May 00 - At the procession for the Feast of the Juni, Brașov, Transylvania

'The Pageant of the Juni' (Sărbătoarea Junilor) is held on the Sunday after Easter, traditionally the only day of the year when Romanians were permitted by the Saxons to enter the town. Transylvania became a stranger place after 1141 when Germans were invited by the Hungarian king Geza II and his successors (until 1300) to colonize strategic spots, develop towns, excavate mines, and farm the land. (Most of the early arrivals were from Flanders and the Mosel and Rhine lands, but the name 'Sachsen' stuck with later waves of immigration). Their name for Transylvania was Siebenburgen, derived from the original '7 Towns' that divided the territory between them (Brașov was 'Kronstadt', 1 of the 7) and which they fortified to the hilt as the towns grew rich on the trade with Moldavia and Wallachia. "Most of the burghers were Saxon or Magyar, and the Romanians (or 'Vlachs' as they were called) came to be treated as inferior in the towns following edicts passed in 1540 [which formalized a local system of apartheid]. These excluded them from public office, and forbade them to live in townhouses with chimneys or windows overlooking the streets, and prohibited them from wearing furs, and embroidered dress, shoes or boots." (Rough Guide). @ 10% of Transylvania was Saxon in the early 1800s, @ 25% Magyar, @ 60% Romanian, and the remaining 5% a mix including Tatar and gypsy (according to a museum at Albesti).

 

- 'Juni' derives from the Latin for 'young men'. The town's menfolk dress up in costumes, some as old as 150 yrs, and accompanied by brass bands they ride through town in 7 groups named after famous regiments, from Piaţa Unirii, the historic heart of Schei, the old Romanian neighborhood outside the gates, into the centre of the old town, to Piaţa Sfatului, circle it 3 x, and then and ride back to Schei, and then climb a narrow valley NW to the Gorges of Pietrele lui Solomon. There, spectators settle down to watch the Round Dances (Horăs). The Horă, which still has the power to draw onlookers into its rhythmically stepping, swaying and stamping circles, served as a sanction in village society. Miscreants seeking to enter the circle and so re-enter society) were shamed when the dancing immediately ceased, resuming only when they withdrew." (RG) I watched the parade or procession and followed along with the huge crowd to the said valley. (If I did see some folk-dancing, which I don't recall, it was from a distance. The valley was packed with people in families and groups sitting on their blankets.) I didn't plan to be here on this day, it was just luck.

 

- Brașov! (Brah-shov!) It's one lovely time capsule of a city. "The medieval Saxons, with an eye for trade and invasion routes, sited their largest settlements within a day’s journey of the Carpathian passes. One of the best placed, Brașov (Kronstadt to the Saxons, Brassó to the Hungarians), became a significant commercial hub on the trade route /b/ Austria and Turkey, grew prosperous, was well fortified, and for many centuries its Saxons constituted an elite whose economic power long outlasted its feudal privileges. In the '60s, the communist regime drafted thousands of Moldavian villagers to Braşov’s new factories, making it Transylvania’s 2nd-largest city. The economic collapse in the 80s led to the riots in Nov. '87 and Dec. '89; since then more factories have closed, but tourism has become almost as important." (RG)

- "Traces of Dacian citadels have been found at 3 locations in Brașov, 2 of which have had their names applied to Bronze Age cultures - Schneckenberg ("Hill of the Snails"; Early Bronze Age) and Noua ("The New"; Late Bronze Age).

- "In 1211, by order of King Andrew II of Hungary, the Teutonic Knights fortified 'the Burzenland' to defend the kingdom's borders. On the site of the village of Brașov, the Teutonic Knights built Kronstadt - 'the City of the Crown'. Although the crusaders were evicted by 1225, the colonists they brought in long ago remained, together with the local population.

- According to metastisizing accounts which grew from those initially spread by the Saxons themselves, when Vlad III Dracula attacked this city in 1460, "he burnt the suburbs and impaled hundreds of captives along the heights of St. Jacob's Hill to the north of the city." (RG) But the original and most reliable record states that he impaled 41 captives there (which is bad enough). A new study posits that this was a form of execution preferred by the Saxons, and that Vlad was giving them a taste of their own medicine, so to speak. Later Vlad would travel to Transylvania from Poenari and would be arrested and taken to Brașov to meet with king Matthias Corvinus, to then be taken as a captive to Hungary.

- One event in the city's recent history which you probably won't hear about from the locals is the renaming of the city for 10 yr.s from 1950 to 60 as 'Orașul Stalin' (Stalin City), and as the capital of 'Stalin Region'. On Aug. 22, 1950, Constantin Ion Parhon, the nominal Head of State at that time, issued a decree whereby Brașov was renamed "in honor of the great genius of working humanity, the leader of the Soviet people, the liberator and beloved friend of our people, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin". !

- The city was the site of the 1987 Brașov strike, which was brutally repressed by the authorities and resulted in numerous workers being imprisoned.

 

- The largely baroque 'Old Town' sits below Mt.s Tâmpa and Postăvaru. Piaţa Sfatului (Council Square) is a "strikingly handsome, quintessentially Germanic town square" dominated by the famous 'Black Church', and handy to the medieval ramparts. Legend has it that near this square the children emerged who had been led away from Hamelin by the Pied Piper to vanish underground. The square is lined with burgher's houses under their red-tiled roofs, each facing the Casa Sfatului (the 'Council house' or City hall, 1420, initially the headquarters of the guilds, rebuilt in the 18th cent.) at the centre, now home to the History museum (which I think I toured but don't recall).

