Transylvanian Trilogy

There are not many books available in the English language about this part of the world – Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy is perhaps the best known - covering the period just before and then during the Second World War.

Over the course of the last ten years, however, mostly through word-of-mouth recommendations, another trilogy The Writing on the Wall, originally published in Hungary between 1934 and 1940, has come available in English (thanks to a translation by his daughter) and bids to be considered as one of the finest works of the 20th century. The first volume, unfortunately, is out of print but I have just finished the second; and the final volume They were divided will arrive shortly here at my Transylvanian mountain redoubt.

The author was Count Miklos Banffy who had a huge ancestral estate in Transylvania, but was also a politician in the Austro-Hungarian empire and after WW I he became Hungary's Foreign Minister. The central character in the trilogy is Count Balint Abady, and we follow his story through the ten years leading up to the outbreak of WW I. Abady is a voice of reason in the Austro-Hungarian government as the empire dithers and bickers its way into the dustbin of history. But politics is only one facet in this vastly entertaining trilogy. Banffy is a great storyteller, and he stuffs the novels with colourful, vibrant characters. There are frustrated, doomed lovers, dissolute aristocrats, scheming estate overseerers, gypsies, a barking mad count, and a couple of dozen other memorable characters – most living their lives just up the road from the Brasov area (where I live) in and around what is now Cluj but is identified in the book by its Hungarian name Kolozsvar. Add in duels, hunts, balls and sundry intrigues and you have 1,500 or so pages of addictive reading. Banffy wants to tell the often bitter truth about the world he knew and he wants to do it in the most vivacious way possible.The second volume is called They Were Found Wanting and one reviewer caught the mood well

This book is the saddest, most gracefully told, subtly portentous book I've read in years, and it's only the second book in the trilogy. First off, the writing is anything but bathetic. It is poetic where poetry is summoned by circumstance and, likewise, quotidian when needs be. It is altogether unbelievably exquisite in the execution. The subject matter has two mirroring themes, constantly playing off against each other, the political obliviousness of aristocratic Hungary as it hurries unwittingly towards WWI, and, more shatteringly poignant to this reader, the slow, inexorable crumbling of the doomed love between Count Balint Abady and the married Adrienne. Here, for example, is the description of Abady's enchantment with the estate woodland, his love for which is only enhanced by his love for Adrienne: "Everywhere there were only these three colours, silver, grey, and vivid green: and the more that Balint gazed around him the more improbable and ethereal did the forest seem until it was only those strands near at hand, which moved gently in the soft breeze, that seemed real while everything further off, the pale lilac shaded into violet, was like clouds of vapour in slight perpetual movement as if swaying to the rhythm of some unheard music."

After WW II, Banffy, like a character in a tragic novel, ended up reduced to a landless nobody with a meaningless title in communist Hungary. His Transylvanian home Banffy Castle at Bontida village was destroyed by retreating Germans in vengeance for his role in Romania changing sides in the second world war. He died in 1950. But the good news is that, under The Transylvanian Trust, the castle is being restored and is now a training centre for craft skills.

village tradition and solidarity

Last Saturday I found myself, as an agnostic, in an initially embarrassing situation – being invited (as I thought) to lunch at a village neighbour’s house and landing at a religious ceremony marking 6 months since the death of a grandparent. The penny (and my heart) dropped as I approached the house and saw the older village women in black dresses and headscarves sitting in a row at table. Fortunately the men were in more informal attire - and one of the grand-daughters even in a long, colourful and sexy skirt. And, when the young priest realised who I was, he was very friendly and understanding. Even so, I found the half-hour chanting and reading difficult – particularly when people crossed themselves (something which causes my Protestant and agnostic hands to freeze whenever I attempt an anthropological pretence). And I beat a fast retreat from the room when a couple of women dropped on their knees under the priest’s embroidered scarf right in front of me - and started kissing it.

In between times, however, I was appreciating the way members of the Orthodox Church do celebrate the dead with these rituals at intermittent dates from the death. I’ve mentioned before how bad we Brits are at this. The scale, however, of the subsequent food and drink was a bit excessive – and hardly conducive to proper commemoration (no toasts). Ditto the differentiation between the men and the women – the latter not only sitting separately but also acting as the servants while the men got loud.

