Romania–Buildings Pt. 1: Exteriors

I decided to split the post I intended doing on the buildings of Romania because there was just so much – I was completely bowled over by the different styles in the various regions, their beauty, and their total otherness from anything I’d experienced before. In this post, I intend sharing pictures showing the different styles of the exteriors, and in subsequent posts, I shall concentrate on the interiors, and on the building techniques we saw in action during the extraordinary period of transition when we visited – a real building boom!

In the cities, the buildings tend to be stone or brick built, and the churches are in the traditional Byzantine style of the Orthodox Church, covered richly with wall paintings inside, as you saw in my previous post – the picture of the church in Baia Mare where the blessing of the wedding rings took place. Here are a couple of pictures taken in the capital city, Bucharest, the second of which is a church.

In my last post, I mentioned the little German town of Cisnadie. The faded pastel shades and dilapidated condition of the place enchanted me – it had a fragility which made me feel that if something were not done soon, the place would eventually sink back into the earth, but the worst that could happen would be for it to be tarted up and made into a bland tourist attraction! I felt privileged to be there to witness its faded charm.

 

Here is a house at Beles.

A lot of buildings have aluminium roofs, which weather to a soft pale grey, but when they are new, they shine like silver in the sun!

We spent a day at Banffy Castle near Cluj. This ancient building was a ruin, but it was being restored by an international team. I took far too many photos to share on here, but here’s a sample:

Here is a portion that has been restored.

There are numerous monasteries in Romania, now enjoying a comeback after severe repression during the Ceausescu era. Here is the gate to the one at Rohia.

This is the chapel at Rohia.

The buildings in the monastery complex are roofed with aluminium, weathered to its soft grey finish.

Maramures is famous for its wooden buildings, and especially for the elaborate carved wooden gates in the villages – it seems that the Romanians in this region suffer from a serious case of Keeping Up with the Joneses – they all try to outdo each other and some of the gates are distinctly over the top!

A common feature is swags of chains hanging from the arches – this is a good example of one of these. The chains, like the rest of the gate, are carved from wood, and of course, they had to be carved from a single piece, showing great skill in the woodcarver’s art. You can also see the traditional cable-style carving.

Here’s a detail of another carved gate. This is a very traditional style of Romanian carving.

This is one of the typical Transylvanian wooden churches in Maramures. You can see the carved wooden detail running along the length of the building, and also the roof covered with wooden shingles. I shall be showing you more of these when we look at the construction of buildings. There are metal grave crosses in the foreground, and the wooden objects leaning against the church wall are coffin carriers.

Here’s a detail of the roof. The church roofs are often constructed in layers like this, rather like the beautiful oriental roofs of China.

This is one particular style of shingle. The overall pattern is delightful, and the wood weathers unevenly, giving a subtly mottled effect. Every shingle is hand-carved.

The grave markers (I can’t call them gravestones because they are made of wood!) are absolutely gorgeous. They often have pictures of the deceased, and some information about their life.

This particular one marks the grave of a lady, shown here with her spindle and distaff. There is a very famous cemetery in Sapanta, in Maramures, but unfortunately we didn’t get there. It is called the Merry Cemetery because of all the delightful and amusing pictures and anecdotes about the people buried there. If you Google it you can find lots of images. It’s such a lovely tradition, and it makes this final resting place of the dead a cheerful and happy place, rather than a sorrowful one.

We visited the old synagogue in Baia Mare.

I was reduced to tears inside, as we were shown round by an elderly Jewish man who clearly loved caring for this now virtually abandoned building. The Jews of Romania suffered horribly in the Holocaust and few returned. The pews contained the old books and prayer shawls, and it was a touching memorial of a once-thriving and devout community.

I will show you some more pictures  of its beautiful interior in the next post.

Returning to the wooden churches of Maramures, Surdesti boasted the tallest wooden spire in Europe – not sure if this still holds true, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

The entrance to the church.

