Full Circle

We left Denmark on Monday, heading  into the final days of travel and heading towards home. We had a long day of driving over flat country on highways, which always seems a little less interesting. We arrived at our hotel in Bremen, Germany late enough that we didn’t try to see the town. Instead, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which served German food. Ordering from the “For Smaller Appetites” menu, we got more food than we could possibly eat, especially since we started with bowls of soup -- tomato and asparagus for me, cream of leek with shrimp for Deane. Deane had an hopelessly gigantic omelet -- even he couldn’t finish it, and I had Bremen “Haggis.” I thought it might be tripe, but honestly, I don’t know what it was, except that it was delicious and so rich that I could only eat about a third of it. The waiter said, “Pork meat and onions,“ the two parts of the complex taste he had English words for. It was a very good meal, and a taste of typical, hearty, traditional cuisine.

Tuesday, we headed for Amsterdam. On our way, we stopped to see the hunebedden, ancient burial sites, probably, scattered across Holland and Germany. The largest is in Borger, Holland, where there is also a little museum that helped us understand what we were seeing.

Since parking in Amsterdam is at least expensive and at worst impossible, we stayed in Zandvoort, on the ocean, where we could take the train into Amsterdam. The beach was beautiful, the air chilly. The breakfast buffet started off with a bang. We didn’t indulge.

Wednesday morning, we hopped on the train and 25 minutes later were right in the heart of Amsterdam. Deane wanted to see the Beijinhof, a convent of sorts for single Catholic women called Beguines who were not nuns, and took no vows. Instead, they simply devoted their time, in ways of their own choosing, to helping the sick and poor, starting back in the 14th century. When the Protestants took power in the Netherlands, the Catholic mass was prohibited and went underground, but the women were not bothered as they were well known for their good works. There was a miracle involving a communion wafer untouched by fire, and when religious tolerance was established, there was a chapel built. We visited the chapel and saw the houses and their peaceful courtyard, but were asked not to take photographs, so I only have one of the outside of the site.

 

We walked to the Ann Frank house, once a warehouse, now a museum, and went through the secret rooms where her family remained in hiding for several years, never leaving, never making a sound during the day, receiving food from a few trusted friends. They were betrayed by someone unknown and sent to Westerbork, a transit camp, and from there to Auschwitz. Ann’s sister died of typhus, her mother of starvation, and just a month before Auschwitz was liberated, Ann died of typhus as well. Her father survived the war. After the family’s arrest, Ann’s writings were found and saved by one of the women who had helped the family. Her father put together Ann's story in her own words from the many journals she kept and soon was able to publish her story. The museum was crowded as the passages are narrow and the rooms small, but it was very affecting. As Otto Frank requested, there was no furniture in the rooms, as the furniture had all been confiscated by the Nazis, but otherwise everything was essentially as it had been during the years they were hidden. This was a very personal view of the Holocaust, very moving, very sad.

We then walked to the “Old Church,” but the main door led to an expensive photography exhibit, so I suggested we walk around to see if there was another door, and we found ourselves in the red light district. Women were in street level rooms with huge windows, scantily clad and ready for business. It was an odd thing to see, and odder still to see that it didn’t particularly feel tawdry or smutty. Earlier, we had wandered into a fun-looking gift shop and found that it also sold marijuana in various forms, the different strains described like fine wines. You could purchase weed, or seeds for home cultivation, along with other paraphernalia and gifts appropriate for children. So we got a glimpse of the extremely open and tolerant atmosphere of Amsterdam. I really liked it -- the openness took away the lure of the forbidden, and let prostitution and drug use become options in a society where most people, from what we could see, choose a pretty wholesome lifestyle and are basically happy. Of course, we saw all this during the day -- it might be a different scene by night!

Two other striking things about Holland: First, there‘s water everywhere, and you can see how little it would take for entire cities to be flooded, but somehow they have not been for hundreds of years; and second, because it is very flat, people ride bikes everywhere. We saw many more bikes than cars, and people of all ages from toddlers to elderly riding them. Every road has a bike path associated with it, and bikes seem to have the right of way over cars. It was wonderful to see.

