A little game of catch-up.

OK, technically it’s not Friday anymore.  Technically it’s Saturday now, which is unfortunate because it means I’m up way too late to get a sufficient amount of sleep for a 5:45 alarm tomorrow morning.  But such is the life… I’m a major procrastinator when it comes to packing, and we’ve been gone all week and will be traveling all next week as well, so tonight has been the only real night to catch up on emails and logistical details that have been postponed for a long time.  And since I promised Hunter and Maria a new blog post, I’ll write a brief summary of the last week.  Maybe I’ll throw in a few good stories, and definitely some pictures… so here goes!

We left Lupeni last Friday to travel north to Cluj-Napoca, a large city in the northwest of the country that boasts a prestigious university and a lot of beautiful architecture and culture.  The drive was lovely—Romania’s forests catch fire in the autumn, with the leaves turning breathtaking shades of red and yellow and orange.  As we drove the switchbacks through mountain passes in Transylvania, it was all I could do to keep from drooling on the window next to me, I was so enthralled by the view.  At one point, we came off the summit of a mountain pass and the trees cleared out for a moment, opening up into the valley below and the mountains off in the distance.  It was foggy and evening was rolling in, so the trees on distant hills were silhouetted with an eerie backlight from the setting sun, while the trees closer to us in the valley below retained their vibrant color, half-hidden in shrouds of fog.  Transylvania is beautiful.  Absolutely beautiful.

 Scenery.

The time in Cluj was really wonderful.  We arrived Friday night in time for the IMPACT ball, an annual event celebrating what’s going on in the 40-plus IMPACT clubs in and around Cluj.  I knew there would be some kids from Viaţa there, but I wasn’t prepared to see two of my co-leaders and three of the girls from my group at the ball—they came rushing at me out of their seats, practically tackling me with hugs and exuberant kisses on the cheek, all of us talking at once in our excitement to see each other.  It was a beautiful moment; I didn’t want to say good-bye.  When I leave Romania in December, part of my heart will stay behind, I think.  I love the land and the mountains and the sky and the forests, but even more I love the people who have become part of my life here.  The week in Cluj with some old Viaţa folks was great for that.

Much of our time in Cluj was spent walking around, enjoying the sights of the big city.  (It’s amazing how awed we were at civilization after living in Lupeni for a while!  And it worries me a bit about returning to the States… I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle going to Meijer… I might faint from exhaustion at all the options!).  Cluj is a really beautiful city, and despite the clouds and rain, I really enjoyed getting to know it a bit.  Our very first night there we stopped at a fountain in the central town square, where there’s a statue of Avram Ioncu (the Romanian national hero who helped reclaim Transylvania from Hungarian rule) in a big fountain.  Lovely classical music plays continuously from speakers in the square, couples cuddle on benches, colored lights illuminate the gushing water, and it’s simply beautiful.  So of course, we decided to dance for a bit, spinning and twirling like ballerinas to the music.  And then, being with a bunch of Viaţa leaders, we decided to do some energizer games… so pretty soon we were playing Ninja and Samurai and Tarzan and Boom-chicka-boom at the top of our lungs, right in front of the fountain, as the music serenaded us and couples stared at us aghast.  I think Avram Ioncu looked down from the statue approvingly, though… and it was certainly a lot of fun.

 Me, Marit, and Julie admire the fountain...

 Cluj's National Theater.

Feeding pigeons in the square.

The other highlight of the time in Cluj, for me, was the time spent at Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai.  We had three guest lecturers present to us on various topics, all of them amazing social scientists, and I loved it.  One thing I’ve learned this semester—ironically enough, since one of my classes is on experiential and non-formal education—is that I really love traditional educational settings.  I really do like school.  And I really do love what I study—I miss Calvin international relations classes!  So being back in an academically-rigorous setting felt familiar and was really enjoyable, even if just for a couple days.  (I am really starting to embrace non-formal education, for sure… but still.  Nerdiness is a hard habit to break.)

After a few good days in Cluj, we headed even further north to Sighet, a smaller city in the far north of Romania which is the birthplace of Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel!  I’ve always admired him, so visiting his birthplace was an awesome—albeit sobering—experience.  Sighet is also home to Romania’s best museum on communism, where we spent hours.  Unfortunately, Romania hasn’t done a great job preserving the truth about the legacy of communism, which is interesting—a recent poll revealed that a large majority of Romanians are nostalgic for the past.  I suppose that it makes some sense: if you live in a time of massive unemployment (like now), you’ll naturally long for the years when employment was guaranteed, as it was under communism.  But to gloss over all the systemic evils of the system would do a great disservice to the memories of the millions of people who died under communist rule around the world in the 20th century.  The museum in Sighet was a sobering reminder of that fact.  

Victims of Communism Museum.

From Sighet, we drove a bit farther north to Săpânţa, a small village only 2 ½ miles from the Ukrainian border (I really, really, really wanted to go to the Ukraine…).  Săpânţa is world-famous for the Merry Cemetery, this crazy collection of brightly-colored crosses that adorn all the graves around the town’s Orthodox church.  A local artist spent his life creating these monuments to the dead, each one bearing a poem (usually kinda tongue-in-cheek) and a painting commemorating a significant moment in the deceased’s life.  The cemetery is supposed to reveal a unique peasant attitude towards death: not so much as a loss to be mourned, but as a life to be celebrated.  Hmm… there’s some good food for thought there, but it’s too late at night for me to wax philosophical, so I’m gonna table that discussion for another time.

Merry Cemetery.

 Merry Cemetery.

All in all, it was a great week.  We arrived home last night and spent today in class, figuring out last-minute logistics for fall break, and having a reunion with our homestay families (hooray!).  Tomorrow we leave bright and early for eight days in Italy and Hungary, so I’ll be back after that.

Drum bun!  Şi noapte bună.