“Evil death, so pitiless came to take me with a scythe”
The title is a more or less accurate translation from the Romanian “Moartea rea ÅŸi nemiloasă a venit ÅŸi cu o coasă”, one of the many rather nonconformist inscriptions on the crosses in the Merry Cemetery of SăpânÅ£a. Having passed the opportunity of visiting this unique place a few years ago, I didn’t think twice when the occasion was presented to me again. We were supposed to go to SăpânÅ£a on the 5th of January and yet, due to very well-founded reasons (”I’m sleepy, we’ll go tomorrow!”), we postponed our trip for the next day. Believe me when I say laziness is a gift from God! For the next day (January 6th), Orthodoxes celebrates the baptism of Christ (Boboteaza) and there is no better place to admire tradition than in a small village. Young girls and boys, aunts and uncles with their nephews and nieces, grandparents with their grandchildren, parents with their kids, everybody set off to the church to listen to the sermon then followed the priest to the river banks for the customary blessing of the water. Even for those less religious, the simple beauty and the hospitality of these people are impossible to describe, so I’ll let the pictures speak.
Original post: here (RO).
Ela is 18 and very talkative. In fact, she is so talkative many people have told her to shut up. So she started blogging. Now she can ban those who tell her to shut up.