|
"Sânzienele"
- a celebration of Midsummer's Day |
|||||
|
THE ITINERARY. |
In the Romanian folk calendar the arrival of summer is accompanied by several merry festivals. They mark the solstice, propitiate the elements in order to assure rich crops, herald future important events (for instance, weddings) and even tell the age of the spouses. The summer folk holidays begin on June 24, on Midsummer Day and end on Saint Peter's Day (June 29). Midsummer Day has a twofold meaning in Romania. One stands for the traditional Midsummer fairies that do a lot of mischief. The other is a reminder of the nice smelling flowers of Lady's Bedstraw. Young girls make wreathes out of them and the boys cross-shaped braids. The flowers are then throw into the cattle pen. If the wreath gets stuck on an old beast, the future spouse will be elderly. If the animal is young, so will the spouse be.
On Midsummer Eve, the lads of Maramureş (north-west Romania) go out in the evening holding fire torches which they move around in the sense of the sun in the sky. When the torches are about to go out the young men descend the hills, surround the plots, enter into people's yards and give the torches to their parents to thrust them into the soil of their gardens. On the same day , in Moldavia, Wallachia and Dobruja, two or four maidens, two of them dressed as lads, perform the Wicked Fairy's dance. The girls may be accompanied by a boy who plays the flute or the bagpipe and carries a banner on which colored head kerchiefs, bedstraw flowers, garlic and wheat ears are attached. in some villages, the Wicked Fairies wield scythes and fight among themselves. The initial significance of the custom compares the maidens to ripening wheat. Thus, a transfer of fertility between the two kingdoms, animal and vegetal , is achieved. Scythes and sickles that will pull down the plants symbolize the mowing of human lives, as well as the eternal duel between winter and summer, between the good and the evil forces. |
The highlights of this tour will be the "Sânzienele" Festival at Borşa and the steam forest railway on the Vaser Valley in Maramureş, Dracula's birthplace in Sighişoara, the fortified citadels of Eastern Transylvania and the Painted Monasteries in Moldavia.
You will travel through the quaint wooden villages of Maramureş, the rural communities based around the Painted Monasteries, and also experience the unique Sighişoara, the finest example of a medieval town in Europe.The visit to a fortified church at Prejmer will introduce you to the culture of the Saxons in Romania, and Bran castle adds more to the fiction of Dracula than the facts. From the first day of traveling through the spectacular Rucăr Valley to the last night in the Carpathians, this tour will introduce you to the many varied landscapes and fascinating cultures that make up Romania.
|
|||