Here’s a rather different style of Maramures house – covered in brightly coloured tiles!

These metal gates and railings are a very common sight all over the country.

Another decorated house, this time near the Prislop Pass in the Carpathian Mountains.

Notice again the aluminium roof. There are some wooden shingles on the building beyond.

At Varatec, up in the north-east of Romania near the Moldovan and Ukrainian borders, we found this house with a distinctly Russian appearance.

If it’s over-the-top you want, look no further than the famous Romanian gypsy palaces!

Finally, no journey around the buildings of Romania would be complete without a glimpse of the painted monastery of Moldovita.

This exterior wall painting depicts the Battle of Constantinople in 717-8 AD, which stopped the advance of Islam into Europe.

This is only a sample of the photos I took. It was really hard to choose which to include. There were far too many to include interiors in this post, so they will have to wait!

Romania–People and Animals

Following on from my first post on Romania, much of Romania is agricultural, and certainly 10 years ago when I visited, many of the practices and techniques seemed old-fashioned to western eyes. We have a saying, “In Western Europe, rich people own horses. In Eastern Europe, poor people own horses.” We saw lots of evidence of horses hard at work – horse-drawn wagons are common on rural roads. This is an example of an old wagon which we saw at the Sibiu Village Museum, which is a large area of countryside onto which ancient buildings and examples of rural industry have been transplanted from all over the country.

There is a modern take on these, though – these days they use old car wheels instead of wagon wheels!

This photo was taken in the charmingly faded and dilapidated town of Cisnadie, which is populated mostly by German speakers – it was curious being greeted with a “guten tag” from an old lady leaning over her garden wall! I will be showing some more pictures of Cisnadie in a later post because I was quite bowled over by the lovely worn, pastel shades I saw everywhere. This is the normal one-horse wagon you see everywhere. You also see the two-horse variety, this one in Maramures County up in the north, near the Ukrainian border:

We saw this two-horse wagon returning home laden, in a village in Maramures County – again, I shall be posting about Maramures in more detail because the wooden buildings and carved gates are like nothing I’ve ever seen before or since!

When we were in Bucovina County, also adjoining the Ukrainian border, there was a distinctly Russian flavour to the houses, and the wagons! I was surprised to see the Russian troika-style harness with the hoop over the horse’s withers – these wagons were very prevalent in Bucovina, but not in neighbouring Maramures.

During the Communist era, there were collective farms, and we saw a few surviving ones, but nowadays, old-fashioned peasant farming has returned, with small farms, often at subsistence level. There is still a lot of poverty in the country. Romania is incredibly rich as far as the variety of its agriculture and minerals are concerned, but after such a long period of appallingly bad management, they’ve a lot of catching up to do.

Travelling near the Prislop Pass in the Carpathian Mountains, we saw some village people who obviously couldn’t afford a horse wagon!

We saw shepherds in the roads, herding their sheep, often wearing the traditional sheepskin jacket. These shepherds spend all their time with the sheep, and come to know them intimately, and sing and pipe to them; the theory is that if the shepherd dresses in sheepskin, the sheep will think he is a sheep too!

These chickens were happily scratching around in the grass verge beside the road in a northern village near the Prislop Pass:

and we came across this farmer taking his cow out for a walk, leading her with a piece of string! Here, they had sat down for a rest and a quick look at the paper.

On the day we drove up through the Carpathians, my hubby chose a short-cut route, a minor road which looked like a straight line running due north on the map. However, it was anything but straight – it twisted and turned as it climbed ever higher – one of Romania’s famous “serpentina” roads – all un-made-up, and we generated a huge cloud of dust behind us as we skittered across the loose stones! It was a hair-raising experience but one not to be missed, as each turn of the road revealed even more stunning views of the mountains. I was not quick enough off the mark with my camera at one point. Out of the blue, a horse and rider came galloping towards us and was gone in a flash – the man looked like a Cossack with a large moustache and rather a flamboyant hat! It was like something out of the movies.