The main subject of their conversation at table was the local elections taking place the next day – the last week or so has been highly amusing with long-overdue road repairs being undertaken all over the place including the potholed track (more like a dried-out river bed) which connects our village to the main road.  Here perhaps is a measure of elite attitudes in different countries – the political class everywhere engages in such vote-buying but here they seem to assume that people’s memories are so short that they have to carry out such public works in the days (not months) before the election itself?

One of the important themes in Geert Mak’s biography of a village (see yesterday’s post) is the encroachment of the outside world on tradition and solidarity – initially through roads; then labour-saving devices; money replacing mutuality; then television; european legal requirements for livestock; and, finally, urbanites buying and/or building houses in the village. Other books also cover this theme - eg Blacker's Along the Enchanted Way (Transylvania); Alastair McIntosh's Soil and Soul; and Robin Jenkins' Road to Alto - an account of peasants, capitalists and the soil in the mountains of souther portugal (1979). Alto in Portugal was a self-sufficient economy, with a stable, sustainable agricultural pattern practiced for centuries. There were no major disparities, and people helped each other during the occasional drought. The community didn’t need many external inputs. This utopia could have gone on forever, but for the coming of a six-kilometre tarred road. The farmers moved to cash crops and the cash economy; soon, the village was not producing enough food for itself and became dependent on external seeds, fertilisers, finance. The middlemen gained the most from this conversion.

The old socio-economic structure, where everyone had their place and nothing much ever changed, no longer exists. In its place there is a system in which any land becomes increasingly seen as a potential source of profit. The old stability and predictability has gone forever, to be replaced by the competitiveness and the mentality of a gold rush. All because of six kilometres of tarred road

The pace of change has been slower in this village where I stay; few outsiders like me - although my old neighbour pointed out yesterday (as we were returning with 4 hens he had bought in a nearby town of Rasnov) a house which a Frenchman is apparently restoring. 
And the photo which heads this post is of the embellished track at the bottom of my garden which now allows me to take my car there. 
My acceptance in the village is helped, I’m sure, by my friendship with old Viciu; and by the fact that I live without ostentation (having kept the traditional features of the house – and driving a 15 year-old locally-produced car!!) But you have to get used to a lot of questions – about where you are going; what you are doing; how much things cost you – and comments about your sneezing and nocturnal movements! That’s why I laughed out loud at certain sections of Mak's book which cover these exactly similar features – “people usually proffered  unasked explanations for any action that was out of the ordinary, for anything that could appear not quite normal. You explained why you were walking round behind your neighbour’s meadow – “it’s more out of the wind there”     

Saxon villages and fortified churches

A heavenly day – almost literally! She who must be obeyed needed a break from the work she had been doing on and around the house. I reckoned Poiana Merova should have a fair this first Sunday of September – and indeed it did. But such a disappointing one! Cheap chinese baubles; loud music; a few vegetables; and, apart from a pile of aluminium pots, none of the rural instruments I’ve come to expect at fairs. But a sign for Vulkan – mentioned on the map on Saxon fortified churches I had bought in Brasov recently - had us on a stretch of road we had never been on before. And the detour was well worth it. Vulkan village has a clean, lively feel to it – despite the sadly derelict mansion (which turned out to be the German School) on its main street. The young Lutheran pastor gave us a personal tour of the complex – which dates from the 14th century (although the building is 17th). The town was known as Wolkendorf and the enemy was the Hungarians. The complex has been wonderfully restored – with a magnificent organ and superb ceiling and pulpit. Services are held there at 10.00 every 2 weeks in summer (next Sunday is the next) – alternating with the Cristian fortified church. Apparently the services attract 50-70 in summer. In return for my donation I got the annual magazine (in German) and a lovely calendar. It emerged that the derelict school had been leased to a company who had not taken occupation and that the church was now trying to wrest it back from them. Either Bulgaria or Romania, I understood, had a new law which required such patrimony to be properly maintained. Wonder how it deals with a case like this.
Before the day was out we had discovered two more superb old fortified churches from the early medieaval period in our immediate neighbourhood (which I had not previously known about) – Codlea as Zeiden; and Ghimbav as Weidenbach. Cristian (Neustadt), on the Brasov-Rasnov stretch) was already known to us.
Codlea, a few kilometres further on, is on the main road between Brasov and Sibiu – and our guide at its church was a young student who alternated between Romanian and German in her explanations. She left the treasure for the end – a small exhibition of paintings by a local artist Eduard Morres (1894-1980) whose realistic genre is precisely my preferred one. I was able to buy what seemed the last copy of a substantial book on him (in German) with lots of reproductions – but, sadly, can find no pictures online.
A black mark has to go the third place we tried to visit – Ghimbav whose front door was firmly closed and the large notice board on the left bereft of any information about its opening hours. The municipal notice board round the corner was equally unhelpful. After some conversations we eventually established that the key could be obtained from the house further to the left of the church’s front entrance. But that will be for another day.
For a very good sense of what these fortified churches and saxon villages offer see this booklet on Viscri which is just north of Fagaras

