Romania and the depths of Transylvania.

Romania and the depths of Transylvania.

My second Morris Dancing trip to International Festivals was to Deva in Transylvanian, Romania.
This was in 1998 just under nine years since Ceausescu was toppled from power.

_{all pictures from my files}
There were still many carts in use as we travelled around

To get there we had to fly to Bucharest then go by bus North West to Deva. 250 miles (400km). The bus was not at all like our modern ones, but at least it did not breakdown.

About two-thirds of the way there we saw a rather attractive restaurant, so we stopped for a beer, then some food and did a few dances. This did delay us somewhat.

We eventually arrived at our destination around 10.00 pm. Only to discover that there was a welcoming ceremony for us with mountains of food. We manfully eat our way through as much as we could, whilst being regularly plied with the local homemade plum brandy. He-Ho were Morris Men, we can drink anything!

Eventually at some point after midnight we were allocated to the families we were billeted with. Yes, to our surprise we were staying with families and not in hotels. Cliff and I were with an 18-year-old brunette.

Fraternisation was the name of the game

The festival was a celebration of youth, ages up to 21! We were special guests as we were all 30+ but had made connections at previous festivals and they wanted us no matter our age.

Most of us stayed with the families of the dancers and when we were not engaged in performances all met up in local bars or restaurants. We found that the currency exchange rate was massively in our favour. To give an indication a bottle of beer was £0.10 the equivalent price at the time in England was £1.50. So naturally, we were treating our guests to all sorts of luxuries they normally never had.

Staying in local homes was quite an eye-opener. The blocks of apartments were of the standard Russian style, very basic, small and in my eyes not at all attractive. What they did have though was piped hot water to every house from a central generator. There was no spare bedroom, in fact, the lounge was the second bedroom. So the parents went and stayed with their parents and their 18-year-old daughter looked after us.

Once again we had a grand time, there were groups from Poland, Belarus, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Moldova, Germany, Latvia, Hungary and many other regional Romania teams.

The castle and the factory at Hunedoara
We had excursions to various nearby towns, Simeria, Brad, Orastie and Hunedoara, at each we had a procession through the town and a big display either in their civic centre or a central park.

Hunedoara was slightly different as there was a large attractive castle We did the tourist bit then did an impromptu display. Sadly the whole area had been deliberately polluted buy the building of a very smokey industrial area. It seems that whilst Ceaușescu was in power he decided to punish the middle classes who lived in this area by building a massively polluting industrial complex right next to this very attractive castle.

In Deva itself, there is a citadel, at the top of what is probably a long extinct volcano. It is now a ruin, apparently, in the 19th century, a soldier accidentally ignited a keg of gunpowder.
I tell you what, walking up there early in the morning is a great cure for hangovers!

On top of the citadel with some of the local dancers

Well another successful festival, I could go on and mention the Venison steak buns and much more but this is already too long.

I am off to Saddleworth this weekend to their Rushcart festival, will interrupt my Foreign trips to tell you all about it on my return.