 

- I toured the city's most famous landmark, the multi-pinnacled 'Black Church' (Biserica Neagră). "Allegedly the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul, it took almost a century to complete (1383–1477) and is so-named for its once soot-blackened walls, the result of a great fire lit by the Austrians in their occupation of Braşov in 1689. It has 3 naves and a large but fairly plain interior apart from its famous abundance of 119 17th-cent. (primarily) Anatolian prayer rugs "hung in isolated splashes of colour along the balconies and walls of the nave - a superb collection built up from the gifts of local merchants returning from the east." (A neat postcard collection is on offer here with one of the old prayer rugs per card.) The 4,000-pipe, 76 register organ is one of the largest in SE Europe. (RG) The 65 m. steeple houses a 6 ton bell, the largest in the country. The gothic sculptures on the exterior impressed me here, the best I saw in Romania I think along with those in Sebeș.

- I think I probably toured the Byzantine Orthodox cathedral (1896) too, which has an 8 m. high iconostasis. The oldest monument in the city is St. Bartholomew's church (1223) which I don't recall.

 

- On the day of the parade I toured the Church of St Nicholas, on Piaţa Unirii in the SW district of Schei, an "amalgam of Byzantine, baroque and gothic, the 1st Orthodox church built in Transylvania by the voivodes of Wallachia /b/ 1493 and 1564" to replace one built of wood in 1392, with a clocktower from 1751 and 19th cent. frescoes. And I took in the first Romanian-language school (ie. the 1st school anywhere in which lessons and lectures were given in the Romanian language), from 1583, in the churchyard. Before then, Romanians were educated in Church Slavonic. "The school bldg. is a museum today with displays of the first Romanian-language textbooks, a printing press, and costumes worn in the Parade of the Juni." (RG) (I was given a souvenir document printed on that press). "The cultural and religious importance of the Romanian church and school in Șchei is underlined by the generous donations received from more than 30 hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia as well as that from Elizabeth of Russia. In the 17th and 19th cent., the Romanians in Șchei campaigned for national, political, and cultural rights, and were supported in their efforts by Romanians from all other provinces, as well as by the local Greek merchant community. In 1838, they established the first Romanian language newspaper 'Gazeta Transilvaniei' and the first Romanian institutions of higher education: Școlile Centrale Greco-Ortodoxe ("The Greek-Orthodox Central Schools)."

- At the entrance to the old town from Schei, the Poarta Schei, a gate on the street of the same name, was built in 1825-28 by Emperor Franz I next to the elaborate Catherine’s Gate (Poarta Ecaterinei) of 1559," the only original city gate to have survived from the 16th cent. In those old days of Saxon/Magyar apartheid, the local Romanians were compelled to live in Schei SW of the citadel walls, together with a population of Bulgarians. (The neighborhood had initially been Bulgarian). "They could only enter the centre at appointed times and had to pay a toll at the [said] gate for the privilege of selling their produce to their neighbours." (RG)

 

- I toured parts of the old city's remaining medieval fortifications (but my memory's fuzzy), with bastions named after and manned by guilds, as at Sighișoara and Sibiu. Of the original 7, the Ropemakers', Blacksmiths', Weavers' and 'Graft' bastions can be toured, and the Black and White towers. I took a photo in the impressive courtyard of the Weavers' bastion (1421 - '32, reconstructed in 1750), with its 3 tiers of wooden galleries and meal-rooms for storing provisions. It houses a small museum 'of the Bârsa Land Fortifications' (Bârsa's the name of the local river), which recalls the dangerous days of conflict with the Tatars, Turks, et al., and which includes scale models of the city (1896) and of the district of Schei (I probably toured that museum but don't recall it.) The Blacksmiths' bastion hosts the city's archives, including the oldest document in Romanian, a letter written in 1521 by a merchant in Câmpulung named Neascu. (Bradt) There's a good chance I hiked up the stairs to the prominent 11.-m.-tall, 14th cent. 'Black Tower' (which Isn't black) as it has some prominence above the Black church, but don't remember it.

 

- I climbed up a trail one evening to the top of Mt. Tâmpa (967 m.s, a small mtn. in the midst of the city) for a good view of the Piaţa and Casa Sfatului and the Old Town below at dusk.

 

- I don't recall and likely missed the following.: a small park with 30 headstones (memorials to those gunned down in the city in the revolution of '89), and the heavily pockmarked Volksbank building; the Moorish synagogue (1901) www.flickr.com/photos/archstanton/53741322466/in/feed-917... ; the 5-story, 15th cent., 20-m.-tall 'White Tower' (up one of the hills, and which sure is photogenic: flickr.com/photos/archstanton/53741647929/in/feed-91723-1... ); and the Ethnographic, Art, and 'Urban Civilization' museums.

 

- From Brașov I took a day trip to incredible Prejmer (Prezh-mare, see the next 2 photos) and back, and then headed to Sinaia (Sin-eye-ah) to tour the famous Peleș and Pelișor castles (which I write about in my description of the photo of the windows in the church at Prejmer).

 

 

Done