After our long day and late night, I was happy that St Paul’s K street’s solemn mass isn’t until after 11:00. We went and I enjoyed the pageantry of the service. Post church we met up with Sara’s sister Jess and went to Chinatown and had “Fresh Noodle Made on the Spot.”
I bid goodbye to Jenna and decided to take another attempt at the National Museum of the American Indian. On the way, I took this picture of the capitol.
Man, there were a lot of good pictures from today. It was a touch choice. Today was the day we “worked” in Okland, which consisted of about an hour or so of clearing wood and debris. A sudden summer downpour ended our labor, though we were pretty much finished. After resting a bit, we took a tour of the cemeteries of Okland. First we went to “the cemetery” on a hill above the village. From “the cemetary” we could see the “passersby cemetery” where anyone who hasn’t lived in the village since forever is buried. “Even if they have lived here for 100 years?” I asked. “Even if they are the minister?” Eva told me both of those groups would be in the passersby cemetery. She said she likes the view better in the passersby cemetery anyway.
We walked back to the village and had a tour of the church. Their church, unique among Unitarian churches, has painted tiles on the ceiling. Their embroidery, as mentioned before, was solid blue. We got to play the organ and go all the way up in the bell tower, where I took this picture of the village.
After our tour of the church we wandered up to the passersby cemetery and indeed, the view is quite nice. Next on our agenda was an incredibly long soccer game in the school yard. I played, Marcia played, Don played, the YRUU youth played, the youth from the village played. It was tremendous fun. While my soccer skills mostly involve getting in the way of things at the correct times and constant chatter, Don (our most senior member of the group) turned out to be a soccer star. So much so, I began to refer to him as “The Wall.” I was surprised to learn he hadn’t ever really played soccer. He attributed his skill to his youth playing hockey.
Our game reluctantly ended when we were called in for dinner. Post dinner, was a viewing of Juno. So ended the evening.
We (that would be Shawn, Sara and myself) started today with the parade. Always a good start to a day, in my opinion. In the parade there were many different people of many different ethnicities in many different traditional costumes as below. There were marching bands. See Sara’s write up of the day to hear about our favorite marching band which we also ran across later in the evening enjoying the fireworks on the mall. You can also see them at the parade in this link. They were great!
The parade itself was interesting, but the spectators were very silent. It was kind of weird.
Today we bid goodbye to Kolosvar and began our journey to Okland. On the way, we stopped in Torda to see where the Edict of Torda was signed. We Unitarians are quite proud of the Edict of Torda.
We stopped in Marosvasarhely (you will note that the link uses the Romanian name, though references the Hungarian. Interestingly, 2002 was the first year in which Romanians outnumbered Hungarians in this city, though they were close in number in 1992.) In this city, we first visited the City Fortress, mentioned in the above link, then after lunch, the Palace of Culture. This, aside from being a lovely place where we heard a pianist practicing in the main hall (until his cell phone rang,) was also the site of our tour guide, Eva’s first date with her now-husband. It is also known for its Hall of Mirrors which is apparently very hard to portray on the Internet. The Hall of Mirrors does have mirrors on one side, but on the other is a series of stained glass windows that portray various fables from Hungarian history. If you click through the above link, you can see some of the stained glass, though alas, not the stars that I fell in love with. It was fun to go to the hall of mirrors, because we got to hear the recorded tour. It was a little hard to understand, but it was humorous to shuffle down the hall hearing about the various fables. This link also has some good pictures.
After the Palace of Culture we got back on the bus and arrived in Korond, which was a place to buy authentic Hungarian handcrafts. We bypassed the place we had stopped in 2005, with Eva remaking that they had started selling non-authentic items. In Korond (“I’ve been there!” Matt told me when I got home) we got to see a family of potters throw cups, as well as their workshop. I bought a few mugs with the traditional designs on them.
This is the gate leading into the courtyard. The gate is the traditional carved wooden gate. This one also sports a few decorated plates. Behind the gate is the shop and the workspace as well as, I think, the family home. Note the satellite dish next to the traditional gate.
I had been feeling a bit homesick all day, this being the first time I was not in the US on the 4th of July. I may have not been the only one. Eva cleverly planned an American-style celebration and we sang patriotic songs. At one point Levente came in waving the flag. I was most astounded that they would have a US flag. We had watermelon and spit the seeds and there were even sparklers. And marshmallows. It was a great end to the day.
