Spinning Words

Another year gone but no one is awarding me the House Cup. I’d probably deserve it because Winter time is Harry Potter time, there is no Christmas without watching the movies again, for probably the 10th, 20th or 30th time. I know them by heart in case you were wondering.

I could make a quick review of the year that is ending tonight but I don’t want to make any difference between moments that left a mark on my year. It was a full year, with good and bad, it helped me gather a lot of stories that I will hopefully share with my grandchildren one day when I am old, close to being senile, proud owner of a dozen cats and rich enough to afford a ticket to Wimbledon.

I am happily writing this from home, sitting by the Christmas tree, having my cute fluffy friend by my side. Both of us are wishing all of you who took the time to read this a healthy Happy New Year, may all your wishes come true!

As promised, I will talk now about a very beautiful and dear Romanian celebration: Saint Andrew’s Night, 29 November. It precedes a very important religious celebration for Romania, yes, St. Andrew. The stories and the traditions related to St. Andrew’s Night date back to the times when the people inhabiting the territory that is now Romania, the Dacians, were not yet Christianized. November 30 was the day when they were celebrating the Wolf, a very important animal for the Dacians: even their flag was represented by a beast with the head of a wolf.

The Dacian Flag

It was the day when it was told that wolves started to go out hunting in packs so you had to be cautious and protect your animals. Also it was the last day before Winter came so long, cold, black nights have a symbolism of their own.

To get right into the scary part: on this night evil spirits take over the world. Blood-thirsty undead come out of the graves and fight with each other at crossroads, live-poltergeists leave their host body and join in the fight. If any of these evil spirits can’t find someone to fight with they will turn their attention towards humans and animals so beware!!! They will try to bewitch any human that is not ready for this night or didn’t take precautions against all evil, they will attack animals that aren’t protected by magic rituals, on short: until dawn they will bring Hell on Earth. That is where the women come in and try to protect themselves, their houses and animals. The most powerful tool against the spirits is garlic. So one has to use it in the best ways possible: anoint the windows, doors, the door knobs, chimneys, one owns’ body, the doors to the stables, the animals, everything. And if by any chance in the middle of the night you are called by the spirits than you must not answer, under no circumstance. Let the poltergeists, spirits and vampires fight among themselves. The undead will go back to their graves in the morning and the living ones will return to their host human bodies and live on until the next opportunity to go out and create chaos. Of course not all spirits do harm, some just go out and dance at the crossroads.

The Romanian folklore is also filled with other beautiful traditions: while women were protecting their households, young boys and girls would party all night. In a house that is well protected with the help of garlic and magic, they would bring garlic that was guarded by an old woman all night and then they would party until morning. At the crack of dawn they would dance with the garlic and then share it among them and guard it all year long near the icons and use a piece every now and then when traveling or when one was sick: it’s magic healing powers were amazing.

Last, but not least, this is the night when a young woman can dream of her soul mate. Of course, in order to do that one should do magic. Bake a really salty small bread, eat half, put half under your pillow and the man that brings you water in your dreams is the one you are meant to be with. Put 41 grains of wheat under your pillow, say a little disenchantment and the one who comes to take the wheat is, of course, your soul mate. You could also see the face of your soul mate in the water of a well. All you had to do is know what spell to say and what things to do.

And don’t forget that one of the most important things is to plant wheat. If it grows nicely by Christmas, your year will be prosperous.

Vasile Alecsandri

And there are more traditions related to this amazing celebration. A Romanian poet, Vasile Alecsandri even wrote a poem called “St. Andrew’s Night”. The poem itself is more than beautiful and it grasps together all the scary and the beautiful part of all the traditions. The poem in Romanian sends shivers down my spine. I will try to translate a small part of it:

“Up on the cross-bare tower/The evil spirit is heading/And the whole turret is trembling!/Midnight passes through the air/And, hitting the cold brass,/Twelve black hours/Are tolled by the hollow bell”.

The only thing I respect, have done since I was little and will do forever: on November 29 in the evening I always eat garlic. And after reading all these things and writing them here for you I wonder: why do we celebrate Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice celebration for the ones who actually have it in their folklore but honestly, look at all the amazing and scary things our own Halloween involves. Who needs pumpkins in October when you risk waking up with a vampire outside your window one month later? I am a bit scared now, will they find me all the way in Stockholm?

I am not going to talk about the reasons why it is not cool to be Romanian. Either social, political or economical, these reasons are all in the news, read the newspapers if you want to find them out but I guess you already know them. I am going to talk, from my point of view, about why it is so amazingly great to be Romanian.

Our grandparents live in the countryside. Romania has one of the greatest countrysides where you can experience the simple life. That means that we drink water directly from the spring without purifying it with chemicals, we bring it out to the surface with the help of buckets and wells. We can walk barefoot on the soft dust and sleep in haystacks in out back yards. We know all the domestic animals without seeing them in the zoo. We know all the wild animals too, come on, who has never seen a fox while walking next to the wheat field on their way to the forest to pick blackberries? And if there is a power outage you find yourself with a great reason to carve a pumpkin lamp, Halloween all Summer long, yey!!!

Pumpkin Lamp

We even have the Romanian equivalent of Halloween, by the way, will talk about it when the time comes. We take our vegetables from our own garden too, and fruits from our orchard. We have and use  lot of medicinal plants. Got a headache? Just ask grandma what type of tea you should drink and she will come in a second with some dry plants and make you a cup of tea that doesn’t taste like anything coming out of a teabag. And these plants grow most of the time right under our noses. Ever going barbequing in the forest? Next time take 15 minutes to gather these plants, they work wonders sometimes!

We have some of the most beautiful Monasteries in the world, places not just for prayer but also cradles of culture and history. Stories and our country’s history are painted on the walls of these monuments in some of the most beautiful colors, one of which is unique in the world: Voronet Blue. Great places for meditation, soul searching and calming down.

We have a Royal Family, I think that is pretty cool and it says a lot about the country Romania used to be. Why the Family is not leading the country, well, that’s on the “uncool” list.

Horia Tecau

We had a double specialist tennis player as a flag-bearer at the 2012 Summer Olympics, 3 times Wimbledon finalist,  two times winner in Bucharest and many other great achievements. I am sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Hai Horia!

We have great wine and amazing cuisine. Every part of the country is different from this point of view. However, I am pretty sure that sarmale and mamaliga are the same everywhere (cabbage rolls and polenta) and also cheese and sower cream with polenta is a pretty national dish (MBS on short, it stands for mamaliga cu branza si smantana). Bring on the onion!!! And try papanasi for desert (cheese dumplings). We brew our own vodka and fruit brandy, of course they are not called like this and they don’t exactly taste the same as the ones you buy from the store, they are even better: tuica and visinata/afinata.

We have all four seasons, and we get the real deal out of each: windy Spring, extremely hot Summer days some with hurricanes others just perfect to lay on the beach, a beautiful colored Autumn with lots of chrysanthemums and a 3 month, sometimes-even-longer-minus-20-or-less-degrees Winter.

Vlad Ţepes

We have Dracula. Thank you Bram Stoker for writing it and Gary Oldman for impersonating the great vampire. Too bad it took an Irish guy to get the story so popular but the myth was born from real facts and it all started with the Order of the Dragon and a really cruel Romanian Voivode: Vlad Ţepes.

Ok, this post is already getting too long so I am going to stop and come back with a second part later, maybe even a third part. If you want to find out more things about why Romania is a cool country watch this. I am only going to write about what I find cool but I am pretty sure someone else discovered other great things about Romania as well.