Day 12: L'etat, C'est moi

Day 12:

After a lovely and freezing night's rest, we all got up this morning with the same question in mind: What should we do today? We were at a Crossroads of Life: we could head to our next destination, which is up high in the Carpathian Mountains; or we could go see Sibiu. But seeing Sibiu would mean staying another night at Versailles, because Gagi will only drive the Carpathian road if we get an early start.

I was voting for Sibiu, because I am really digging Versailles and would like to spend another night here. After a hearty breakfast of fried mamaliga, farm-fresh eggs, sausage, and mici, we decided to go see Sibiu. After driving 10 minutes towards Sibiu, we decided not to see Sibiu after all. Gagi pointed out that we were passing another village museum, which he said would be good to see. But it would mean missing Sibiu because it would take all day. Fine with me! So we pulled off the road and went there.

It was along the same lines as the village museum in Bucharest: original construction buildings and other items, transplanted to this museum from all over the country. But it was a lot bigger than the one in Bucharest, and it included things from a much larger timespan. Bucharest's museum was basically all medieval. This one spanned from Dacian (pre-Roman) times all the way up to just before the Industrial Revolution.

This was one of the oldest things I saw there. It's a Roman-era oil-press. You put sunflower seeds in the little well in the middle, set the large T-shaped piece on top, and then use the gigantic hanging hammers on either side to pound one wedge after another into the machine, pressing the T down onto the seeds to get oil.

*Correction: Io informs me that although this is the same technology used by the Romans, this is not actually from Roman times. Which makes sense, if I had stopped to think about it...it's made of wood.

This tractor was probably the most modern thing I saw there.

Chris Pulliam, do you know what this is?

Medieval bowling alley!

Sprinkled throughout the museum are these history buffs. They're all retirees, living on their pensions, who spend their twilight years hanging around the museum and telling people about whatever their area of interest is. They get a small stipend from the town for that, and I think it's typical to give them a tip if you're happy with the information they give you. This guy was a specialist in oil pressing. He's the one who explained the Roman oil-press to me, as well as various other ones from other periods in history. You might think that oil-pressing is pretty dull -- that was certainly my first reaction -- but it's actually really interesting to see how any particular industry progressed as technology improved. We got to see, live and in person, how things evolved from the Roman wedges-and-giant-hammers method up through foot-powered machines, stone wheels, metal screw-presses, and so on.

We walked around a whole huge area looking at buildings and reading signs. After a couple hours of walking, Gagi said we saw maybe 10% of the place. That's a pretty big museum.

Ancient house-boat

Medieval Ferris wheel

Water mill. +1 hammer +1 coin on river tiles.

Hand-operated grain mill. The user would crank the stone around by arm power, and flour would trickle out the notch in the wood.

+1 food +1 coin on hills. OK, I will stop doing that now.

This museum building is on the Romanian 10-lei note.

We had lunch at the restaurant attached to the village museum: schnitzel and potatoes for me (Transylvania has a lot of German history and influence -- most signs and menus are at least in Romanian and German up here), followed by a Transylvanian version of donuts called (I think) papagosh. They were basically donuts with sour cream and strawberry jam. So good.

We then got back into the Dacia and took a little tour of the countryside. Romania is an almost schizophrenic country. The large cities, particularly Bucharest, are pretty advanced. Bucharest has lots of large buildings, enough cars to create massive traffic-jams during rush hour, as well as a fully developed public transportation system including subways, light rail, buses, and trolley cars. You can buy top-of-the-line electronics there; in fact, I saw my first functioning home-3D system at a Domo Electronics store in the Auchan hipermart.

But once you get out into the countryside, the advancement level drops off a cliff. By the time we were a couple of hours outside Bucharest we were passing people in horse-drawn wagons all the time. I've probably seen 50 or 75 people driving wagons since I landed.

Romania is a country where people routinely talk about "the peasants." You've got the people who live in the city, who live lives that seem about 85% similar to the sort of life I lead in Los Angeles, and then you've got the peasants, who live in the countryside in a bizarre world that is 70% the same as the way people lived 500 years ago. I could put up dozens of photographs of these peasant shacks just sitting out in the middle of nowhere. When you first go to these village museums you think "Wow, I can't believe they were able to find all these intact medieval buildings," but after spending some time in the Romanian countryside, you realize these things are actually pretty common. And people live their lives in them, just as dozens of generations before them did.

There are some changes -- most of the wagons have rubber tires, for example, and several of the peasant villages have electricity -- but as far as I can tell the vast majority of their lives is the same as it was before the Renaissance. People herd cows and sheep, they plant and harvest crops by hand, draw water up from wells, and so on.

One of the issues facing Romania since its inclusion in the EU is that the EU has moderately strict food regulation, similar to what we have in the US. But so many Romanian peasants make their living selling unpasteurized milk, cheese, and eggs, and unregulated meat and skins and other animal products, that it's nearly impossible for the government to start telling everyone they have to follow such-and-such procedures and allow their work practices to be regularly inspected and regulated.

It's going to be interesting to see how the country deals with these issues as they move forward.

After the countryside tour, we came back home and have spent the entire night playing pool and ping-pong against each other. I won every single game I played. At least, that's how I remember it.

Tomorrow we're saying "Au revoir" to Versailles and heading off to the Carpathian mountains. I'm told there is 5cm of snow on the roads, and that route over the mountain is full of switchbacks and areas where there is nothing but deadly cliffs on either side. So this may well be the last anybody ever hears of me.