Wednesday, on our way to Belgium, we drove through the area where many of the flower bulbs Holland is so famous for are cultivated. The tulips and daffodils had gone by except for a few stragglers, but even so it was amazing to see the scope and realize that “Holland bulbs” I’ve purchased came right from this area. We stopped in Delft for lunch, where there was a bustling Friday market. Our lunch came from this fish stand, with fresh fried fish pieces and shrimp with tartar sauce--delicious!

 

Deane’s last “official” pilgrimage site was in Bruges, where the Holy Blood Basilica houses a cloth that was supposed to have been used by Joseph of Arimathea to wipe blood and water from Jesus’ body after his crucifixion. This was one of many relics brought back from the Crusades. We found the basilica tucked in a corner of a picturesque square, with a sign saying that “veneration of the relic” would take place between 2pm and 4pm. Just before 2, the doors opened, and we went in and sat down as directed. Two women came from the sacristy, one robed as a priest, one not. The “not robed” woman carried a briefcase up to a raised platform with a table and chair. The robed woman sat in the chair and, when the briefcase was opened, took out a glass cylinder capped in gold holding the relic. She placed it on a stand on the table, and invited people to come up and offer a personal prayer while touching the relic. So we got in line, and each had a time to touch the cylinder and pray. It was unexpectedly moving for me, whether or not the cloth is what is claimed (the container dates to the 12th century; the relic has never been dated).

We also visited the Church of Our Lady, where there is one of the few Michelangelo statues outside of Italy, a Madonna and Child.

 

We walked around Bruges’ Old City for several hours. It’s a great place to be a tourist -- every corner you turn brings a view of a new set of medieval buildings. We visited lots of chocolate shops, ate a Belgian waffles and fries with mayonnaise, and at the fish market found seafood salads to take back to the hotel for dinner. We also splurged a little on a boat ride through the canals for a different view.

 

Saturday was a long day of driving to our hotel near the Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris. We took the long slow way, driving along the coast past Dunkirk and Calais. We were surprised at how many bunkers were still left from the German occupation. When we reached Calais, we could see England’s coast with the white cliffs mirroring the white cliffs we stood on.

 

Our trusty GPS, Dora, lost the ability to charge her battery somewhere along the way, but she held out until we found our hotel, which we especially appreciated in France, a country firmly committed to roundabouts and to using road numbers as infrequently as possible. I knew we had come full circle when our hotel was on a road where we had gotten lost our first day, trying to figure out how to use the GPS.

We spent part of the morning today, Sunday, trying to figure out how to cram everything we’ve been accumulating in the car into our two backpacks. Then we went into Paris for a few hours. Deane wanted to see Notre Dame Cathedral again. I didn’t remember much from our first visit except the lines and the crowds inside. We stood in line again and it was crowded, but there was a Mass, the organ was filling that beautiful space with sound, and there were amazing voices singing the liturgy.

 

We had dinner before we left town, moules marinieres and rabbit with mustard sauce for me, crepes with ham and cheese and cod for Deane.

It was a lovely way to end our trip, and we were a bit wistful as we took the train back to our hotel. Tomorrow, we’ll return the car and board our flight back. When we arrive in Albany, the first familiar face we’ll see will be Nancy Corliss coming to pick us up (Thanks, Nancy!). We’re looking forward to seeing many more familiar faces in the weeks ahead -- the trip has been wonderful, but it will be wonderful to be back home, too!

Twilight at Midnight in Norway

The week did not start auspiciously for us. On Monday, Deane woke early, worried about getting to the ferry on time, and Deane doesn’t wake early or worry. So we got an early start, and arrived at the ferry in Hirtshals early enough to get gas before we left, we thought, but we stopped at the kiosk to be sure. “Hurry back! The ferry is full today," the clerk warned. There were two banks in town, so when the first one said that the transaction was denied by the card issuer, I walked across the street to the second bank’s ATM. There, I got the same message. Oh well, I thought, we’ll get gas in Norway.

