Touring Transylvania

Tuesday Sept 27th

Today we are back on a schedule and set to visit some other towns in Transylvania. We had a private guide for the day who picked us up at our hotel promptly at 9:30. The driver was Emmanuel and had been doing private tours in the area for years. He and his family live in Sighișoara and he has grown up visiting the towns in the area, so, he’s knows his stuff.

Our first visit was to the fortified town of Biertan which was certified as a fortress over 600 years ago. The town with its fortifications are considered the strongest in Transylvania. Rows of houses are arranged around a central square, above which rises the imposing church-fortress. The impressive religious monument combines Gothic and Renaissance styles, and is enclosed by three walls with towers and medieval bastions. The current church was built in the early 1500s in late Gothic style.

Inside the church and to the side of the altar area is the sacristy. Not being of this faith I had no idea what that meant but after seeing it I’m guessing sacristy is the Catholic word for “small room off to the side”. We were told this was a Protestant Lutheran church but it sure looked like a Catholic church to me.

Anyhow the focal point here is the door to the room. As the story goes, the priest was responsible for keeping money belonging to the townspeople. Don’t remember why, someone was trying to raid the town and burn it down and take all the money, just a typical event for the area, and the people were so worried about loosing their money they commissioned someone in town to make a super strong door that can never be broken into. Sounded like a Harry Potter story to me but that was back in Scotland.

Anyhow, the door was a success and protected the money from all the marauders (they probably should have also had on eye on the priest also but that’s a later episode). Apparently this door was so secure and the locking mechanism was so well made and complex that they sent the door to the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and it won some international award there some 400 years after it was made. The door became famous with its very complicated system of 19 locks, exceptional inlays and the original closing system. It was a representative example of manufacturing of medieval Saxons. The door is back on the sacristy in the church and is still fully functional today.

Our next visit was to the town of Medias. This place is not normally listed as a tourist destination and our guide took us there to see a town that was untouched by tourism. So many things change when tourists start coming. Shops and houses are slowly bought out and changed to cater to the visitors which slowly starts changing normal small town life. He said besides us there are no tourists at all, everyone we see lives right here. In the middle of the town stood the usual clock tower but this one was built on some weak ground and now the whole tower is leaning.

We ventured next to the large city of Sibiu. Sibiu is known as the informal capital of Transylvania. It’s known for it’s classical Germanic architecture of 12th-century Saxon settlers. Around the city are the remains of medieval walls and towers, including the 13th-century Council Tower. In the upper town, Brukenthal Palace now houses the Brukenthal National Museum, with European paintings. The nearby Evangelical Cathedral has gravestones in its walls. All the churches looked both beautiful and a bit creepy to me with dead hanging people all over the place. Oh wait, maybe that’s Jesus and maybe that’s the point. Lol

Our guide took us into one of the churches and gave us each two thin candles to place in these big troughs full of melted wax. He said place one candle in each trough and as you do think of a living person for the first and a dead person for the second. I’m not sure what it was supposed to do but watch the candles melt in the wax. Maybe they take the melted wax and make more figures for the church.

One of the most unique architectural oddities are vents built into the roofs of houses that look like eyes which has given the city the nickname, the city of eyes.

Before leaving the city we had a nice traditional Romanian lunch and some yummy gelato and then headed back to our hotel in Sighișoara. During lunch our guide talked to us about Covid. Every single thing he said reminded us of home, in fact it was eerily similar. About life stopping, and the government trying to help with small relief checks. Many people refused to take the vaccine claiming the government was trying to control people and poison them. They had all the same excuses to not take the vaccine as we did in the states. Now things are getting back to normal except they also can’t get enough workers. It was the same in both Scotland and Barcelona. Now hiring signs everywhere and restaurants and other places can’t keep the doors open because they can’t find people to work.

Back home I’ve heard many times that the Democrats are paying people to stay home and not go work. But they can’t be paying everyone in every country in the world to stay home. There is some other phenomenon going on with the lack of workers.

This was our last night in this hotel and the last in Romania, so tonight we had to pack. In the evening Jason was so tired he went to bed early and the rest of us went out for a quick bite to eat and a final walk through the old city at night before wrapping things up. For the very first time my meal came out and the cook put a smiley face on my potatoes. It was a nice kind gesture for our last evening in Romania. All the food here made me smile.

We have only three more nights left on this trip and each one in a different country.