We had five days of rain but then, on Friday, it stopped and the sun even came out. Saturday, if neither particularly warm nor sunny, was at least dry and it seemed that the entire village turned out for the Cabbage Festival. There were prayers and music and dancing and, at midnight, fireworks.
We went down to have a look and spent a couple of hours wandering through the fresh fruit and veg stalls, the street food stalls and the craft stalls. There was a good turn out and everybody seemed to be having a good time - some a little too good and were seen being guided home by their wives, children or hangers-on, literally.
It was good laugh and we met some interesting people, British, who have a variety of reasons for being here, and Romanian who are trying to promote tourism in a gently unobtrusive way. It seems the Romanian tourist powers that be are trying to sell Transilvania for its history rather than for what it can offer now. And they seem to think that this will happen by itself and people will just come anyway which, of course, they won't. They need to know where the places to stay and to eat are in the villages not just in the main towns. Moşna, for example, has quite a number of places which offer rooms and there are any number of homes where they can eat home-cooked food very reasonably but, not only are they not advertised, people living next door to each other don't even know what the other does! It'll take a while.
We went down to have a look and spent a couple of hours wandering through the fresh fruit and veg stalls, the street food stalls and the craft stalls. There was a good turn out and everybody seemed to be having a good time - some a little too good and were seen being guided home by their wives, children or hangers-on, literally.
It was good laugh and we met some interesting people, British, who have a variety of reasons for being here, and Romanian who are trying to promote tourism in a gently unobtrusive way. It seems the Romanian tourist powers that be are trying to sell Transilvania for its history rather than for what it can offer now. And they seem to think that this will happen by itself and people will just come anyway which, of course, they won't. They need to know where the places to stay and to eat are in the villages not just in the main towns. Moşna, for example, has quite a number of places which offer rooms and there are any number of homes where they can eat home-cooked food very reasonably but, not only are they not advertised, people living next door to each other don't even know what the other does! It'll take a while.
It seems however that there is a Cabbage God and he made sure that the weather was kind for one day only. We woke up on Sunday morning to heavy rain once more and Sunday's festivities were a total washout! Shame really. It's good to see people getting together to celebrate their local heritage and culture. |
You know though? For all it was a cabbage festival and all, I didn't see any delicious cabbage dishes being sold by any of the food stalls. There were lots of cabbages for sale though - make your own delicious dishes!