality, conscious of their beneficial effects on community behavior.

Nowadays, the mask and the winter festivals are far from their ancient meaning. The liberalization of the moral tend to reduce the necessity of the rite, making it superfluous. All in all, it seems that they never have been so successful: many local and regional traditions have paradoxically consolidated and in some cases they were recreated out of different motivations, tourism being one of them. But, behind some mercantile motivation, there is a deeper, unexpressed urge: cultural identity. Recovering values of the past  answers in a way to the questions of modern man.

To conclude my babbling: even if the function of the mask has modified in time, its persistence in our days is a sign of its power. More than any other object, the mask symbolizes and will always symbolize the duality of  human nature and the relation between the real world and the unreal one, the visible and the invisible.

Sorry for being a bit longwinded, but I hope I've helped you understand all this fuss called Festival going on here in Central Europe.

Sincerely

Ioan Johnny Popescu