Saxon Greenway seems to be a good example of ecological tourism in the Sighosoara area.

medieval Brasov

One of my daughters is visiting me (for the first time) in my Carpathian mountain house at the moment; and this has taken me into the heart of medieval Brasov for the first time for some years – seeing it not only in its new splendour but through new eyes. I normally sweep round past the Central Station on the circuit road to one of the large consumer outlets (god forgive me) but this time I took them up past the Saxon houses on Strada Lunga to the elegant square and the huge Black Church (with its Ottoman rug collection) and back via an equally graceful old road. A later walk uncovered a terrific German bookshop at the Black Church where I was able to buy many excellent guides to the area – particularly to the fortified churches. When I first visited Brasov in 1991, it still boasted 2 German newspapers and I could hear German spoken in the streets. But Kohl’s financial blandishments to the Saxon population sadly emptied the villages around here – the vaccum being filled by the gypsies. The old houses are only slowly being rescued – a visit to a winery gave the chance to see the lovely courtyards and cellars which grace the Saxon houses.

Lessons in Transylvania

I've just received the latest issue of The Ecologist and it contains a great article by Laura Sevier, a freelance journalist, about traditional farming here in Transylvania. For the (few) lazy readers I have, let me reproduce the entire article here -

Transylvania has maintained traditional farming methods for hundreds of years. As it faces the twin threats of intensive agriculture and byzantine EU policies, its model of under-development is attracting the interest of policy makers. Forget Count Dracula. Deep in the heart of Transylvania, an altogether more mesmerising scene is playing itself out - a vision of what life must have been like in a medieval village. There's not a brightly coloured shop or advert in sight. Horse and carts clatter down the dirt track roads and cows wander freely. There are barely any cars. And behind the tall walls of each of the old Saxon houses is a self-contained ‘courtyard farm' complete with a wooden hay barn, livestock sheds and a small vegetable plot and fruit orchard.
In the distance are unfenced wildflower-rich grasslands and communal hay-meadows and beyond that, thick, old growth forests where bears, wolves and wild cats still roam.
This village, Crit, is one of the 150 or so well preserved Saxon villages and settlements of southern Transylvania that have remained almost unchanged for hundreds of years. The so-called Saxons were German colonists who immigrated to Transylvania in the 12th and 13th centuries and they were renowned for being hard working farmers. The smallholder lifestyle continues to flourish here today, with most villagers entirely self-sufficient.


The good lifeA typical household keeps poultry, a couple of pigs, 10-20 sheep, along with 2 or 3 cows that graze on communal village pastures by day and are milked by hand in the morning and evening in the courtyards. Fruit and vegetables are eaten fresh from the garden or preserved in pickles or jams for the winter months. As well as growing and rearing their own, villagers also slaughter and butcher their own animals. Every chimney has a special chamber for hanging meat (predominantly pork) for smoking. Many households make their own wine from homegrown vines and brandy from plums.
This self-sufficient way of life is still deeply ingrained in rural Romania, passed down from generation to generation. Farming dictates the rhythm of life here, both daily and seasonally - during the summer months, for instance, most families are out in their hay-meadows with scythes and rakes making hay for their cattle and sheep.
‘Practically everyone is a farmer in rural Romania,' says Nat Page, director of the charitable conservation foundation ADEPT. ‘Ninety per cent of villagers have land outside the village and their courtyard farms.' There are some shops but they're very basic - you wouldn't even know they were shops and most people only buy things they can't make themselves, like cooking oil, cigarettes and beer.
The food produced is organic in practice, although it's not certified because the costs of certification are too high. This low impact, ‘High Nature Value' farming allows nature to thrive. Wildflowers are abundant, and many of the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish and insects present are rare or protected at national and international level, and have disappeared over much of Europe.


