Galya and Teo's trip to Romania, Part 2

Sept 26

It is evening in Jasi (pronounced as Yash) the capitol of Moldova.
WE strolled the city entire day, and pretty tired now for another report :).
I will try to be short.
WE left Bucharest and drove through the side of Carpathian mountains with gorgeous views, visiting picturesque ski and hiking resorts which I believe are not any worse than other Europeans (probably, not much cheaper either looking at the villas and mansions around. But hiking... must be spectacular.
Then entered Transylvania and spent some time in Brashov, built by Saxon's in the mideaval times, and the old town clearly has German architecture, clean and very beautiful, old town still retaining the old wall . After Chaushesky fell 90% of Saxonians fled back to Germany, and Hungarians became a majority.New part of the city are mostly Moldavians brought here to build the industry, to work on the factories during communist time. Looks like typical industrial town of communistic times. But.. again, the old town is very very charming.
Yesterday was a long drive through Moldova towards Iasi -which is about 10 km from the Russian Moldavians border.
It was pretty drive through the villages, and interesting to watch how the character of the villages was changing by the distance from Transilvania towards Moldova. From reacher to less reacher. However, all are clean and well maintained with orchards. All the way we saw horses pulling the carts loaded with potatoes, cabbage, or hay, or wood.... Sometimes carts were pulled by cows. I could not stop filming them. YOU know... so strange to see two - three horses pulling the cart, galloping, in front of slowing down cars. Also sacs of potatoes and cabbage were on sale in front of many villager's houses. So... sweet, peaceful, and somewhat nostalgic
The highlight of yesterday's trip was detour to the little town of Comaneste where Theo's Dad was born 104 years ago.
In the little wooden hut named City Hall in the so called archive room with NO computer the woman was able to produce within 5 min the folder named 1903 from which she read all the details of Theo's father birth. Unfortunately, no address... And under NO conditions she let Theo to take a picture of any other copy of this document. As Theo speculated that they afraid people coming and claiming inheritance... Though... now it is allowed. In any way, she did not even wanted to show the document until Theo convinced her that he does have any inheritance claims, just came here to take a picture of the dad's place of birth.

Next stop was in town of Roman where Anca's (Oliver's Mom) grandfather was a Rabbi in the Synagogue. We managed to find a Synagogue, dilapidated building squished between huge, dirty apartment building and open peasant's market (looks as Gomel's bazar in 1950th.
Interestingly enough we found an old person who "maintains or guards the synagogue, and as he said, it was his life time job.
So, Theo recorded the interview with him where he acknowledged memories of Anca's grandfather, Father, and even Anca as a little girl (well, he and Anca are about the same age.

So, it was pretty emotional day of discoveries.

Today was Jasi... In Russia it is Yassy...
THE town where the first University was built (I do not overwhelm you with the names of all the kings and Boyars, and years of their reign, and who united Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldova, etc).
IN general, in the old times Jasi considered to be a romantic, cultural sophisticated town where famous poets and writes lived and created while Bucharest still was a merchant village.
So, Jasi - is very different from Bucharest and other cities we've seen so far. thanks God, it does not really have this blatant into your face communistic influence..
Very green, beautiful with majority of the buildings build in late 19th - early to mid 20th century architectural stile.
City of young people, I guess, influenced by University, BTW - huge, beautiful campus.
Lots and lots and lots of churches, beautifully painted, well maintained, constantly visited with people for a pray. We also visited the pilgrim place of Romanian saint Parascheva.
YOU should see how many young people were staying in line to kiss the coffin with his bones and touch and kiss his robe.
IN general, Romanian people are very religious, I would say extremely religious.
As Theo joked :" See, Russians had Tciolkovsky, adn Romanians - Parascheva. Russians went to Space and Romanians fell on their knees, praying".
in the afternoon we visited art Museum with Romanian painters (old and contemporary). Some of them are pretty good.
Then we made a long walk on the streets far from the center, and we were amused what a rich villas are built recently, adn still building. So, apparently, business is booming and one can see that money are pouring in Romania.

Tomorrow we are going to visit Theo's Mom's birth place, and drive deep into Moldova to see the famous monasteries.

THE weather is gorgeous.


Galina Ermolin