We stayed for a few days with some friends – a large family, who gave us a simply wonderful time. They lived in Cluj. Here we are sitting down for breakfast – the usual spread of wonderful country food – fresh fruit and veg, home-made pancakes… You can see my hubby’s hands clapping in the bottom right of the picture!!

One day they took us up into the mountains, to Beles, where they had a cabin that they had built with their own hands. We carried watermelons that we’d bought on the roadside:

and ate them in the open air outside the cabin. (You can see Humphrey, my little platypus, sitting in my hubby’s blue bag.)

Everywhere we went, people were so delighted to have us with them, and were so friendly and hospitable. This couple took us to see her elderly parents who lived in a village not far from Cluj – although they were very old, they still had a large patch of land and grew everything under the sun, and kept pigs and chickens too! People had to learn to be self-sufficient during the Ceausescu years or they would have starved to death. It was easier for people living in the country than for city-dwellers.

Finally, some pictures of the wedding. This took place in two stages, the first in Baia Mare (the home of the groom’s parents) and involved the civil ceremony, a short church service for the blessing of the rings, and a feast, and the second a week later in Focsani, the bride’s parents’ home, and included the service in the Romanian Orthodox Church, and another feast!

This picture shows people gathering in Baia Mare church for the blessing of the rings, and gives an indication of a typical Romanian church interior, with all the wall paintings.

This picture shows the couple after the exchange of marriage vows in Focsani church a week later, having been crowned, in the tradition of the Orthodox Church.

Finally, some Romanian children. At the beginning of our visit, we stayed at the home for orphaned street girls in Bucharest in which my hubby took a special interest.

Some of the children are so damaged from lack of love in the appalling orphanages which so shocked the world after the fall of Ceausescu, that they will never be able to function independently and will always need care. Much damage is also caused by the horrific street living, keeping warm in the sewers and sniffing glue, and often progressing to other drugs, and alcohol. Others have grown in responsibility and maturity, first being given tasks around the home complex, and then finding work outside, and many go on to live normal, happy, independent lives. One of the girls went to America and became a lawyer!

Finally, a sweet little girl called Iulia, whom we met in the Cathedral of Baia Mare, which was under construction (I will be posting some photos of that, in the buildings and architecture post).

So, that’s a sample of the people and animals living and working in Romania, and some of their traditions.

Romania

Not having been very active in Blogland recently, and not having anything of great interest to share because my whole ARTHaven is packed up, I thought I’d go back in time and share something a bit different with you.

For many years, my hubby has been involved in charity work in Romania, and during that time he made many good and lasting friendships. In 2003, the son of one of them got married, and we were invited to the wedding, so of course we combined this with a fortnight’s holiday. It was my first visit, and nothing prepared me for the beauty of the country or the generosity and warmth of the people – they had all suffered terrible privations during the Ceausescu era and many were still struggling financially but they welcomed us with open arms, and opened their homes and hearts to us.

We went at an extraordinary time – it was several years since the revolution, and the country had had some time to pick itself up by its bootstraps and was beginning to repair the infrastructure. It was a time of a great building boom – particularly of churches, after a long period when the Orthodox Church was barely tolerated, and we were privileged to see how they constructed these buildings, and decorated them – so unlike our building styles here in the UK.

As you can imagine, I took loads of photos – over 600 to be exact! It is a country hugely rich in cultural heritage, and their wooden buildings and brightly coloured textiles were crying out to be photographed! I was particularly interested in all the small details, so my camera was clicking almost constantly.

When we came home, I transferred all these photos onto discs, and put them away. They did surface a couple of years ago, and I thought, “I simply must get those onto the computer and uploaded to my Photobucket album” but at that point the discs completely vanished! Recently I’ve been turning the place upside down in an attempt to find them, and when I packed up my ARTHaven ready for our house move, I was sure they would turn up, but they didn’t. Yesterday I was clearing some stuff dumped in the dining room while packing boxes, and I found them! I am so delighted. I have now transferred them and uploaded them all, and they can be seen here if you are prepared to dip into over 600 photos!!