ThreatsADEPT focuses its work in the Târnava Mare area, 85,000 hectares in the heart of the Saxon Villages area and has had the area certified as a Natura 2000 site which gives it a basic level of protection.
There are, however, threats facing the landscape and local communities. ‘People are not being allowed to produce jams and pickles in their own kitchen because of excessive interpretation of EU law by the Romanian Food Standards Agency,' says Page. ‘They're being driven out of business and lovely old bakeries are still being closed down.' This, he stresses, is not what Brussels wants. ‘Brussels preaches diversity, flexibility and cultural traditions but it's up to the host country to implement it.'
Another problem is that 70 per cent of farmers are over 50 years old. Christi Gherghiceanu, ADEPT project manager who grew up in the area says, ‘people older than 50 are reluctant to leave their homes. They seem to be happy with their rural lifestyle. The rest of the population would rather abandon the villages because of the lack of financial opportunities in the area.'
The biggest threats to the landscape are intensive farming - artificial fertilisers would seriously damage or destroy the wildflower meadows and high stocking rates could lead to over-grazing - or abandonment of the land.


Farmers' markets‘Inevitably many of the smallest farms will disappear,' says Nat Page. ‘The average size of a farm here is 1.5 hectares. In five years time it will be three hectares. We can't say that everything is going to remain the same. But we can say we hope small- scale farming has a future in the area.'
Founded in 2004, ADEPT's main objective is to protect the fragile biodiversity of Transylvania and use it to benefit local communities. ‘We didn't just parade in with a load of money telling them what to do,' explains Page. ‘We employed local people and we've helped small farmers in the real world. If you want to conserve an area but there are no economic benefits, people are less responsive.'
ADEPT, funded by Defra's Darwin Initiative, Orange Romania and Innovation Norway, has assisted small farmers in two main ways. The first is to help them find a market by organising regular farmer's markets in nearby towns and cities and enabling producers to get their kitchens authorised (by persuading inspectors not to excessively interpret the Brussels guidance). ADEPT, based in the large Saxon village of Saschiz, also provides a modern ‘food barn' authorised by the Romanian Food Safety Authority where people can produce food. The 20 producers it works with now sell 70,000 euros worth of produce a year through markets, although ADEPT is keen to work with more. In addition, ADEPT has helped 65 small-scale farmers gain an income again by finding a market for milk. By working with them to improve hygiene and equipment, the farmers had their milk collection reinstated.
The second aspect of what ADEPT does is to help small-scale farmers get grants from the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. Many farmers own under 1 hectare, so don't receive basic Pillar 1 payments. ADEPT is dealing this at a policy level, promoting higher payments for small farmers.


To CAP it offADEPT has also helped farmers benefit from biodiversity conservation. As the area is a Natura 2000 and HNV landscape, farmers are eligible for CAP agri-environmental payments but these are not automatic - you have to opt for them. After running farm visits explaining the advantages of signing up, 75 per cent of eligible farmers within Târnava Mare have joined the scheme; this is four times the rate of uptake in neighboring areas which demonstrates the desperate need for farm advisory services in such areas.
This will too, of course, benefit plants and animals. ADEPT's botanist, Dr John Akeroyd, who often accompanies Prince Charles (a regular visitor to Transylvania) on his walks through this countryside says, ‘the grasslands in this area are uniquely rich in Europe and appear to be still in good heart thanks to continuing traditional management by local farmers'.
On a wider scale, Nat Page believes this project could even have an influence over the next phase of the CAP, 2013-2020, in favour of High Nature Value landscapes elsewhere. ADEPT has been asked to present its results at EU meetings in Brussels because it shows a way forward to protect the small-scale farmed landscapes and communities across all of Europe. The Commissioners for Agriculture and the Environment both sent encouraging video messages to the High Nature Value Grassland Conference organised by ADEPT in Sibiu in September 2010.
‘An amazing thing is happening within the EU,' says Page. ‘A few years ago everyone said these farms were irrelevant and policy favoured competitive farms. Now small-scale farms are seen as valuable for food and landscape, with massive benefits for flood and fire control, biodiversity and mitigation against climate change. They are increasingly appreciated as vital for Europe's future.'

