Romania Part 3: Retrospect and Belonging(s)

Hello again everyone! I apologize for ditching the blog for a while, but in the middle of our trip I made the decision to return to Italy for a month to work at my old summer camps. I restocked on money and personal energy and on July 22 I’m flying to Berlin to meet Luca who’s been there for two weeks now! Check out his new blog in Italian: www.venturadellarte.wordpress.com. In response to the concerns, everything is fine with us and the camper and our project. When I left from Vienna, Luca continued the ArtVenture journey from Vienna to Berlin alone, passing through the Czech Republic. I’ve just finished working in the Garfagnana mountains in Tuscany, Italy, and we’re getting ready to start life, work and new projects in Berlin.

But as for the rest of our Romania trip, which I never finished telling…

…heart-warming and personal. That’s a honey truck above. Romania is full of fruit, colors, forests, bales of hay. Everything’s just a little bit out of style, and products/services a little more difficult to access than elsewhere. Romania’s the land of gypsies, the people known as Roma, and many Europeans seem to think that this wandering race have roots in Romania.

Endless planted fields and farmers with picks and rakes, horses instead of tractors and the seasonal fruit of that labor mile after mile on the side of the road. Just pull over and with a few RON get your fill of cherries, honey, watermelon that they’ve raised and cared for with their own two hands.

Some of the most unique architecture is half Victorian, half circus explosion of colors and shapes and wood-carved fringes lining the roof that you wouldn’t believe. Paint fading, roofs made from tin or aluminum that glimmer in the sun, so much that you notice from kilometers away.

And in the middle of it all, the three of us:

A Romanian-born Californian, a Californian living in Italy and an Italian. Weaving our impressions of contemporary Romania together with stories of a distressed past.

Playing inside and out of abandoned houses in random villages, hunting for the best ciorba in town, imagining what it would be like to intertube down the Mures River.

Dancing alone because we don’t really know where we fit in.

Knocking on doors and waiting for answers to unanswerable questions, wondering when to stop wandering, wandering to start wondering.

Our journey led us to the real treasure of Romania…

…and all his memories, stories, hard work and suffering that paved the way for his son and daughter, his daughter who became the mother of my friend, Iris. And here are Iris’s final reflections on her project with ArtVenture.

“My dad’s side of the family (my great aunts and uncles) was no Brady Bunch, not even after heavy editing and embellishments would they have received a stamp of approval. There was no theme song, no family station wagon, no spacious house with all the conveniences, or, if you will, nothing today’s generation and society could really relate to. Instead the 7 siblings dealt with hardship and misery and the looming sense that a carefree childhood with no want for anything could only exist in one’s wildest imagination. My initial idea of having the family members choose an object of significance to them proved difficult. Was it a sign of how they grew up, materially-deprived? Whatever the reason, it made more sense to just let the conversations take their course, knowing that eventually they would point out what was/is important to them. What really counted for them was health (the Romanian word for health, sănătate, is commonly said when people are saying goodbye), family (esp. grandkids) and important documents.
In looking at my mom’s side of the family (or more specifically, my grandfather) in Tirgu Mures, I soon noticed that “my work” had already been done for me. My bunicu, Carol, has his life (at least a hefty portion of it) on record. His notebooks are separated by months, with a page archiving the events of that months and another tracking the finances. If you skim through it (the current notebook starts in 2003) you’ll at times see a phone log telling you who called and when and even the temperature on certain days. It all seems to strongly suggest that pen and paper are his weapons against the fading and blurring of time, now so more than ever. It’s that which pushes me too.”

All these photos and reflections will give birth to this album below, made by hand with paper, thread, wire, cloth and, with Luca’s help, a metal incision of tree to represent the roots, new growth and spreading out of her family.

Some final images of Romania, beautiful Oridea…

~ by Amy and Luca on July 13, 2008.