Rather than give you a blow-by-blow account of our trip, what I propose to do over the next few blog posts is share a selection of these photos, following a theme in each case, to give you a flavour of this wonderful country we were so privileged to visit, 10 years ago! To begin with, here are some photos of the stunning landscapes we encountered.

After spending a couple of days in Bucharest, we drove to Sibiu. This is a river scene beside the road.

We went in September/October, and everywhere there were fields of sunflowers – all getting themselves ready for harvesting. I stood underneath this one and felt as if I could have a shower of sunflower oil from its massive “shower head”!

Staying with friends in a cabin in the mountains near Horea, we were surrounded by this:

We loved the stooks and haystacks they made, over a wooden support. They were everywhere in the fields, and we called them “dumbies”!

Sunflowers on the roadside as we drove from Cluj towards Baia Mare:

Beautiful Mogosa Lake:

A picnic spot in Maramures County:

The dam at Bicaz Lake:

This gives a taste of the landscape and countryside. It’s been such fun looking at these long lost photos once again – I am so glad they have turned up! (Nothing like a house move for finding lost things, is there.)

Watch this space for more. You’re in for a treat.

Thai Takeaway Zentangle Again, and More House Move News

Zentangle Art

In my last post, I described how I decorated the front of a most attractive Thai takeaway pack we’d had. I have now decorated the back of the box.

Again, you can see my own tangle pattern, Spawn (approximately in the centre of the design). I have also used Meander and Nzeppel as fills, and Pokeleaf, Jellyroll, and again, Planateen for the oriental roof, amongst other patterns. Again I have used Jetties to fill the spoon, and this time added a little steam!

Here are some detailed shots. On the first one, you can see Spawn and Meander clearly.

This has been a fun project to do. After completing the front, I contacted the manufacturer of the food, called simply “COOK” (www.cookfood.net) and they were kind enough to say they would like to put it in their weekly staff newsletter! They said how pleased they were that their packaging had inspired my art.

House Move

One brief bit of news – yesterday the sale of my parents’ house was completed! We are delighted that Phase 1 has now been achieved. We are still waiting to hear from the solicitor that a date has been set for exchange of contracts on our purchase, and as yet no completion date has been set – it should have been 17th May but now looks likely to be early June. Nothing for us to do except contain ourselves in patience for a little longer, I’m afraid! Meanwhile, work continues on the home front, with box packing etc. My hubby has been busy dealing with the paperwork associated with the transfer, cancelling services and insurance etc. etc. As we cross each task off the list, it’s one less thing to do, and we are gradually making steady progress in the right direction.

Thai Takeaway Zentangle, and an Update on our House Move

Yes, it’s me back again, at long last! I have really missed going on my blog because I’ve been so busy with the house move, and thought it was high time I posted again.

Zentangle Art

Now that my ARTHaven is all packed up, I am very limited in what I can do creatively, but I have my Zentangle album to work on – I have done quite a lot of designs since I last posted on that subject, and need to get them scanned and uploaded so I can share them with you. However, I’ve got a piece of Zentangle art that I’d like to share. Several weeks ago my hubby went on a trip, and brought back some rather posh Thai takeaway food. The packs were so lovely that I thought they would be nice to embellish with Zentangle art – they have been sitting on my table since then, and last night I thought I’d have a go and see what I’d come up with.

Here is the front of the box as it was:

It is printed in purple on buff coloured cardboard, with designs of chopsticks and oriental spoons. The back of the box is decorated similarly, but so far I haven’t decorated this.

I began by outlining the shapes I wanted to fill, and I drew a string in pencil to indicate different areas to fill. Here is the front of the box with the completed decoration, coloured with my Inktense pencils. I kept the palette somewhat limited, to complement the existing purple.