Back to the ferry we went, and gave our number to check in. “I have your reservation, but you’re booked for tomorrow,” the clerk informed us. We asked if we could change our reservation, but she said that because it was Norway Day, Norway’s national holiday honoring the signing of the Constitution, there were no places left. So we decided to go back to the hotel in Aalborg for another night, straighten out the debit card with the credit union, and try to change all our reservations to a day later. 

We made good use of the extra day, because there’s an archaeological site in Aalborg that spans the Viking, Bronze and Iron Ages. We had not had time to visit it when we arrived, so off we went. There was a very nice museum with extensive exhibits of finds from the site. Along with the pottery, jewelry and other articles from the daily life of the people, there were some paintings portraying life and rituals. The forms and designs were quite different from what we’d seen in the southern reaches of our trip, and appeared much more akin to Celtic design.

Outside the museum was the site itself, which was a burial ground in use for centuries in the early part of the common era and before. Sheep were grazing in the site, which kept everything very well cleared (actually probably overgrazed), so we could see the oval placement of stones marking each gravesite. There were also remains of a series of longhouses placed in the same site -- the wooden posts only lasted about 30 years. And, because it is late spring, we saw lambs with their mothers, a sight we would see over and over in the coming days.

Back at the hotel, I called the credit union again, and they told me that the card was fine -- some banks just don't take international debit cards. I was able to change all our reservations to a day later. All was well. We went and got money and had the only dinner we could afford (did I mention how expensive it is in Scandinavia?), a falafel pita and a tiny pizza.

Tuesday, we drove to the Hirtshals ferry again, amazed that everything had worked out, and off we went to Norway, landing three hours later in Kristiansand. We had a few hours to explore the city, as the days are longer way up north this time of year, so we walked all the streets. The city is small but beautiful, with plantings of daffodils and narcissus and tulips in bloom. It is also very expensive. We picked up a small salad and a sandwich at a bakery without asking prices, then found out we had $28 worth of food. On the waterfront, near an old round fortress tower, a group of swans swam -- I don’t know how they were persuaded to stay, but they were there, so I got to see swans sleeping and eating, two new sights for me.

On Wednesday, we drove up the coast from Kristiansand to the second island past Stavanger, Vestre Amoy, where we had a room that turned out to be amazing. The place has several small houses, so when you rent a room, you also have access to all the shared parts of the house, which included a kitchen and a LAUNDRY! So we watched this gorgeous view and cooked dinner while our clothes laundered.

The other thing we learned is that we were really far north now, so this is what the view looked like at 10:30 pm.

We woke up way after sunrise, which apparently takes place about 4am. The owner, Lilian, who was lovely in every way, recommended a walk through a sculpture park created when Stavanger was a UN culture city in 2008. What this park turned out to be was a series of environmental sculptures set in a gorgeous landscape of fields with ewes and lambs. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera, and Deane’s has so many pictures on it that I can’t download them to the computer without a card reader, so I have no photos. However, here’s a link to the brochure we used to find our way on the couple of miles of trails and farms roads: http://www.horizonsandfragments.no/files/Folder_6s_10x21_ENGELSK.pdf.

The sculptures were designed for particular places on the landscape and were whimsical and almost magical -- a giant nest of twigs in a garden, a star carved in a flat ledge titled “Landing Pad for Angels,” giant earth berms covered in grass spelling out “Nå” (“now”). As we approached the ocean, the landscape changed and we were in wilder country on the edge of the fjord and the sea. There, we came across living art, a Norwegian Fjord horse on a Norwegian fjord. And on the way back, a sheep drama -- a lamb separated from its mother, bleating frantically. Over the hill, we heard the answering deep almost guttural bleat of the mother. The lamb took off running, then stopped and bleated again. “Baaaa,” came the response, and off it went again running over the hill.

After viewing all the sculptures, we drove to the neighboring islands, as far as we could go without getting on a ferry. We saw an old monastery:

And every turn of the road brought another new and beautiful view:

We stopped at the store for some food to cook, and we had crustacean (crayfish?) soup and garlic bread for Deane’s birthday -- no cake, too expensive. We will pick that up when we’re back in Europe.