tribes, traditions and transitions

A time for superficial dipping – with another Amazon packet thudding onto the table. At the moment I’m locked into Jonathan Watt’s grim journey around China’s environmental disasters
and spellbound by William Blacker’s Along the Enchanted Way
This last is a memoir of ten years spent in Transylvania and the Maramures as an age-old way of life gradually crumbles in the face of modernity. Jason Goodwin (who writes so well about the ottoman way of life) has given it a very positive review on the Amazon site.

It's a gripping and affecting account of the experience of living in this remote and beautiful region of Europe, telling a story that's almost impossibly romantic. He chronicles a near-mediaeval way of life, with its horses and witches, its casual kindness and grace, its wholeness and jealousies -interwoven with his own story - the years he spent living the peasant life, the rumbunctious affair with his Gypsy girlfriend, the brutality of the police, the cruelty and the wisdom of country life.

I particularly enjoyed his description of his attempts to learn the scything technique which so well matches my own.
With guests here, I slept last night under the eaves in the attic last night for the first time since it was refurbished all of a year ago. It’s about time we gave it some decorative treatment!

The morning dawned cloudy for the first time for amore than a week – and an article on Kyrgzystan got me to browsing through recent stuff on this country which I knew so well in 2005-2007.
One of the articles was by my friend David Coombes
The admirable Crisis Group has just issued its detailed assessment of the horrific events of April in that country
And I noticed that the guy who was central asian Director of Crisis Group – David Lewis - has an interesting analysis of the area - Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia

Another interesting recent discovery was the debates which the Economist journal now runs online – the most recent of which was on the Chinese development model.

New York Review of Books blogs are always interesting – and, with all the recent publicity about Wikileaks, this one on secrecy in China is worth a look
Finally – and remembering what I said recently about satire - PJ O’Rourke has a great piece on the way our understanding of far-off countries is filtered by journalists

more Transylvanian and Balkan flavour?

