Another Easter in Bucharest

Spring has arrived in Romania along with another Easter season.

Typical of every holiday, the street vendors are set up near busy intersections, peddling seasonal goodies. But the place to go is the artisan's fair at Park Herestrau.

Herestrau is a stunning oasis in the middle of Bucharest.

It hugs the lake where you can take boat rides, or explore the walking trails.

Swans and ducks grace the ponds.

There are beautiful exotic birds

We admired this gorgeous creature.

An heroic statue of Charles De Gaulle stands in a place of honor at the entrance to the park - homage to historical French/Romanian relations.

We were surprised to find Beethoven here, but then there is a section of town where the streets are named Tchaikowski, Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Garabaldi, Rachmaninov, Puccini and Strauss. But I digress....

There is also a large section of the park called the peasant village where replicas of rural homes are displayed.

During the Artisan's Fair, display tables of paintings, baking, leather works, jewellery, and more are set up in and around the various peasant houses, making for a feeling of authentic ambiance.

Randy admired the handiwork of this lady selling traditional Romanian costumes.

We thought she looked pretty in her tradtional dress.

This lady was making a woven container.

A young girl is shown how to play a homemade flute.

This beautiful lady was demonstrating spinning wool.

These masks were interesting. Randy particularly like the one with the curly ram's horns.

This lady tried to convince Vicky to buy an outfit by showing her how "beautiful" she looked.

Uh huh...

But the busiest area by far was the one where ladies were selling their Easter eggs.

How could we resist?

Adding to the festive atmosphere were the various musical groups performing in the peasant village square. This was a group of young priests singing in rich a cappella harmonies.

We were charmed by this group of girls in their lovely costumes.

The next act was waiting in the wings, having their picture taken with friends.

On the metro, this lady explained that she (and many others we saw) were buying fronds of greenery to place in their church in commemoration of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  Romania celebrates Easter by the Orthodox calendar, which means this year, it is a week later than in Canada.

We invited eight young missionaries and a senior couple to share a turkey dinner with us on Canada's Easter Monday and will celebrate with the local members the week after.  Paste Fericit! (Happy Easter).

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Help for a Hospital - Phase I

Istvan is the local representative for a charitable organization from the U.K. called North Nibley Romania Team.  NNRT has "adopted" a village here in Romania and for 20 years has worked to help the psychiatric hospital, the school and the kindergarten. They contacted us at the beginning of March for help, so we went to take a look.

The hospital has 147 chronically ill psychiatric adult patients who have come from all over the region. They will never leave here - it is their home.

We met the head nurse - a happy, capable and devoted woman who has worked here for 30 years. With Istvan as our translator, she gave us a tour of the hospital.

A meal was being dished up for the patients.  The menu included a healthy portion of  meat, potatoes carrots and bread.

We saw a rehab room where patients work on various arts and crafts. Vicky was presented with a pretty plaster of paris plaque made by some patients here.

There was some nice work being done on the loom as well.

The seamstress showed us the industrial sewing machine that previous humanitarian missionaries from our church had donated in 2007. It was still going strong.

The head nurse modelled the robes they were making for the patients. Things were looking pretty good until we got to the laundry room....

This ugly beast is their washing machine. It handles a very large load and it agitates the clothes, but it doesn't have a spin function.

It even foams at the mouth! When the machine finishes its cycle, the laundry workers have to take the sopping linens and clothes out of the "beast" and carry them to a "spinner", soaking themselves in the process, of course. They even have to wear rubber boots when they work in here.

The head nurse told us they would love to have a clothes dryer, but they can't afford the power it would use. So once the load has finished in the "spinner" it is hauled outside to hang on the clothes lines. In order to keep up, workers are doing laundry this way 5 days a week!

This is the shelter that NNRT built to cover the seven clothes lines of laundry, so the clothes will still dry even when it rains or snows. 

This is what it looked like when we came for the visit.  The severe winter storms that we have described previously had collapsed the drying shelter and the clothes lines with it.This is what NNRT was asking us for help with. We gladly got a project approved and waited for the snow to melt.

On a warm, sunny April day, we dismantled the broken shed.

With three of us working together...