Vestre Amoy was so relaxing that we were sad to leave, but we had to and turned south. We spent a few hours in Stavanger, where we visited the cathedral, dating from the 17th century. There were about six of these interesting portraits around the cathedral, apparently families with children, including babies who had died pale and ghostly in the front of the living members.

We drove from Stavanger to Bryne, where we dropped off our bags at the hotel and got directions to a nearby beach. We knew there were beaches somewhere, but didn’t know how to find them. This one was a sandy crescent backed by dunes.

On the landward side of the dunes, there were farms using every inch of land. The Norwegians have also really taken advantage of every way to lengthen their short season -- especially huge hydroponic greenhouses and floating row covers. The pastures are so rocky and the stone walls around them so extensive that we got a very good sense of exactly what it took to clear the land for cultivation.

Saturday, we took a drive into the mountains, making a loop around mountains, lakes and fjords. Many Norwegians have second houses in the mountains, and we could see why. The air was crystal clear and clean, and the views dazzling. We saw the beginning of the fjord that ended up in the much larger fjord by Stavanger. The sheer cliffs of the mountains made for a dramatic landscape of trees and stones.

Deane has been looking for evidence of trolls, very important in Norway. He saw evidence in the stony landscape everywhere. Here, he consults a local resident.

When we came down from the mountains, we drove once again along the coast, stopping at a lighthouse, and then a beach. There was fog in the south, but it lifted as we moved northwards. We took our time, drinking in the sounds and smells and sights, before returning to our hotel for a relaxing night.

Well rested, and thoroughly in love with Norway (wish we could afford more of it), we headed back from Bryne to Kristiansand to catch the ferry back to Denmark. First, though, we ate enough for the whole day at the hotel’s delicious breakfast buffet -- three kinds of pickled herring and fresh baked bread, among other delights.

Tomorrow, we really start back home, at least in my mind, as we visit our last cities: Amsterdam, Bruges, and perhaps a final day in Paris.

Legacies of Horror and Beauty

The clouds that gathered as we left Romania for Hungary have stayed with us the whole week, and it has rained at least some part of every day. This has not impinged on our sightseeing very much, which is remarkable, although Deane has had some rainy driving conditions. We are out of the sunny lands and into the rainy ones, I guess.

We left Budapest on Monday and drove to Terezin (Theresienstadt), a village whose fortresses were used by the Germans as concentration camps between 1942 and 1945. The larger of the two fortresses, holding the village whose occupants were forced to leave their homes, became a Jewish ghetto and transport center. Because some people lived there for months or years, and because there was a house full of children, there was a vibrant culture in this camp, with literature, art and education. Some people survived the crowded and filthy conditions with starvation rations, but most were transported to Auschwitz sooner or later and murdered, including most of the children. What was left behind was a remarkable collection of drawings, poems and other evidence of the nature of life in the camp. The children's drawings were particularly heartrending. The camp was used as propaganda in 1944, to show the Red Cross that the “relocated” Jews were being treated well, so perhaps conditions were a bit better then. However, up to one fourth of the people who came through the camp died there of disease, overwork, or broken hearts (who can say?), necessitating a crematorium; ashes were thrown in the river.

The smaller fortress was a political prison for enemies of the occupying Germans, and there were thousands of executions there, adding to the death toll. In the small fortress, there was also an exhibit about a nearby work camp, Letrice, where men and women were sent to work until they died, so the whole area has a tragic and brutal past. The village has some occupants now, but the village still has a haunted and terribly sad feeling about it, and I wonder how it is possible to stay there. We were in the small fortress as the site was closing, and as we turned the corner to go out of the massive wooden doors, we saw that the doors were closed. My blood ran cold at the thought of spending a night there, but of course, we could walk right out. This was an unsettling place to visit, and raised more questions for me than I know how to give voice to.

From Terezin, we backtracked to Prague for our hotel. We had a full day to spend in Prague, and we took the metro to Wenceslas Square, walking to the Old City from there. Our first quest was to find the Unitarian Church, which was near the Charles Bridge according to their website map. We didn’t find the church at first, because the church is on the second floor of a building that also houses a blacklight theater, which seems to be a locally popular device. The Unitarians have regular services each Sunday in Czech, and twice a month in English. From the display they had in the lobby, seem to be more like American and British UUs than the Transylvanian Unitarians.

