Gone country

As today was my sister's last full day in Romania, we took the opportunity to do a little bit of traveling, to the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, to a royal town called Court of Arges. 

Our plan was to visit the famous, supposedly fantastically beautiful, 14th century church in the center of town.  Everything went as planned: traffic was light, this morning's snow gave way to sunny skies, and David's new GPS navigated us without any detours.  We found the church and deemed it to be, well, quite ordinary.

To make matters worse, it was locked.  We all took turns peering through the keyhole.  It did look beautiful inside.

Afterward, we went across the street to the town museum.  Bee found it fascinating, especially the religious icon with the "grumpy Virgin Mary."  Mary did look grumpy and I remarked on it--but I really do have to learn to be more careful about what I say. Bee's like a sponge and she spent the rest of the day telling me about Grumpy Mary and Grumpy Jesus.  My wonderful baby daughter seems to have a slightly sacrilegious bent to her personality.  

We were finished visiting the otherwise unremarkable museum in less than 20 minutes. After walking down the town's main street for about as long as it took for my fingers to become numb, we settled on a restaurant ironically named "No Comment."  As in, "How was your meal?"

Fortunately for all of us, the pizzas were actually pretty good.  

Fortunately, after lunch, my sister saved the day.  While consulting our guidebook, she discovered that the town actually is home to two 14th century churches.  The second one, situated in an ancient orthodox monastery, is fantastical indeed.

This church is home to one of the country's most famous legends, that of Manole the builder. He aspired to build the most beautiful church in the entire world. While building the church's foundation, Manole decided that a woman must be bricked up inside the walls in order to ensure that the edifice would be everlasting.  Manole told his laborers that the first woman to come to the work site the next day would be the victim.  All the laborers went home that evening and, wisely, told their wives to stay at home.  The next day, the only woman who came to the church was Manole's wife.  Forced to keep his word, he put her into the wall and sealed her in, as a living sacrifice.  

Manole's luck only continued to deteriorate.  The prideful owner of the church decided to make sure that no other church would ever be as beautiful as his own.  While Manole was finishing the roof, the owner ordered the scaffolding taken down, stranding Manole on the highest spire.

  

In an attempt to escape, Manole fashioned himself a pair of wings and flew from the top of the church.  He crashed to earth.  On the spot where he landed, a natural spring of water appeared. To this day, Manole's fountain still burbles, a short distance from the church.

There is something about the countryside, despite the many trappings of burgeoning modernity and communist era industry, that belies the 21st century and continually looks backward. Whenever I leave the capital I feel that I travel back in time.  Horses pulling carts still ply the country's biggest highway. Conical haystacks dot the landscape, formed in the style of centuries past.  And everyone slows down for sheep crossings.

After the sheep, shepherds, sheepdogs, and donkeys had cleared the road, we headed another 15 miles north, into the mountains to visit Vlad Tepes's (better known as Dracula) mountaintop citadel.  It was haunting.  I read that there are over 1,000 steps to reach the fortress.  The few flights that we could see were covered in ice.  That combined with the thought of carrying Bee, well, this is as close as we got:

Every time I leave the city I tell myself that I have to do it more often.  Despite the bad roads and frustrating traffic--we have to get out more.  There is so much to see.