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In equal proportion to my love of travel is my loathing of being a tourist. I mean a camera- case toting, loud and slow speaking, tennis shoe wearing, ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in the local language knowing American sense of the word tourist. I lean toward quiet, blended travel exploring local spots in typical towns, and my brother’s marriage to a woman from Ploiesti, Romania, provided the perfect opportunity to be an un-tourist.
Tourists have no reason to go to Ploiesti. It’s located about an hour from Bucharest, which attracts visitors from around the world to take in its massive architecture and history. Going the other way, Ploiesti is about an hour from the city of Sinaia from where ski buffs and day trippers flock in air conditioned busses, making an arc from Bucharest, a stop to see Peles Castle, on to Brasov (a German-built town that’s home to The Black Cathedral), and off to Bran Castle (better known as Dracula’s Castle) before getting back to the big city in time for a late dinner. Ploiesti doesn’t make the itinerary, and neither does its history.
An industrial city, Ploiesti was one of the world’s leading oil extraction and refinery regions in the late 1800s. Between the two world wars, several major oil companies set up plants and the city’s refineries provided 80% of the petroleum processed in Romania. In World War II, Germany appropriated Ploiesti as its main source of oil and the U.S., in turn, conducted such massive air strikes that it became the most bombed city in Romania during the war. The city was captured in 1944 by the Soviets and the communist regime nationalized the oil industry, which had been mostly privately owned. Romania did not regain its independence until the Revolution of 1989.
Today, Ploiesti is Romania’s 9th largest city with nearly 250,000 residents and continues to be a working city as evidenced by its extensive public transportation system. Its yellow bus fleet is one of the most modern in Eastern Europe and connects with trolley buses and trams to transport nearly 150,000 riders daily. The town supports the second largest railway center in the country and is home to the Oil & Gas University as well as the Ploiesti Philharmonic Orchestra.
I visited the small town of Baicoi outside of Ploiesti and the countryside—oh, the views— would be reason enough to go. Imagine a stretch of pasture dropping to an endless valley filled with varying shades of green and spotted by sheep and cows being herded by men with sticks, all set against a backdrop of foothills, then rolling mountains, backed by snowcapped peaks in the distance. You sit on the hill and are transported.
All of this might not make a guidebook, but it does make Ploiesti a perfect place to visit if you want to experience actual Romanian life. In my case—I was the guest of a local family, on the inside of a big cultural event, and staying in Ploiesti itself— it was an ideal opportunity for some un-tourism. Now, before I go further, I must explain the generous hospitality of my guests. They were not going to let me get away with a week of bumbling around, deciphering local bus schedules and just seeing what I’d find. Many days were arranged with barbecues at grandma’s house, van taxis to some of the previously mentioned sites, food, wine, wine, food, and warm hosts. I visited the Zoican family, whose daughter Codruta is now my brother Benjamin’s wife. I realize my experiences were indicative of visiting one particular family, in one particular town, but for the sake of travel writing please excuse my forthcoming generalizations.
The trip did provide me the opportunity to meander around a town not accustomed to seeing tourists, force me to reconcile my place in its history and allow me to be inside homes, pastures, ceremonies and cultural experiences that a tourist just wouldn’t have access to.
So, let’s start with the food. Do not visit a Romanian family without your appetite or an eye ready to admire culinary beauty. Their idea of an appetizer is not your average meat and cheese and veggie dip. You think you are fancy when you roll up the cold cuts before arranging them on a tray? At each lunch, dinner or barbecue, course one consisted of exquisite serving plates overloaded with various meats, cheeses and vegetables which were cut to look like flowers or other appealing shapes. It’s a case of everything looks so good, you don’t know where to start, and you are afraid to start because it looks so pretty and you don’t want to mess it up. At the wedding, we were each served a plate —knowing four more courses were to come! Next, you can expect fish or soup, which precedes the main meat course, before being followed up with dessert, which is not a dessert but a beautiful array of little cakes of various flavors and styles. I’d have a chocolate one, try a strawberry, then I’d have to eat a vanilla cake and I still hadn’t gotten to the coconut or pecan that my family was oohing about. I could go on and on, because that’s what we did in Romania—eat on and on—and I can back that up with details.
The wedding reception began at 7:00 p.m., greeting guests and socializing. The band was playing and dancing picked up by about 9:00, by which time most everyone had arrived. Of course, drinks flowed the whole evening: a light wine, homemade by Mr. Zoican, gin, whiskey, and champagne. Early on, the musicians played a mix of traditional Romanian folk music during which these huge, circle dances would form; even the Americans could follow along some approximation of the steps and move with the group for the very long songs. I worked up an appetite, but around 9:30 when the first course was served, I was still shocked that the whole, gorgeous plate was just for me. My first instinct was to take a few things and pass it.
