Transylvanian excursion

Things don’t always go as planned. You may remember that I had planned to leave site on Sunday evening and to arrive at camp in Hargita county on Monday morning. I wish I could blame my abrupt change in plans on anything other than myself, like the bus breaking down, or not coming, but the fact is that I was on the wrong side of the road and the bus simply passed me by. Looking back it was probably a blessing in disguise, since the next day, when I was able to get a ride with host family to the train station, I realized that never in a thousand years would I have known where to get off the bus. I don’t remember seeing any indication that the particular obscure, unpaved road that jut off the main drag, led to the train station. Even if I had asked the bus driver and he had pointed me towards said road, I would have likely turned back, sure that this long steep road that the car could barely get up couldn’t possibly lead to anywhere, let alone a train station, but indeed it did.
My trip consisted of three colorful overnight train rides, which left me sleepless, but in Hargita County at 7 in the morning, where Eva greeted me. At the time all I knew about Eva was that she was the director of the camp where I would be volunteering. After our half an hour ride to the camp I was fairly well acquainted with her and her unique culture. Hargita County is interesting because central Transylvania is home to a Hungarian population. I was shocked by how different the culture is compared to Romanian Culture. The most obvious difference is the language. The people here speak a dialect of Hungarian. Another major difference is the Religion. While the vast majority of Romanians are Romanian Orthodox, this region boasts a majority Unitatian population. In fact the Unitarian church was started in this area in the sixteenth century. By the end of camp I had become familiar with the church in town since Eva is the minister’s wife and the camp is held in two of the buildings owned by the church.
Work started upon arrival. After throwing my stuff down in the girl’s room I headed downstairs where I led the first session of the day. Our second activity was supposed to be a follow up activity to the video “Peace One Day” that the campers had watched the day before. We divided the rowdy teenagers into three groups, each with a counselor to help facilitate. Of course, while the other groups developed countries based on ideals of peace my group invented “Boratstan” where the rivers flowed with Vodka. Great first impression I thought, but Boratstan, was appreciated by one and all. The students especially liked our national sport, cup ball, in which one stacks as many cups as they can and balances a soccer ball on the top.
The hardest part of the whole camp was remembering the names of the kids. I have become familiar with Romanian names, and in my town there is a preference for the names Maria, Iuana, Ion, and Vasile, which makes it rather easy to remember any outliers, however since Hargita county is one of the Hungarian regions all of the names were, well, foreign. By day five I finally had them all down, which was just in time for the end of camp.
The original plan was to leave camp a day early, and head to the music festival that was nearby, to meet some friends, but as it turns out camp actually lasted until Sunday, so I gladly stuck around. It would have been hard to leave Eva’s mom’s amazing Hungarian cooking any earlier than was necessary. In fact, once I found out that I could get a ride with Eva, to Cluj (which is on my way home) I decided to stay though Monday and help with the first day of camp for the younger kids. I talked Carly, the other peace corps volunteer at the camp, into taking a day or two off to accompany me on my adventures in Cluj.
I would love to say that when in Cluj I saw the famous church, went out to eat at the restaurant my friend had recommended before I came, and flat out enjoyed the sites of the city, but Instead Carly and I hit the mall. While it sounds less than interesting to someone who has been living in America, I hadn’t seen anything that reminded me so much of home in the three months and so I was perfectly happy to save the culture for my next visit and instead indulge in the food court Chinese food and two movies on the big screen. It was a good end to what ended up being a great trip, even if it did end up a bit different than I had originally planned.