...it came down in surprisingly good time.

Some of the patients were very interested in the activity and wanted to help.

After Randy measured and inventoried the re-usable material, the patients gladly carried and stacked it for us.  It was touching to see how it made them happy to be working with us.

Randy and Istvan straightened the posts.

We checked to make sure they were plumb, then there wasn't much more we could do at the site until the NNRT volunteers come in June except...

to deliver a large new washing machine and laundry soap to the staff's delight. We'll be back!

  

A Quick Trip to Germany

A beautiful view of the Transylvania Alps from our plane as we flew to Frankfurt for a Europe Area Humanitarian Conference.

The view of Frankfurt as we were coming in to land.

Our hosts were John and Susan Leonard, Area Welfare Specialists (our supervisors). Doesn't Susan look cute in her German costume?

We all stayed in the building on the left which has rental apartments for patrons of the Frankfurt temple (right).

We were able to attend a temple session on the first evening of the conference.

Here is the beautiful tudor-style home of the temple president.

Also on these temple grounds is this church meetinghouse and a church distribution centre.

Here is the whole group. Besides us, there were humanitarian missionaries from: Albania, Cape Verde (off the coast of Africa), Croatia/North Bosnia, Czech Republic, Macedonia/Kosova, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia/South Bosnia and Slovakia.

For two great days we were instructed and inspired.

Elder Fingerle, Area Authority Seventy was our keynote speaker.

We heard from John Leonard, Area Welfare Specialist ...

John Mulligan, Welfare Services Manager for Europe ...

Elder Wirthlin, Director of Temporal Affairs and others.

We listened and learned from each other as each couple had an assigned topic to present.

At the close of the formal conference meetings, Vicky led the ad hoc chorus.

On day three, we got out to see some of the sights:  First stop, Braunfels castle.

It was built in the 13th century, but like most castles, there have been many renovations and extensions. It has been the way it stands since 1885.  What is unusual, is that it has remained in the same family over its entire history.

The castle is still inhabited.  The Count came out to walk his dogs as our group arrived for the tour. He said "hello" to the tour guide, but just walked past the rest of us. We would only be allowed to see a few rooms because it is still a private residence.

There was the typical arms and armor room.  We saw samples of their extensive art collection, but were not allowed to use our cameras there. We learned that one daughter in the family gave up everything and worked with the poor. Another ancestor, Prince Carl, nicknamed "Texas Charlie", moved to Texas and built New Braunfels, a famous German community there. Our tour guide says he takes his wife to New Braunfels on vacation every year.

On prime real estate, the castle overlooks the town.

Enjoying the castle grounds.

We exited the castle grounds into the town square where we enjoyed lunch at an outdoor cafe. Then we all headed to Frankfurt.

We boarded public transit to go to downtown Frankfurt.

Apparently it was the first warm sunny day of Spring, so shoppers and buskers were everywhere. We enjoyed this fellow with his alpine horn.

We learned that 75% of Franfurt residents carry a foreign passport!

Tucked in among the large modern stores were these charming curio shops with their medieval-looking signs. At 6:00 PM on the dot, all the church chimes in the city began to ring - it continued for 15 minutes. Lovely!

On to Romerberg Square - the sight of the famous burning of the books by university students - an action against "unGerman spirit". Happening in 1933, it began an era of state censorship and control of culture.

This action occurred in 34 towns across Germany. This is the memorial of the event in Romerberg Square.

 I am standing on the memorial plaque and pointing the camera at the balcony where Hitler came out and waved at the people around the bonfire where books by authors including Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Helen Keller, and H.G. Wells were burned. Especially notable were the writings of German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, who wrote in his 1820 - 1821 play, "Almansor": "Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people." 

While in Germany, Randy was on a quest to find "kasekuchen" (cheesecake) - something his Grandma Deibert made. He didn't find any that tasted quite as good as he remembered his grandmother's, but he did extensive research in the attempt.

This is the top of a three-storey mall -a fascinating piece of engineering. As you can see, there is a glass tunnel through this wall.  We had to go inside to see it from another angle.

So cool! We felt so lucky to have been able to visit Germany.

Now we're back home in Romania and on the lookout for another project.