More dancing ensued and festivities such as the bride and groom’s first dance, parent dances and some more traditional folk dancing. Somewhere in there, the wait staff brought out course two, a lightly breaded fish with diced potatoes. Mid-bite, a hush fell over the room when Nina Predescu, a famous Romanian folk singer, entered. Predescu, a friend of the family, had agreed to perform at a private ceremony. We finished eating to be treated to her singing and the world-class fiddler who kept everyone dancing until at least midnight, when we had to further sustain ourselves with sarmale and mămăliga, both traditional foods. Sarmale is small cabbage rolls stuffed with rice and pork, and the side is a cornmeal mush often known to Americans as polenta but called mamaliga in Romanian. Mamaliga has historically been a staple food in poor rural areas, but is now considered trendy.
I hope you aren’t full yet, because the main course did not arrive until after 1 a.m.: pork and chicken served with veggies and potatoes. You had to dance your way to the wedding cake, the final course, that was served around 2:30 in the morning, but who was keeping track at this point? Needless to say, the Romanians know how to throw a party and feed you while you’re there!
Enough eating. Let’s go for a walk. I had to reassure our guests that we would survive on our own for at least one “free day,” assuring them we’d be able to secure transportation, get around town, experience Ploiesti, and arrive back at the hotel in one piece. My sister and I chose to head to the center, taking a 6 lei (the equivalent to three dollars with tip) taxi to “centru” and walking around from there. On a sunny Friday afternoon, the town center was bustling, people of all ages were out, and there was a big festival set up in the square with groups of kids performing both folk and modern dance. On one corner was a McDonald’s and across the street was a massive Soviet-style building that wrapped around the entire block. Taxis and buses zoomed by on the wide, main thoroughfares and the interior common areas were filled with vendors and people milling about. We were on a mission to get our nails done; after all the big day was coming up and we were unofficial bridesmaids (this custom doesn’t really exist in Romania).
We cut across the main square and started looking on side streets, looking for signs of a nail shop. In a second-story window, we see first, in the universal language of pictures (a hand with sculpted nails, a pair of scissors), then the convenient (for us) Romanian words manichiură and pedichiură. We enter through a heavy, two part steel door that opens to a dark hallway in one direction and a large concrete stairwell in the other. It looks a bit more like an abandoned warehouse than a place of business, but as un-tourists we are not dismayed. If everything looked just like it did at home, what would be the point of traveling? We take the stairs, hear women’s voices at the top and enter through what seems like a classroom door among a series of others along the hall. Inside is a bustling salon with hair in various stages of color and cut; the bustling comes to a halt as a roomful of Romanians turns to stare at us.
“Uh, manichiură, pedichiură, is possible?” I hold out my hands and indicate flaky, travel-neglected nails. Most people start back to their business after glancing in one woman’s direction with uncertain eyes.
She pauses for a moment more before jumping into action, “Da, da,” and breathes a long sigh which I take to mean, “Okay, I can do this” but which might mean “Ah, why are these stupid Americans bothering me?” She ushers us into yet another small room and points for me to sit while my sister is left lingering in the door. Finally she’s offered another chair, which looks as if it belongs to another stylist’s station. We shrug, gesture, use lots of facial expression and settle in with my feet in warm water and my nails being filed. Some things don’t change much no matter the culture. When the second stylist enters, she sits across from my sister and looks annoyed, filing her own nails and huffing to the point that my sister is sure she is committing some great disrespect by being in the client chair. She offers to get up; “No, no,” she is gestured back to the chair. The offended stylist decides to speak, a long Romanian phrase directed at my sister. We confer in English; we have no clue, until the lady gestures whether my sister would like her nails done.
“Da, da!” We were sure we had already communicated this, but this is the nature of foreign exchange. From this point, the second stylist softens (or was never hard but just seemed so to us) and we start “explaining” that we are there for a wedding. I pantomime a ring on my left ring finger and kissing.
“Ahhh!” The ladies are now interested and my stylist starts removing her paint job from my index finger. I realize she thinks I am getting married and start again. It takes about ten minutes. She understands my pointing to self and saying no, but then doesn’t get whom it is that is to be wed. My sister dredges up the word for children (on the spot we can’t remember brother, sister, marriage…anything from the language lessons we’d added to our iPod in preparation). We manage to explain there are three children: me, her and another, whose name is Benjamin.