Next, we crossed the river to see the church housing the Infant of Prague, a wax statue of the Christ child purported to be given to the church by St. Theresa. The church is unassuming, unlike many of the churches with internationally famous icons we‘ve seen. We were not allowed to photograph inside, but you have all probably seen pictures of the Infant, dressed in richly decorated robes. Deane whispered, “It’s smaller than I expected,” and I felt the same way, given its huge life in imagery around the world. Less beautiful, too, I have to say, as the head was pallid and lifeless looking. Still, people, mostly women, came to the church in a steady small stream, kneeling and praying at the statue.

Now that we had seen the things we came to see, we had time to be tourists, and Prague is a wonderful town for that. Streets are clean and there are few cars permitted in the old section, the Old City is remarkably intact even if the statues are black with sooty pollution, and there are wonderful crafts and performances everywhere. So we enjoyed, visiting the Horological Tower, listening to jazz bands, and finding a few special gifts. Prague has an old Jewish Quarter as well, but almost all the Jews were taken to one of the death or work camps, so what remains is mostly a memory. My favorite site was the John Lennon Wall, a wall of graffiti painted and erased over and over when the Czech Republic was beginning to try to break free of Communism, still dynamic today.

From Prague, we went to Czestochowa. In the Cathedral there is a black Madonna, painted by St. Luke according to legend, on a board from a table made by Jesus. Dating and the Byzantine style actually place the painting in the 5th century. The walls of the cathedral were hung with amber beads, silver amulets, crutches, and other tokens of gratitude for miraculous cures and prayers answered. On the day we visited, the sanctuary was crowded, so we could only see the painting from a distance.

The reason the cathedral was so crowded is that there was some sort of confirmation or children’s day, and hundreds of children, girls in white dresses, boys in suits, came into the sanctuary in groups and took turns reciting prayers or sang songs. It was quite touching, those high voices, and the parents and grandparents were enthralled.

Leaving Czestochowa the next morning, we drove to Auschwitz. This was a difficult visit, and I still feel the sadness of it. Auschwitz began as a political prison when the Germans first occupied Poland -- half the lawyers and many of the intelligentsia of Krakow were imprisoned there. But the site was soon selected to be the major death camp in the Nazi’s attempt to kill all the Jews in Europe, along with gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others. They came much closer to succeeding than it is possible for me to conceive. Auschwitz was not large enough to hold all the prisoners selected for slave labor along with the thousands and tens of thousands of Jews and others facing immediate death, so a second adjoining camp, Birkenau, was built. The exhibits at Auschwitz were horrifying and agonizing -- thousands of children’s shoes, hair from 40,000 women which was to be sold to the textile industry, prayer shawls obviously precious to their owners, crutches and prosthetic limbs whose owners were not fit for work -- everything was sorted and reused in one way or another, with terribly cold-blooded efficiency. Political prisoners were also kept in their own section of Auschwitz along with prisoners singled out for punishments of unimaginable brutality and neglect. This picture is of the execution wall.

Birkenau is so vast it covers the land as far as the eye can see. Once the gas chambers and crematoria were finished, it was here that the transport trains arrived and prisoners were sorted. These were people who had been told they were being relocated, so they brought their most precious and important belongings with them. Most people, especially Jews, especially young children, especially pregnant women, especially the elderly and infirm, were simply gassed without being counted or registered in any way, which is one of the reasons that it is so hard to say definitively how many people died at Auschwitz. Our guide said 1.5 million was a fair estimate; it is also an unimaginable number. There were eventually too many ashes to bury, so they were trucked to area farms and worked into the soil. When it was clear the war was lost, the Nazis began trying to destroy the evidence of the camps, so what remains of Birkenau are the tracks, some chimneys, and the twisted wreckage of the gas chambers and crematoria. There is a monument, but I did not find it as moving as the mute site itself.

