One of my favorite things about this trip has been examining the local culture versus outside influence, often broken down very clunkily into 'traditional' and 'modern' (modern being a codeword for Western technological inventions, more or less).
So let's compare and contrast yesterday in Odorhei and Sighisoara, shall we?
Odorheiu's local market was just that, one street cordoned off and filled with the same wooden-and-green-fabric-covered stalls and very fresh, local goods. At least three different meat stands, two cheese ones, multiple pastry stands (cinnamon rolls and pretzels, mmm!) and that's not even touching the honeys and jams. There was soap and there were wood and straw crafts, and a few stands selling similarly made bracelets and accessories. Traditional and/or local music drifted from the large speakers, a very welcome change from the American pop music we've been hearing in every restaurant and shop. It was very nice to just buy some food and wander around and then sit in the park and listen to the music and the people. I had one of those moments where I realized, once again, how fantastic it is to be here and how lucky I am and how cool it is that I'm just wandering around Transylvania.
The train from Odorhei to Sighisoara could be seen as a liminal symbol, if I were to be anthropological about it -- we travel from Szekelyfold (ethnic Hungarians and the local culture of Odorhei) to more Romanian Romania, through the country where we don't know which is which. We're in neither place, rattling and stuttering through the fields and the outskirts of towns with names we can't pronounce.
Sighisoara (pronounced, depending on the person's origin and language, either Siggy-shwara or Siggy-shorah; also my favorite place to say.) is a very interesting combination of Romanian and English (plus a dozen other languages; the man at one of the stands asked if I spoke German then French before we settled on English), of old architecture and bouncy houses strapped between the buildings, of stall food (stall goulash! I wanted to try it before we left, but we didn't have time) and British style pubs.
The Sighisoara medieval festival is somewhere between a ren faire and an SCA event. There were loads of obviously ren faire type people there, tons upon tons of tourists, and a whole lot of proper medieval fighting and crafts and outfits. There's traditional Romanian food and traditional Hungarian food in stalls (langos are incredible. Fried dough type bread with sour cream and shredded cheese and garlic on top. It sounds gross, but it's really yummy!) and the stalls sell everything from kitsch that we've already seen outside of Bran Castle (those vampire face mugs are everywhere!) to handcrafted, handmade leather-bound journals. There were knights fighting each other as we bought our tickets in and someone dressed as Vlad himself wandering around; there were a bunch of dressed up guys working who ran blowing a horn and photobombing people, and we stayed long enough to listen to a really cool band.
Easily my favorite stall was Natura Paper. I was drawn to old maps on parchment next to journals, and then the man behind the table showed me that they handmake every piece of paper. They had a paper-making stand next to the table; they offered to print me up whatever design I wanted on their parchment right then and there. I looked through their prints, their maps, their journals and their parchment (smooth but rough at the same time) and I had to walk away. It actually hurt, I want you to know. I wanted it all, but was on a gift-giving mission and besides, I didn't want to know how expensive it would've been. (More than that, I wanted to know how to do it myself.)
Yesterday was long and sweaty and crowd-heavy, but so great and so much fun. Today, we're off to visit quite a few of the churches in the area, so later I'll have another blog detailing that and talking about the quite literally breathtaking Orthodox church we found in Sighisoara.
Title lyrics from Loreena McKennitt's Marrakesh Night Market
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