I hope you enjoyed my break from my typical type of content with this mini-series. We have reached the end, but before we move on, I'm going to cram in a lot more of the traditional vibe of the local place, especially around Christmas, but throughout the year as well.
I didn't want to show any photo of people, but I found this one where the people in focus all wear masks, and it's part of ancient folkloric customs that are kept alive throughout generations.
That is called the "Dance of the Bear(s)"—something between dance and acting—a tradition that predates Christianity, and maybe even the Roman Empire, and apparently was practiced by the old inhabitants of my country called Geto-Dacians. As the name implies, it is a ritual where the toughest animal (besides men, working together) in these places is at the center. From my understanding, the tradition suggests the deaths of the bears involved and their revival (perhaps in another life?). The bears are still widely spread in our country (likely out of control), Romania having the 2nd largest population of bears in Europe, after Russia. The risk is that they are too many and don't have enough to eat in the wild, and many became half-domesticated but still wild, getting close to people in search of food. And some people are stupid enough to take selfies, despite enough accidents that warns they shouldn't do that.
To talk a little more about the scene in the photo, what you see is a part of the local folkloric group which visited different places in the town where we stayed (there are more members who aren't shown in the image). We are located on the back terrace of our guesthouse where they performed.
Behind them you can see what is called a "ciubăr" (basically a large outside tub heated with wood, generally; in the photo it is covered). The most often way to use it nowadays is during the winter, to take a short bath into the ciubăr, then rub yourself with snow or with water from a cold stream (or jump in it naked), then perhaps repeat. I haven't tried it, but the experience seems a bit like using a wet sauna then having a cold shower (or the more extreme cold options) afterwards.
Before we move on to the next topic of today, I didn't want to do it before I add a picture of these type of gates, relatively common this that region:
Many of them I saw from the speeding car, so I don't have pictures, but these wood-sculpted gates are still trademarks in certain areas of Maramureș.
And finally, Maramureș has many churches. Not the kind transformed into big auditoriums with great acoustics, but the kind used for their main purpose.
People from that region take connection with God very seriously. I know someone who moved to our region from Maramureș when she was young, and my mother says she is still very religious and taught her boys to be like that too. One of them—now an adult—I heard plays in their churches' choir when he's around town.
But none of what I heard before prepared me for what I saw. Imagine this: second day of Christmas, we took breakfast and decided on the itinerary then jumped into cars and left the guesthouse. On the way, all the way, we saw people returning from churches, all wearing the same (almost identical) costumes. They looked almost exactly as the ladies out of focus from the second picture with the "Dance of the Bear(s)", as were the men looking like the ones in the picture without the masks. No one tried to look fancier, the old didn't have different cloths than the young. I don't know much about these costumes, but those who knew told us they are quite expensive.
The other thing that surprised me was their... cemeteries. It may sound morbid to bring it up, but it also speaks about how close the connection between people and their church is. Every church has a small cemetery around it. There were no big cemeteries that I have seen. Maybe there are in bigger towns, although the one we stayed in was pretty big, at least when it comes to its surface.
Although we didn't know what that meant and didn't ask any local, the assumption that made more sense to us was that people are buried in the cemetery of the church they belong to, unless they move to a different place, like that person I know moved to our region when she was young.
I debated with myself whether to add such a picture or not, but in the end, I talked so much about it, I feel I should add one, so you know what I'm talking about.
This is an old wooden church a few centuries old, no longer used. There is a new church right next to it that is now used. It was Christmas day when we were there and there was a service in the new church.
Where there are many churches, there must be some monasteries too, right?
One of our main destinations from the second day of Christmas (and our last vacation day) was a place called Mănăstirea Bârsana.
That's another both spectacular and serene places, with more extraordinary wooden handmade buildings.
Here are some pictures, the last ones of the series:
