We had plenty of time in the afternoon to do a road trip through several small villages around Sighişoara.
<- Here is our route.
Observations:
It is really interesting to be driving down the main road, watching out for horse drawn carts, and dodging piles of horse poop. In 2017.
I almost hit a hog.
It charged out of a corn field right in front of me.
I am used to cows and sheep on the road. But a pig?
It is nothing to see men and women walking down the road with hoes, rakes and pitchforks over their shoulder, or to see them working in the fields actually pitching the hay by hand. Of course there are other farms with tractors and mechanical balers as well.
The women in their long colorful dresses pitch alongside the men.
Cruising through a village where they make copper pots, cups, bowls and so on, all hung out in front of the houses for sale. They glitter in the sun. I have had no desire for copper anything, but the glittering makes me want to buy some.
We don't stop.
Everywhere there are these fortified churches, like little forts, or castles, in every village. If you were really into it, you could make an entire vacation out of just going to see them all. However, we are about filled up with them after the four or five we saw today.
I am surprised how many people still pull water, by hand, out of a water well. Some have a well in their front yard, others use the community one. If you are lucky, your village had a water pump at a communal trough, where you go fill up, wash clothes and even splash around (if you are a kid).
Jesus hanging out everywhere. Little wooden crosses with what looks like a cardboard cut-out of Jesus. Every town, every church, all over the place. He is always dressed and decorated slightly different, but the one fact I learned is that Jesus was definitely a Romanian, not a white American as I was led to believe growing up. Sheer numbers of crosses prove the point.
When you listen to Romanian being spoken, it sounds really Italian. It is a Latin based language, so that makes sense. But German is the second language here.
Every town name is in German and Romanian, and the Saxons settled this Transylvania region long ago.
We stopped for some water at a little cafe. I went in the bathroom, and some of the tiles were missing in the wall above the toilet.
There was a skull in the empty space.
Weird.