One of my favourite tangles, Planateen, I used to create an oriental tiled roof. I also included my own patterns, Y-Ful Power (in purple, on the left), and Spawn (to the right of the lower spoon). I filled the two spoons with Jetties and Meander.

Here are a couple of detailed shots of the box.

I hope I have achieved a nice oriental feel to complement the design already on the box. Once I get my new ARTHaven running, and have access to all my stuff again, I am thinking of putting some acetate behind the aperture in the box, possibly coloured with alcohol inks to complement the design. I am also going to decorate the back, and the second box with a different design.

These boxes were just too nice to throw away!

House Move

It’s so long since I’ve been on here that I need to update you all with news of our house move. We have now exchanged contracts on my parents’ house, and the completion of the sale is set for next Thursday, 9th May. Mum has gone up to Dorset to stay with my sister until the new house is ready for us to move in.

We haven’t exchanged contracts on the purchase yet, because the solicitor acting for the vendor seems to be dragging her feet. We have been informed that our proposed completion date of 17th May (with our builder coming in on 20th May) is now impossible, and will be at least a fortnight later. This is most annoying, because the last thing I wanted was to cause a delay in our builder’s schedule – he is just finishing a very large job, and taking a fortnight’s holiday, after which he would have been free to start on ours. I was afraid that any delay would mean he would take on other work, as we could hardly expect him to hang around waiting for us, but when I spoke to him, he immediately put my mind at rest and said that no way would he take on another large job, as ours was next on the list; however, he was glad of a bit of a breather, and it would give him a chance to catch up on a few smaller jobs, and to work on his own place. This is a great relief! He says our work will take about 8 weeks, so I don’t anticipate our being in before the beginning of August at the earliest.

My whole ARTHaven is packed up in banana boxes waiting for our move. I am now positively itching to get into the new house and have my new room, and get all my stuff unpacked and sorted, and all the fun I am going to have planning my new creative space! I shall be taking lots of photos of before, during and after, and also of the rest of the building work.

We have our kitchen CAD drawings now, from Howden’s kitchens. We have chosen Burford Light Oak, which is a lovely plain and clean-looking design, nice and light, with Alaska White Honed worktops, and simple steel bar handles. All the cupboards and drawers will be soft-closing. This is what it is going to look like. The first picture shows the door from the hall on the left, with the fridge-freezer and a full-height unit with wall units above, and LEDs shining down. Plenty of storage space here.

Moving clockwise around the room, we have the door into the utility room and the reduced-height units which I can sit at, using my wheelchair. For the past couple of years I have found it impossible to cook in our normal kitchen, even with my perching stool – I cannot stand for more than a few minutes without severe discomfort, and sitting on the perching stool, I can’t get my legs under the worktop, and I end up with pain in my legs, back and arms. As a result of this, my hubby has been doing all the cooking lately, and while he has done extremely well, he is also working full-time and we’ve been existing on a lot of ready meals and takeaways, and we’ve both put on quite a bit of weight. With an adapted kitchen I am looking forward very much to cooking again. Cooking is something I enjoy greatly, being a creative activity, and to be able to do it in as much comfort as I did when I was able-bodied will be a great joy! It will also be nice to be more in control of what we eat, and to have more variety.

