Every
now and then I contemplate christening the elegant old house which has been
home for me these past 7-8 summers – walkers occasionally give it an admiring
glance but I discovered yesterday that it has acquired not only a new status
(in a superbly produced little guide about traditional houses and skills in the
area – entitled Carpathian
Gate) but also a name "Burlacu Lucia".
A
couple of charming young women arrived yesterday and presented me with a plaque
about the house for installing on the fence at the road " (although I will
have to question the idea that the house is late 19th century) -
also a couple of copies of their little booklet in Romanian.
They
belong to a small foundation (The Centre for Mountain Ecology) which is doing
the sort of work Daniela and I were bemoaning was all too little evident in the
country....this is another example of their work from their site http://cem.ro/galerie/case-fundata/.
One
of the women was actually German, married to the Romanian who heads up the NGO
As
you can imagine, I'm delighted that there are some people around here celebrating
traditional architecture and skills.......For someone who earned his money
these past 25 years from preaching the “modernist” agenda, I have developed
quite a respect (if not passion) for the “old ways”… A few years back I did a
couple of posts about this subject - http://nomadron.blogspot.ro/2012/06/village-tradition-and-solidarity.html
and http://nomadron.blogspot.ro/2012/06/getting-under-skin.html
and a little section of my library here is about
village life this past century in various parts of Europe eg
- Geert
Maak's Island in Time (2000)
- "Thin Paths - journeys in and around
an italian mountain village" (2012) beautifully written with black and white photos giving it a WG Sebald feel...
The full list of such books can be found on a post I did last year about some of the relics found in our house when we bought it in 2000 and the extent of the work Daniela did to bring it back to life
The full list of such books can be found on a post I did last year about some of the relics found in our house when we bought it in 2000 and the extent of the work Daniela did to bring it back to life
At my age it becomes particularly important to celebrate memories and traditional skills..I therefore liked the booklet on
"craftsmen" on the NGO website - which reminded me of a lovely
little booklet/notebook I have from 2010 ("Calet de notiste despre
mesteri si mestesuguri" (ARHITERRA) which lists about 100 craftsmen throughout Romania - unfortunately it doesn't give a
website although it does contain a reference to this French site .
Sirnea
is a bit "off the beaten track" compared with the other nearby
villages you will find in a lovely little glossy produced recently about a local poet and scupltor - "Legenda Branului". Indeed the village is almost in a bit of a "time warp" - which gives it an additional charm
for me....that's the wrong word - but the life these people lived needs more recognition eg my old neighbour Viciu (age 89) down the hill was the postman in
the 1960s and 1970s and delivered the mail on horseback - from Bran!!! He lost
his wife last year and has this year been living with his daughter in Bran. It
would be great if people could talk with him about these days and record it in
a proper book about village life in the middle of the 20th
century……..
Some of you may be interested in these flickr photos I uploaded today of the area as experienced last month by 3 relatives who spent a couple of weeks based here
Some of you may be interested in these flickr photos I uploaded today of the area as experienced last month by 3 relatives who spent a couple of weeks based here