The title of this blog is Carpathian Musings since I am now based here in this marvellous mountain range – in its southern sweep in Romania – but a recent incident has made me realise how little about the immediate area or country I mention in the blog. The other blog I started a couple of years ago but which transmogrified into this one contained much more about life in the mountains.
The starting point for today’s story is one of my many book blogs. At one level it is hardly surprising that those who read should also want to share their pleasure – and write about their recent reads in a blog. For me, the discipline of summarising key points in a book fixes them more solidly in my mind – and may actually create a few questions which send me back to a reread or search in another book. But that is for the non-fiction which tends still to be my fare. What I find amazing is the care and love book bloggers devote to the sentences and characters in fiction. I am deeply grateful to those bloggers who reproduce whole chunks of text to give the reader their own sense of a book and of its style – rather than leaving us to rely on an opinion. One of the best such bloggers is Pechorin – who asked recently about central European literature. As someone with a base in the Carpathians I was happy to share a couple of recent overviews I had come across on the subject – but I then decided to add my own blog address to the second comment. But immediately Max (such is his name) graciously acknowledged and promised to look at my blog, I could anticipate his shocked response – “this guy doesn’t really read novels – and where are his musings about the Carpathians?”
Technically the Carpathians sweep from the plains 150 or so kilometres north of the Danube (in which Bucharest is the largest city) to north Romania, up into Ukraine and then across most of Slovakia – and I did blog (however briefly) in June about my latest trip to superb Slovakia.
But the content of this blog belies its title. The focus here is, of course, on issues of public management - since it takes over from the blog I wrote under the “publicadmin reform” rubric. Ideally I should retitle the blog Carpathian Musings about Good Government! But that would make it more difficult for me to celebrate the wines, paintings and mores in an area which extends for me to the other side of the Balkans mountain range which runs across central Bulgaria.
It’s almost exactly twenty years ago that I started my work and nomadic existence in what was then called countries of central and eastern Europe (CCEE). It started with a personal invitation from the Head of WHO’s Public Health Office in Copenhagen (on the basis of my role then in the Healthy Cities network) to identify the scope in the new central europe for developing networks of preventive health. WHO had long had small offices in all these countries and my job was to fly in and spend a week or so talking not only with Ministers and party leaders but with representatives of the new NGOs. One of my most vivid memories is driving in an ambulance to Brasov (just down the road from where I am now) with the young doctor who had been assigned to me in Romania, hearing German being spoken in the streets; talking with both the University Rector and an episcopalian Bishop; and then being driven on to Alba Iulia to talk with the Archbishop of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. I also had a moving hour long discussion in Bucharest with the old, frail and highly respected Leader of the Peasant party who had recently been released from 20 years’ imprisonment. My WHO tour included a stunning visit to a snowy and blue skied St Petersburg in mid-January - where I remember being shocked by the completely different value system eg that a life had no value (from a bright young woman) or that food should be subsidised and controlled by the municipality. The one capital I was not allowed to visit in this busy 6 month spell in 1991 was Belgrade. Copenhagen knew something the rest of us didn’t about the coming conflict in the Balkans.
And, since that dreadful conflagration, the Balkans have (once more) being marked apart. Indeed those of us in the Technical Assistance business since then have used a threefold classification - central Europe (for countries such as Poland; Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia with their borders with EU countries); CIS or Commonwealth of Independent States (for those to the East which had never experienced capitalism or democracy); and the troublesome Balkans (the countries of ex Federal Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and Romania) where the Ottoman influence was still evident. Not so, of course, here in Transylvania which was not only Austro-Hungarian until the Trianon Treaty but had Saxon immigrants in medieval times. The old border with Ottoman-controlled Wallachia is just at the back of my house!

Anyway, the point of all this is to promise that I will try to give more of a Balkan flavour to this blog – or rather Transylvanian and Bulgarian flavour – not least to counter the impression that I am leading a vicarious life and missing home. Of course, on fine days here, I have a certain hankering for the Clyde and the Argyll hills and a sight of the Hebrideans – but I have no wish to return to the dreary weather! And I follow the politics simply because it’s an easy case-study for me.
As I’ve mentioned the Ottoman influence, let me finish by pointing you to a provocative article on Turkish styles of argument.

In Turkey, it is normal and expected to say that you will do something, have done something, or agree with something when, in fact, you won’t, haven’t, or don’t.Not only is truth here derived from emotion, but the emotions themselves are more intense and more transitory. Arguing a mild difference of opinion by screaming and threatening would come across to Westerners as weak at best, lunatic at worst. Not here. No shame attaches to displays of anger that in the West would result in the issuance of restraining orders. The fights dissipate as quickly as they start; everyone proceeds to drink tea and moistly proclaim their mutual love. The entire incident is then forgotten, except by the American, who is still shaking with rage and nurtures her resentment forever

Thanks to Marian for the photograph of my neighbourhood. Her stunning collection is worth a look.

Transylvania

Sirnea
Just to give a sense of the neighbourhood. The house is modestly hiding behind the trees to the middle-right of picture (beside the redhouse) At the moment I have to park the car at the neighbours (bottom left) and struggle up the hill with the groceries et al. Good for flabby muscles!

I'm back in Bucharest for the moment - feeling so refreshed after the week there watching (and listening to) the change in season. After my return from China I had become a bit of a couch potato - with Midsummer Murders and Foyle's War staple viewing in the morning! At Sirnea, music is the only distraction.
Family and friends I try to tempt with a lyrical book on Transylvania produced recently by Bronwen Riley and Dan Dinescu (the marvellous Romanian photographer)

For those interested in hill walking, please have a look at Mountains of Romania