In this picture you can see the sink in the reduced-height unit, with space for my legs underneath. We are having a 1.5 bowl and a tap with a hose, and to the right of the sink, mounted on the work surface, will be the Quooker boiling water tap which I bought a few months ago from Ebay. The cupboard under the drawer will not be installed in the actual kitchen, as I need to be able to sit at the worktop to the right of the sink, and I am hoping there will be some storage space to the right of this, under the extended worktop to the right. I have also asked for a light under the wall unit, and further LEDs in the ceiling over the window, and I am hoping we will also have loads of power points! We all have so many gadgets and machines these days…

Moving on around the room, in the corner is the first of two alcoves, which I have decided to leave without units. The kitchen designer’s original drawing had a tall unit here, and also one to the immediate left of the oven tower, but to my mind this gave the kitchen a cluttered look, so I asked that they be omitted. My microwave will fit in this alcove. To the right is the reduced-height ceramic hob. I had thought of getting the latest induction hob, but after researching online how these work, discovered that because they work by inducing a magnetic field, only my modern steel pans would work on it, and I do need to be able to use my old aluminium ones too, especially my heavy-based preserving pan, so I’ve opted for a normal ceramic hob. Over this is a chimney extractor with glass hood, and to the right is a tower unit incorporating a double fan oven with storage over and under. To the right, in the second alcove, is an existing wooden cupboard which we think has probably been there since the house was built in 1925, and I want to retain this as it will be most useful as my larder, and it seems a shame to remove all of the original features!

The final picture shows the remaining wall, where we will have our pine table from our present kitchen (a bit larger than the one illustrated) with two glass-fronted units above, with an open-fronted shelf unit between where I shall keep my recipe books. We have some lovely oak dining chairs which my parents had in their first home just after the War, original Utility design, and excellent quality – when we first moved to where we live now, we had these restored and the dark varnish stripped to reveal the natural oak, and we’ll keep a couple of these at the table in the kitchen, bringing in the others as needed if we have visitors. To the right of the table you can see the door into the hall. This completes the virtual tour of our proposed new kitchen! As the work progresses, I will be posting photos of before, during and after. It will be interesting to compare back to these CAD drawings. We are not going for the blue walls! I am thinking of a pale olive green, as one of the illustrations in the Howden’s catalogue had our units with this, and it looked lovely.

As soon as we have exchanged contracts, our builder will be able to start ordering the things he needs. The kitchen designer said most of what we want is in stock, so there shouldn’t be any delay.

My ARTHaven will be made up of cheap white kitchen unit carcases without plinths, with a continuous work surface connecting them, and open-fronted wall units above, so that I can have different work zones for different tasks, with storage below and above. I will be posting more about this in the future, and also about the building work adapting the currently unsuitable utility room and annexe kitchen, and my en-suite bathroom. The roof also has to be done, which is a whole adventure in itself! It’s all soooo exciting! I just can’t wait to get in now.

We’ve got less than a week to finish sorting Mum’s house before the sale is completed next week. She went up to my sister’s in Dorset a week ago, and this makes it easier for us to get on. The removal men came on Thursday and cleared the house – some to go for house clearance and the rest going into store until we are ready to move to the new house. Today we went over and blitzed the kitchen (me mostly) and my hubby mowed the lawn and did a few odd jobs. I had no idea Mum’s kitchen had got so dirty, and I wanted to leave it in a good state so that the new owners can simply unpack their stuff straight into the cupboards without the worry of having to clean up first. Now that the house is completely empty it’s a lot easier, and easier still now that Mum is away and we can get on without her getting under our feet!! I was hoping that today would be the only day I’d have to work there, but the kitchen took so much longer than I thought that I am going to have to go back to have a go at the bathroom, and make sure the rest is all OK. On our way home, we called in to see Dad in the residential home, happy in his own confused little world, and he was very pleased to see us. With everything that’s been going on, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to see him, although my hubby calls in quite regularly when he is passing.

After next Thursday, we can concentrate on packing up the rest of the stuff here. There’s still a great deal to do, but I have made major inroads into most of the rooms now, and recently I’ve been tackling our kitchen cupboards (horrendous! Don’t ask…) and packing up stuff we don’t use every day. What a job it all is, and how much stuff one accumulates over the years!

I hope to be posting regularly once we have completed the purchase of the new house, as my hubby says we will be going over quite often, taking stuff with us, and I shall take lots of photos of everything that’s going on. I am now super excited!!!