Religion Sells

Today was the day of church hopping. We traveled to 4 different monestaries: Suchevitsa, Voronets, Humor and Arbore, or the green, blue, red and the undefined color churches respectively. Suchevitsa was just a few kilometers from our hotel, and is very well preserved on all but the western wall, which is the main direction from which rain and snow come from in the area. This church is well known for its fresco depicting the family tree of Jesus Crist. It covers all of the eastern wall, and it has about one hundred different portraits. Voronets was the last church that we visited in the day. Voronets is without a doubt the blue church. Every background, and boarder is painted in a vivid blue. The most famous fresco in this church is the large perfectly preserved painting of the last judgement, in which the path to heaven is depicted, along side the scale of justice and all animals giving back to God what they have eaten. Each church has its own version of the last judgement, but this was the main focus of all of Voronets' attraction. Arbore was a wonderful church to visit, being small, out of the way and with no tourists or nuns in sight. The whole site is run by a 48 year old woman who has been working there for the last 17 years, learning French and German from the visitors to the church. I particularly enjoyed speaking to her and being the translator for Bev and Buz. She explained that all of the frescos in the interior of the church tell the entire story of Jean the Babtist. There were also some special paintings which she pointed out, such as the hands of God reaching out to Mary, composed of the souls of all of the people on Earth. Humor was a very red church, being mainly composed of warm colors and red borders. It was a fairly boring church, having very few frescos that were unique. After there was just a few hour ride to our sleeping point in Bistrita. In our hotel there is also staying a tour bus full of Southern Babtists who are on missions here in Romania to provide aid to little babtist churches in the Transylvania area. It is quite surreal to find about 80 Floridans and Georgians in a little city in a minor eastern European country who ask if you too are on a mission and try to give you the word of God as the Americans see it. We went into the town and had a very American pizza in the square, which was filled with people who were immitating a mideaval scene, with bands and horses and flag twirlers wandering through the blacksmith, cheese and cheap souvineer shops. After supporting a theremin player who actually crafted his own instrument, we headed back to the hotel and made it home before nine o'clock for the first time in several days.