There were many, many visitors, including Polish and Israeli schoolchildren, and Israeli army personnel. Because of the crowds, we had to go through Auschwitz with a guide, herded from building to building, with so many horribly difficult sights to take in and no time to be still. It impressed the shocking scale of these camps and this murderous operation on us all, and when the guide asked at the end of the tour if there were any questions, everyone was speechless.

We left Auschwitz for Krakow, where we spent the night and then had a day to see the Old City. We started towards the Warwal Castle, where a 12th century cathedral has the tombs of Kings and Queens of Poland, and Saint Stanislaus, a (good) bishop murdered by a (bad) king; he is the patron saint of Poland. On our way, we passed a memorial to Katyn, where more than ten thousand Polish dissenters were murdered by the Russian secret police in 1940 -- it was this even that the Polish president was going to Russia to commemorate when the plane crashed, killing him, his wife, and many others. Poland did not had an easy time of it in the 20th century. The cathedral was crowded to bursting with school groups and tours -- at one point we were trapped in the back of an airless crypt while a guide lectured dozens of teenagers crammed into the tiny space for what felt like far too long. We went to see the Sigismund bell, not realizing that this involved climbing rickety wooden steps up to the top of the belltower, propelled by the groups behind us -- no turning back for acrophobic me!

In the Krezmierz, the old Jewish quarter, we saw a synagogue that had survived the war fairly intact because it was used by the Germans to stable horses. It had been fully restored and was lovely. Other synagogues were turned into museums or stood small and threadbare. The whole quarter seemed to be almost abandoned other than tourists like us, staring at maps on street corners. I thought of the area as it once must have been, vibrant and alive, and my heart broke all over again.

Krakow has a beautiful market square from the 14th century, which is still a center of culture and conviviality today. There was a college fair going on, and a jazz band played on a stage. Outdoor cafes ringed the square. We visited St. Mary’s Basilica, but decided that paying to visit was enough -- we did not pay an additional fee to take pictures. I had a small pang of regret, though, as the painted interior was amazingly beautiful, with teal skies and gold stars, frescos of Bible stories, angels, and all manner of decorative adornment. Outside, a trumpeter played from the belltower on the hour, cheered on by crowds and stopping mid-song in memory of a trumpeter struck by an arrow centuries ago.

We left Krakow and turned north and east, driving all day and stopping near Wittstock, Germany for the night. It rained all day, and I was grateful for the chance to sit quietly with my thoughts and feelings. We stayed in a small pension and spa in a beautiful forested area. We had a fireside raclette dinner, softening the cheese by holding it over the fire on long skewers, then eating it with dipping sauces and garlic bread. We were the only ones eating, and I can’t imagine a more peaceful or romantic setting for a meal.

Today, Sunday, we left Germany for Denmark. We stopped in Jelling, where there are two huge burial mounds, side by side, tombs for King Gorm and his wife Queen Thyra in the tenth century. King Gorm’s son, King Harald Bluetooth,converted to Christianity and dragged pagan Denmark along with him. He was responsible for two carved stones, one huge and one much smaller. The larger one with the first image of Jesus in Denmark, and is considered the “birth certificate“ of the nation. These smaller runestone contain the first written mention of Denmark, so is considered the “name certificate of Denmark.” After climbing the dolmens and visiting the church which is between the two, we drove on to Aalborg, where we are staying tonight on our way to Norway.

Transylvania: Going Back in Time and Meeting Unitarians

Before I begin the chronicle of our week in Transylvania, I have to say that Deane is very disappointed in me and the blog, because every day he offers me any number of corny puns to use, and I have yet to use even one. I am sorry for this, but I promise that if he ever comes up with one that works without requiring paragraphs of explanation, I will put it right in.

