Old Europe. Man, I mean like REALLY old Europe

I just got back to Bucharest from spending 4 days in Maramures, one of the areas on which the EDS tourism strengthening project is focusing. Maramures is in Northern Romania, at the Western end of the Romanian Carpathian mountains. Its about as rural and traditional as you can possibly get. According to one story I heard, interpersonal conflicts in some of the towns are still dealt with by giving your enemy the "evil eye", apparently a very effective attitude adjustor that can be responsible for any number of bad things ranging from a difficult case of hives, to certain doom for all of your generations - forever and ever and EVER. Of course, only a qualified witch can give the evil eye, and these days one can be hard to find as a lot of the kids have moved to the cities (no pool of trainable labor) and most experienced witches have retired to vacation homes on the Black Sea. Seriously though, it is quite rural. I saw more horse drawn wagons than cars, and tons of farm animals. Traditional clothing was very popular as well. About 90% of the women wore scarves on their heads. The ones that didn't were usually school girls who I suspect removed their scarves once out of sight of their Mothers. Kids!

On a more professional level, I was there to look around and get a feel for what tourists to Maramures come to see. One of the notable things are a series of wooden churches that are anywhere from 200 to 700 years old. I was invited to climb up into the steeple of one of these churches, the oldest one actually, and since I figured not many people are given this "opportunity", I decided to accept (so as to not appear ungrateful or disinterested in a regional landmark). Here is where I have to say that the average 700 year old church steeple tends to accumulate a lot of bat and animal shit - everywhere. It was an interesting experience though, with a nice view from the top. Click http://www.okcomputer.org/gallery/album151 for more pictures of the church and some other things from the trip, including traditional hemp (yes, hemp) weaving, the town of Baia Mare, and the hundred some odd cows we encountered on the road as we drove home. By the way, I also came within about 200 yards of the border to Ukraine - close enough that I recieved a message on my phone, presumably from a Ukrainian cell provider, that said "Welcome to the Ukraine". Then the border guards fired some greeting shots in the direction of our car. Okay, I'm kidding about that last part.