Not many pictures today, as the majority of the day was spent traveling to Silver Spring to visit my Aunt Merle, who lives in a retirement community there. I had left my Zipcar card at home (drat) and so could not reserve one to drive and see her, so I depended on the Metro to get me there. It did, much to my amazement, though it was a bit more than a 90 minute journey each way. This is the road leading to the retirement community. While there, I neglected to take a picture with Aunt Merle. (double drat)
Sara lives in this tall building. The one in the middle of the picture, not the one closest to me. By the time I got home, it had started to rain, a bit. In the afternoon, I hung around and helped (a little) while Sara prepared for our 4th of July picnic.
We also saw the stone where Francis David stood and preached a sermon that converted the entire town to Unitarianism. (There has since been some backsliding.) We also toured St. Michael’s church which is the large Catholic church in the main square.
Then: swimming. I was thrilled as it was very hot and sticky and I like nothing more than to be in the water on such a day. We took the bus to the pool which was huge–they had one big pool and two or three smaller ones. There was topless sunbathing (which everyone handled most maturely) but the thing that was the most interesting to me was that the pools had no filter. They were very large cement rectangles with no outlet for all the detritus that comes along with public pools. So while swimming I brushed against all sorts of things.
Post swimming we broke up into smaller groups. Dana and I found a post office, which was thrilling as I had been trying to mail my postcards for days, and then wandered down to look at the Orthodox church, where these two women were chatting. I wonder how old they are? They could, conceivably, be in their early 60s as old people there tend to look older than their age would suggest.
On this day, Sara, was kind enough to drive me to Leesburg to visit my childhood friend. That’s us there, myself, Becky and her son, Thompson. As you may guess from the picture, Thompson is about to have a new brother. It was a lovely visit, I hadn’t seen Becky since her wedding in 2000. I also really like this picture. Double thanks, Sara.
After lunch (I had Colcannon) we stopped to take a picture of this lovely church.
We drove to Oatlands, but were not super inclined to take the tour. We wandered the grounds but were not allowed past this point without tickets. So this is my picture of the house. You can see the actual house on the link.
Returning home, I got to go to Costco with Sara and Shawn. It was pretty interesting. They introduced me to the “spot the diplomat corps car” game, and the parking lot was one you had to pay to park, unless you got your parking stub validated. I’ve never seen that in conjunction with a Costco. Costco itself is always a bit overwhelming to me–all that large quantity of food–so that was a tourist attraction in and of itself.
What took the cake (took the chocolate slab?) was the large, solid chocolates molded in the form of the Pentagon. They had them in the shape of the US Capitol and the White House, which I get, but would you want a solid chocolate form of the Pentagon? That place where wars are planned and executed? It’s a little odd.
Our first stop was at the Hortobagyi Pasztormuzeum. This is a small museum, but one of my favorites on the trip. Until the communist era, the area around the museum was a great range where different kinds of animals were raised by herdsmen. They have traditional costumes on display–including the very cool coats they used to wear. I am having trouble finding a picture of the coats, but have discovered what we had for lunch. It was delicious, and one of my favorite meals of the trip. I also learned at this museum, that there was a hierarchy of herdsmen depending on what kind of animal you took care of. I believe geese were at the low end of the scale and I think horses were at the top. Traditionally, the herdsmen were also great horsemen and they are famous for riding around and cracking their whips to get things moving. Ted, one of the youth really liked the whips and bought one, though everyone else who tried, seemed to be better at cracking the whip then he was.
We drove though the plain, crossing over into Romania. Our destination was Kolishvar, which is the Hungarian name for the city that is now known as Cluj-Napoca. On the way, we passed the gypsy houses with the fancy tin roofs. They are huge houses, four and five stories tall, with the most elaborate roofs. This group of Gypsies are known for their metal work and so they build their houses big, so as to maximize the roof area. The houses themselves are most often shells, with no windows, unfinished walls, open rooms. The family usually lives in a smaller house in the back.
Eventually we got to Kolishvar. Because I was traveling with ethic Hungarians, I will be using the Hungarian names for things. In Romania most cities/villages/towns have two, or sometimes three names. (Hungarian, Romanian and sometimes Saxon) Kolishvar was a major city in the Hungarian Kingdom, and today is the fourth largest city in Romania.
We were staying at Janos Zsigmond Unitarius Kollegium (which we called the Unitarian High School) in the dorms where the students live during the year. All of the girls on the trip were able to stay in one room. That is eight girls in one room, with room for four more. I could not imagine living an entire school year in one room with 11 roommates. Our rooms were on the top floor and they had skylights. At this point in the evening, we are all taking pictures of the Kolishvar skyline and each other.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard in a movie. At times, I had trouble catching my breath. Maya Rudolph was fantastic and John Krasinski’s character Burt Farlander reminded me of of a certain other resident at The Orange Door.
Bechdel score. Two women: nope.