We began our week with a day devoted to driving the back roads north of Brasov, looking for Unitarian churches. We had a list of churches from the UU Partner Church Association and a Romanian atlas to get us started. We had seen many horse-drawn carts in the more rural areas on our way to Brasov, but when we turned off the main road to drive towards Belin, suddenly the horse carts outnumbered cars. I felt as though I had entered another century, maybe early 20th, maybe 19th. We found Belin, which had three churches without names or anything we could figure out to tell us which one was Unitarian. At the newest church, Deane asked a woman passing on the road where the Unitarian church was, but she answered in Romanian, or Hungarian -- whichever, we couldn’t understand a word. One of the churches was obviously very old, and surrounded by a wall, as churches in Transylvania often were centuries ago for protection from attacks by various invading forces. We poked around that church some more, and suddenly Deane found a sign on the wall that said, along with Hungarian and Romanian text, “Unitarian Church Office.” We were pretty surprised, but went through the gate. It looked like a private home, but there was an open door, and a man and boy inside, so Deane said, “Excuse me,” and the man answered, in perfect English, “Just a moment.” So we met Albert Kosmo, or Kosmo Albert as is the Hungarian convention, minister of the Unitarian Church in Belin.

He showed us around the church, and answered questions about theology, ritual and history. The Unitarian creed is a simple one: There is but one God, and Jesus is the prophet who best showed us how to live. The church is traditional and, other than theologically, conservative: Men and women enter through separate doors and sit separately; they take communion four times a year, in remembrance of Jesus, as he asked at the Last Supper; the preacher gives his sermons from a high pulpit. Watch out, UUCGF -- Deane liked the view from on high. Just kidding!

The Unitarian Church in Romania is Hungarian, and runs its own schools where children are taught in Hungarian. Transylvania was once part of Hungary, and the language and culture are strongly rooted in the region. In the sanctuary, I noticed the hand embroidered cloths on the table and the pulpit, and embroidered covers on each and every hymnal. The embroidery had Hungarian roots as well.

We visited with Albert for two hours, meeting his family and having tea, but then it was time to move on. We drove in a big loop through villages, and having learned to look for a three dimensional star on the steeple, we could see that almost every village in the area had a Unitarian church. Most were not open, but two special ones were. The first was in Ocland, and we found it because a sign said that there was a “Monument,” which turned out to be the Unitarian Church, special because of the wooden painted panels on the ceilings and walls. The Hungarian Unitarian symbol was there as well -- a serpent with its tail in its mouth forming a circle around a white dove from Jesus’ charge to his disciples to be as “wise as the serpent and as gentle as the dove.”

The village next to Ocland, with a long name I won’t attempt here, was having the steeple repaired, so the gate through the wall surrounding it was open. We poked our head in, and saw a man sleeping in the grass. We hemmed and hawed, not wanting to startle him, until he woke up. His gestures said that it was okay to visit the church, so we went in, while he went to fetch someone who spoke English. That someone turned out to be the minister, who came with his daughter and explained that the frescos in the church dated back to the 1400s, and were just now being uncovered, having been plastered over when the church changed from Catholic to Unitarian. The frescoes were quite violent, and apparently depicted the triumph of some local ruler, complete with halo, over invaders from the East -- “Russians,” the old man said. The church is now a UN World Heritage site, looking for funds to continue restoring the frescos.

It was an eventful day, and we drove back to Brasov amazed at how strong the roots of Unitarianism in Transylvania are.

On Tuesday, we left Brasov, and drove by way of Bran Castle, which has come to be associated with Vlad Tepes, also know as Vlad Dracula, although no one really knows if he ever even was there. I suppose on a dark and stormy night the castle might feel a bit spooky, but on a sunny spring day, it was just lovely.

We also stopped in Sighisoara, where there is a well-preserved medieval city on the hill. We walked up to the large church at one end of the city, coming through the graveyard, where we noted that there were no crosses on the graves, and the names were all German. We asked the person collecting fees to visit the church, and he told us that there were no crosses because the church was Evangelical Lutheran, so they rejected the symbolism of the Catholic church, and that the names were German because they were Saxons from Germany who came to Transylvania sometime in the 1500s as craftspeople. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the church, but I can describe the symbol I found most affecting. It was the heart of God, held between two hands emerging from a cloud, with flowers growing out of the top of the heart.

