Bucovina delights
Trip Start
Aug 27, 2011
1
9
14
Trip End
Sep 09, 2011
Where I stayed
What I did
Putna Monastery
Radauti
Marginea
Bogdana Monastery
Moldovita, Romania
Sunday, September 4, 2011
The next goal of our journey was Putna monastery with its museum of Byzantine items. By far the most crowded of them all - well partially because it was Sunday and the villagers came for a mass there. Generally Sunday was the best day to travel through this rural area, because you could see hundreds of people going to churches, mostly dressed in traditional clothes (which you can also see on the photos) - a tradition that died in most of the countries we had visited so far and sadly, in Poland mostly as well. Breathtaking Bucovina environments, forests, hills, animals were adding to the scenery that was hardly forgettable. The monastery as such is not as impressive as the other we visited or where supposed to visit that day, however it was worth a trip (the monastery is situated far north, not far from the Ukrainian border). It is worth to drive there, even if only for the sights that you can observe along the way.
From Putna we followed the same track back to Radauti, a small town famous for its Bogdana Monastery. We spent an hour or so looking for the monastery, as all the signs and people were telling something different. We even took a gravel road out of town and drove for about 15 minutes before we decided it was not the right route. Spare the trouble, the church is the least impressive and not worth your time if you're aiming for many more along the way. What was interesting though was Marginea, the village of pottery. It is where we made some shopping (beware though, as not everything is as handmade as the shoppers would claim) and had a chance to take a look at the pottery workshop next to one of the stores. There we experienced the whole process behind creating the vases, cups and other pottery stuff, from forming the clay till heating it and creating desired shapes.
100km later, in Sucevita we again found ourselves gazing at the beautiful painted structure. Sadly not photos were allowed inside and what's most important - it was strictly forbidden to make photos of... nuns - with a self-explanatory sign that you can see posted here. Moldovita on the other hand was a completely different story. The place was special for its paintings indeed. It struck us that the most common motive all around was... decapitation. I was never aware that there was so many stories of cutting the saint's head in the bible or in the Christian world - and in Moldovita you could see hundreds. Sometimes there was one head cut and sometimes it was a mass cutting (four to five at the same time!). Brrrr... At one point of time, as we were sitting and watching the paintings a nun came out of the church with a plank of wood and a hammer and started to hit the plank with it going around the building. It seemed like some kind of ritual that we were not aware of. We though that maybe the monastery had no bell, hence she was announcing the time for the faithful to come and attend a mass. Nothing like that happened though and we are still not sure as to what this ritual really was.
What's still worth to mention is the road from Bucovina towards Maramures area, as yet again we encountered a village with all the houses painted - this time not with flowery motives, but different patters - like the ones we used to draw in our notebooks between each lesson in primary schools.
For the next night, we selected a place deep in the mountains, near Stationea Bursa. a place "designed" to be a ski resort, counting on great mountain views. We could not get more disappointed. Bursa turned out to a dirty pile of concrete buildings and non encouraging hotels, empty obviously since the season was way off.
And the worst of them all - our hotel... For a few moments we were sure we would keep driving and lose the money we paid for the reservation, but, after all, decided to stop and rest before Maramures. The hotel name was Paltinis (http://www.booking.com/hotel/ro/paltinis.pl.html?sid=400e394a1f5a4c129e01742940b243c4;dcid=1) and I put this link here for the sole reason to warn you! The room itself was not that bad, though it was lacking any view that we were so much hoping for. But the worst was the staff. When we came that was one guy with two ladies, sitting next to the reception (and bar - all-in-one) drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes (plenty of them). No "hello", no nothing - we felt very welcome... It was hard to reach our room without catching the smell of smoke on our clothes. Later that day, some guys came as well and turned they place into a regular bar with lots of drinking which effectively discouraged us to go out of our room. Never ever again! I told Aga to wake up early the next day so we could leave this place as fast as possible and forget this dreadful experience. As I am writing this, you can clearly see, that it was one that was hardly possible to forget...
