By Jasmine Greene.
“Where are you going?”
“Romania.”
“But…why?”
In fact, if I hadn’t been interested in archaeology and looking for a field school, I might
have completely overlooked this country. After all, it isn’t the most common place for
tourists to go. Luckily, I wasn’t touring the country, oh no. I paid good money to go out
there and do some manual labor. Let’s think about that again. I paid to do manual labor.
Dig Site at Piatra Detunata
And let me tell you, it was no joke.
We climbed a “hill” (read mountain) 5 days a week with our shovels, pickaxes and
trowels. Once we got to the Piatra Detunata site it was 8 hours of digging trenches,
picking out ceramic shards and then troweling around a brick watchtower. Still, it was a pretty good time. When we got back to our campsite located in the small town of Tilisca, we’d start a campfire, sing some drinking songs and drink some Tsveka (basically plum moonshine except far more disgusting) and drank 1L bottles of Romanian beer. What more could I ask for?
There’s something to be said about camping around a country like Romania. It’s the
countryside. And by countryside, I don’t mean tractors and farms; I mean dirt roads,
cattle roaming freely along the countryside and cars replaced with horse-drawn wagons.
The Roads of Tilisca
Tilisca is small; almost 1,200 people live there. It provided us with enough basic needs that we could get through workday with some protein in our diet and plenty of beer for afterwards, but other than that, there was not much to do. The nearest town, Saliste was a 2-mile walk away. Apparently Romanians don’t want to pick up hitchhiking archaeologists. On top of that, my travelling companions and I couldn’t get a drink at 10am. What kind of establishment are these Romanians running? Still, Saliste had much more going on than Tilisca with several restaurants- we went to Popasul Marginimii (DN 1, Nr. km 33) – as well as a nice wine shop.
Of course, when the weekend rolled around, I took a warm “shower” (we heated up 3L
soda bottles with water and left them out in the sun) and put on my least dirtiest clothes and went to Sibiu. Despite it’s small size, Sibiu is actually quite a bustling and beautiful city and was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2007. The architecture ranges from Baroque to 19th and 20th century buildings, a truly inspiring mixture of old and new. The main draw to Sibiu is the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Piata Huet 1).
Evangelical Lutheran church in Sibiu
On the day that I arrived in Sibiu, there were at least 5 different weddings around the church. Some were the standard tuxedo/white dress pair though I also got to see traditional Romanian wedding garb. Still, I tired of simply viewing the church from the outside. I ventured in and was not disappointed. It really is no surprise that this church is the most famous example of a gothic style church in all of Romania. There are literally arches everywhere: the windows, the open hallways, the doors and so on. The stained glass windows beautifully depict the life and times of Jesus Christ and many may just be content to sit in the church looking at all of the details. For me and several other people, it was not. For those that want to get THE best view of Sibiu without getting in a helicopter, the top of the bell tower boasts the best view of the city. Below you can see the city design with the Fagaras Mountains as its backdrop. Of course, nothing is free and the view cost a whopping $3 USD. Being broke archaeologists, we tried to sneak by the money collectors in front and haul ass to the top and back down without being noticed. It didn’t work. Eventually we were cornered in the bell tower and forced to pay the fee. Still, it was worth a try.
Aside from trying to cheat the church out of money, we also went to a nice restaurant where we were more than eager to pay. At the time of 2006, the exchange rate was very in the US’ favor. A delicious dinner of steak, potatoes and wine went for about $12 a pop. Sure, maybe we were getting strange looks from the wait service because our “clean” clothes were still filthy from the dirt and sweat of the trenches, but they were nothing but professional. Even the hair salon I went to – Maioko Hair Salon (Str. Calea Dumbravil, nr.2-4) with my friend to simply shampoo my hair was cheap, about $5 USD for a washing. The woman was nice enough, though I’m sure she was wondering why there was so much dirt in my hair. I felt refreshed, dare I say, clean. I walked around the city center and came upon some designer clothing stores that were surprisingly not much cheaper than in New York City. Considering that I was doing a lot of digging in the dirt, I figured I wouldn’t really need any fancy clothes for my stay. So I decided to go to the History Museum division of the Brukenthal Museum, (Str. Mitropoliei, Nr. 2). The
history museum has items that date back to 1-3 century BC and go from there. I kind of sped through the museum as I got to it almost as it was closing, but got to see beautiful glass blown objects, weapons of the Transylvanian area and how they evolved over the course of time and the various silverware pieces from the 19th century that ranged from jewelry to actual forks, spoons and knives.
Of course, there are the larger cities like Bucharest to visit, but I was pretty much warned off from the city by my dig director Andre Gonciar. He specifically told us to fly into Budapest and take the train to Sibiu as Bucharest was very dangerous. I wasn’t quite sure how dangerous it was, but considering that there are roaming bands of gypsy women and children, I imagine a lot of people get their money and probably even passports stolen. I also skipped out on a trip to Brasov to see “Dracula’s Castle.” It seemed a bit too kitschy, which I guess is the point. Still, I had no room in my duffel bag to pack away Dracula shirts and memorabilia. Those that went had an ok time. I was just happy to be spending time lying in the sun reading my book amongst the pine trees and beautiful sun.
Coming from America, Tilisca was so much slower and rustic than any other place I have visited. The people were extremely friendly and I learned important words like fum = smoke and ţânţar= mosquito. I also learned that you get tired of eating canned tuna after 5 days in a row and that tsveka and orange juice do NOT mix. After my dig, my friend and I had a short stay over in a hostel over in Budapest that had its own bar and was home to numerous low budget travellers. We spent the night playing kings and flew still drunk. That day, I learned that flying hungover is not a good idea. Still, it’s a fun story to tell and even though my entire trip was mainly a drinking binge with manual labor in between, it remains my fondest traveling memory.