“Benjamin, Codruta,” we say then make kissy faces.
“Ahhhh, da, da.”
“Benjamin, Americano…Codruta, Romanian, from Ploiesti.”
“Ahhhh, da, da, da.”
My non-bridal nail design is resumed and the ladies are now smiling, happy I presume, that we have placed our presence in their shop in their town. I test my theory.
“Americans, here?” I ask by pointing around the shop.
Her eyes grow wide, “Nooooo, ooohh, no, niciodată,” which I guess from context and later confirm means never.
In the end, we come out laughing, imagining already the stories we’ll all have to tell, and with shiny nails and toes lined with a reddish creamy substance all around our cuticles. We wonder what it is, if it will come off, scrape at it a bit. My stylist had pointed to the jar, asking, to which I had shrugged and indicated she should choose. To us, it looked like we had picked and torn at our nail linings all day. We’d later find out it’s a disinfectant, specifically dyed red because the look it is popular among older Romanian women. So we’d be going to the wedding with a, well, traditional look.
The last stop of our walking adventure was a huge, public market we came across. Baskets and tables filled with fresh produce, meat, spices and some presumably edible things we’d never seen. I have the same experience whenever I am traveling and encounter this form of commerce. It is so refreshing, seems so much more alive and less sterile than a fancy grocery store with fake lighting—not that I am ungrateful at the plethora of food choices and abundance available to me. It’s just that at these outdoor markets I feel as if I am picking the food from the ground myself, fresh, and as I barter for some apples it makes me think happily of the growing trend of farmers markets back in my home town of Charlotte.
The last thing to talk about is the wedding itself, a formal, traditional Romanian Orthodox ceremony in a cavernous church that seemed older than the ground it stood upon. Codruta and Benjamin stood center on a podium facing the priest, flanked by their godparents and then the best man and the maid of honor. The parents formed a line behind that. The godparents have a very important role in a Romanian wedding. The couple must choose carefully, and it is a great honor and responsibility to accept the invitation. The godparents give a lot of time and money to the marriage proceedings, and they serve as counselors and guides to the new couple throughout their relationship.
For about an hour, all the wedding guests (somewhat less than the 200-plus who attended the reception) stood and watched the proceedings of the priest and his attendant. The priest’s table was located between the couple and the altar, which was adorned and layered with gold and ornate painting. The table boasted its own array of shiny objects: candelabras, a cross, crowns, a cup and a gilded bible. As he performed the rites in Romanian, the priest sometimes intoned chants and sometimes spoke frankly with the bride and groom, even cracking a couple of jokes. Meanwhile, the wedding guests wandered about, taking pictures, whispering to each other occasionally, and seeing the ceremony from different angles. It was one of those cultural moments. I had no idea exactly what was expected, what I was permitted to do and what would be a faux pas. Meanwhile, my brother’s friends were urging me to scoot forward, get pictures, move to the back and get more pictures and my aunt and uncle across the church were signaling with hand gestures to get more pictures. I tried to be discreet and snap away and play with the camera settings so the flash didn’t go off, hoping something in the dim church will still show up.
The ceremony was as fascinating as it was baffling, as I actually had no idea what the priest was saying or what the various rituals signified. Definitely should have done a little more homework! Some of the major acts during the wedding are the crowns, the common cup and the wedding party walking in a circle around the table. In the service of the crowning, the priest literally crowned both Ben and Codruta as the king and queen of their own little kingdom (their home or domestic church). The couple wears their crowns until the end of the entire wedding ceremony, symbolizing martyrdom, the idea that every true marriage involves immeasurable sacrifice on both sides. In the wedding at Cana, Jesus performed his first miracle and turned water into wine to give to the newlyweds. In the Orthodox ceremony, the couple drinks from a “common cup” of better life. The cup is a token of a harmonious life, and by drinking the couple accepts a mutual sharing of joys and sorrows. Then, also representing the wedding at Cana, the pair take their first steps as a married couple, and the priest leads them in the way they must walk.
While repacking my bags and squeezing in a few souvenirs, I couldn’t help thinking of other times I’ve traveled. I’d walk by a church emptying itself of dressed up people or down a vineyard lane imagining the backyard view, and wish, just wish, I could be on the inside. My new Romanian family and their hometown of Ploiesti provided me that very opportunity—an un-tourist’s dream trip.
~ Celina Mincey |
