Wood is all the Rage

Yesterday was the day of painted churches, and today is the day of the wood churches. We went to three, but only entered two. The first church was a fairly simple church as compared to the other examples, with no interesting paintings or art and height. It was built on a little hill, with a large cemetary surrounding it. These churches are built entirely from from wood, tall and long with wooden shingles and biblical scenes painted directly onto the wood inside. After looking around the outside, an hour before the church would be unlocked, we left and headed off for the next church. It was also on a hill, something that was quite common among these churches. Built from about 1650, these churches were built quite quickly and were the most popular style for the area. Our second church was full of the most amazing paintings, almost 400 years old and very worn out, but amazing nonetheless. There were scenes of hell and the Garden of Eden, all of which were stained in comparison to the wood behind on which it was painted on. So we left this church and went off to the next monestary, but stopped along the way. We found a little stand of trinkets, run by an old man and woman, who were offering us a hat. I have been looking for one of the hats that the old men wear here, they are little alpine fedoras, small and worn on the top of the head. So we stopped and I tried a hat on, but it was poor quality, but being only 8 dollars, I figured that I might as well get it, just to have one in case I never have another chance. The greatest part of it all was the old man who was selling them, he was wearing three on his head and looked like a child of the soviet area. We did not understand a single word of each other, flapping our arms around and using silly hand signals to cummunicate our messages to each other. He was very interesting, happy and funny with a poor , inhygenic man, a perfect example of Romanian poverty. We made it to the monestary, the tallest of all the wooden churches, which was in the wooden version of a European Disneyland. With large elaborate houses and new wood and flowers everywhere, one was given the impression of being in a Disneyland. The next stop was the happy cemetary, which has its name arise from all of the wooden crosses that are painted in bright colors depicting the professions of the people burried there. Despite being no more than fifty years old, some of the crosses are in very bad shape with paint peeling and faded. It is almost surreal to see a graveyard full of bright blues, reds and whites spreading at least a hundred graves deep and fifty wide. That was the end of the fun of the day and all that was left was a two hour car ride along a widy road past a few gypsy camps into our Best Western hotel here in another inpronouncable city in Romania.