There was also a movie shoot going on in Sighisoara, with about 50 men dressed in Medieval peasant clothes and carrying pitchforks, scythes and other farmer’s weapons. We heard them charging around the city, shouting menacingly in deep voices, every now and then. As we were leaving, they were charging right towards us down the street, and we could see they were led by someone with a rainbow flag. “It’s a medieval Gay Pride parade!” Deane exclaimed.

We drove on to Targu-Mures, where we stayed for two nights. On Wednesday, we took a trip down to Alba Iulia, to see the church where John Sigismund was buried. He was the Romanian king who was so persuaded by Frances David that he converted to Unitarianism himself, and issued the Edict of Turda in 1568, stating that all major religions were to be considered equal. The church where he is buried is Catholic, so there was no mention of the Edict or his Unitarianism.

On the way back, I was navigating using the Romanian atlas I mentioned earlier, which meant that I was putting together the route over four or five different pages, some with twenty pages of maps in between them. Anyway, we were motoring along (as much as you can on Romanian roads, which, if I can generalize, are bad), and I was following on the map, but when I turned the twenty pages thinking we were almost at our destination, I realized that I had actually sent us about 100 kilometers out of our way. So we got to see a whole different part of Transylvania, where the horse carts became ox carts, and people were plowing the fields with oxen, and if you took away the power lines and occasional satellite dish, you really would not know the century.

We made it back safely though, if a little weary, and on Thursday, as we were leaving Targu-Mures, we thought we should see the new Unitarian church right in town. We found the street, and there was the church up on a hill. It looked beautiful from the outside, and when we walked up to it, the door was open. So we poked our head in and were greeted by the secretary, who spoke English, having lived in Berkeley for a year while her husband, a Unitarian minister, did a year at Starr King School. He died unexpectedly four years ago, and she is raising their three children alone. She showed us around the church, and then the minister came. He was young and softspoken, and told us that their partner church (because apparently all the churches have one) is Schenectedy. Talk about a small world! Here’s a picture of everyone -- forgive me for not having the names!

From Targu-Murres, we made a brief stop in Turda, where we found the Unitarian church, but it was closed. We did not find the Catholic church where the Edict of Toleration was signed, so on we went to Clug-Napoca, where there were two significant churches. The first is St. Michael’s Church, Catholic again now, where in the 1500s Frances David forcefully argued for the Unitarian faith in an open debate. The second was the Unitarian church where the rock from which David spoke so persuasively that the entire town converted is housed, which we found along with the seminary associated with it, but again, everything was closed. A picture of the St. Michael’s church pulpit is below.

We spent the night in Cluj, then had a long day of driving to Budapest. When we arrived, we paid for the hotel, which was 17,000 florins. Obviously this is not a unit of money that is worth a lot! We walked the neighborhood around our hotel, took thousands of florins out of an ATM, and found a good restaurant nearby. I had a potato pancake stuffed with chicken and dill sauce that was very tasty and very filling.

Saturday was a “free day” in Budapest, in that we had no particular agenda other than to try to find the Unitarian church there. First, though, we crossed the Danube River from Pest to Buda, and took the funicular up to the medieval city. Budapest had seemed kind of dead until we got there, but when we got off the funicular we found ourselves in tour bus central. So we joined the crowds and walked the cobblestone streets. We visited St. Michael’s Church, which was interesting inside and out.

Walking back across the river, we eventually found the Unitarian Church, which was, of course, closed. Still, Deane was glad to see it, and I wondered what the other Unitarian offices were in the large building the church was part of.

Back at the hotel, we spent our last few thousand florins on dinner. Sunday morning, we drove the back roads to Bratislava, Slovakia. From our hotel, we walked towards the old city, to see the “Little Blue Church.” Built in honor of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, born in Bratislava in 1207, the church was designed in Art Nouveau style, and is painted in shades of blue. It’s lovely, but we could not go inside. However, although it was closed, the doors were open, so we could peer through the iron grille and just make out a statue of St. Elizabeth with a basket of roses.

From the church, we walked into the old city, where we had traditional Slovakian dishes with unpronounceable names probably translating as “heavy and cheesy.” The walk back to the hotel helped to settle our stomachs somewhat, but I’m not sure we could thrive on this cuisine over the long term!