Today’s lunch is at the Best Western Bucovina, which is actually a lovely old medieval looking (in decor only) hotel. Our menu is a lovely greek type salad (from which we pick out the feta type cheese and tomatoes, but leave the cucumbers!) and then for the main meal it’s mici (sort of – more fried mici than traditional grilled) on polenta for Ed and some sort of creamy chicken with mushrooms for me (at least I swear that’s what Cristina said it was). The mici don’t look like much (and to be honest, the picture makes them look terribly unappealing), but Ed says they have great taste. I’ve absolutely no idea what the chicken is supposed to be, but it is excellent, served looking far more like some sort of Asian chicken dish you’d get at a Chinese restaurant than whatever the explanation of it was. But I’m not complaining – nor is Ed when he finishes what I can’t eat. And then the piece de resistance – Papanasi! The traditional Romanian dessert that’s basically this fried doughnut made with cheese and honey then topped with berries and a sour cream type sauce. Oh – and the berries? They were caramelized or something so that they were crunchy and sweet and sugary – sugar and carb hell, and I just don’t care! I could have eaten every portion on the table.
We’re all ready for a nap, and we’ll have about an hour and a half to our next stop, the Neamt Monastery, to snooze if we want. After meeting Yuntz’s wife and absolutely adorable daughter (not to mention the really cute cat, on a leash no less), we all saddle up and head back into the countryside where I’m too busy watching the scenery, little villages and farmland pass by to bother sleeping. It’s all so Bavarian looking here, the houses, the hills, the farms.
This monastery is different than the other two we visited earlier. For one thing it is actually a monastery, not a nunnery, with monks’ quarters and an ecclesiastic school on the premises. It is a very rich monastery, we are told. The monks have been given bee hives and vines over the years, so in turn, they have created a large business around honey products and wine.They’ve also reintroduced Bison into the national forest that surrounds the property, as well as curated one of the oldest libraries in the country. Some of the very first books in Moldavia were printed here.
Secondly, it is much grander than the other monasteries, and completely protected by a huge stone wall (which turns out to be the back wall of the school and monks’ quarters) and fortified gates. Once through the gates, the monastery itself is situated in a huge green courtyard with cobblestone walks leading to the front entrance. The plain tan stones are a surprise, as there are no frescoes painted on the outside. But that doesn’t make the structure any less grand. The back drop of bright white and black tin roofed buildings housing the monastery school and monks’ quarters totally sets off the monastery itself, providing a fabulous contrast to the massive stone structure.
As we get closer, we can see the detail brick design used on the walls, windows and door sills. Colored bricks are interspersed with the stone to create colorful patterns around the palladium windows, up the walls and under the eaves of the black singled roof. There also round metal looking features embedded into the stonework around the curved tops of the windows providing subtle color against the tan stone.
We meet our priest guide here, who is somewhat of a hoot and keeps Cristina laughing about some joke he’s telling her, and proceed inside the monastery, where joy of joys!, we can actually take photos! (Not that you’ll ever see them until I get the Google Photos/Open LiveWriter debacle figured out!) The frescoes inside are beautiful, but not restored so you can see up close the degradation, but also the artistry that went into every single painting. We all spend a while milling around the inside of the monastery with its wooden carved pulpits and gorgeous gold Virgin Mary icon then head back outside to visit the ossuary.
I’m not 100% certain the actual reason for the Ossuary, which is a displayed collection of bones and skulls from previous monks. Maybe they ran out of room in the cemetery? Maybe they were dug up when the communists moved the graveyard from the interior courtyard to its current location (for tourism)? Who knows? It was either lost in the translation, or I just didn’t take good notes. Nonetheless, we are led into this big long room that is lined with carved rock “shelving” upon which sits engraved skulls and miscellaneous bones. The engravings on the skulls are the apparently the name of the monk and date of death. How would they know this, you might ask? I’ll tell you: Each monk was buried with a brick engraved with date of death and rank of the monk at time of death under his head. When exhumed, their skulls could then be engraved in the same fashion.
Grisly. Yes. But as the sweet, funny monk tells us (through Cristina) that since the 18th century, death has not been a comfortable word. But it is a reality of life. We are just travelers in this life. It's a journey not a destination and we live life by the day not by the years. We need to make each day important to ourselves, and have joy, be better and be human.
Now that’s a very fitting way to turn a slightly disturbing visit into a wonderful ending. With that we wonder through the cemetery, retrace our steps through the monastery courtyard and return to the bus where Yuntz has a regional surprise for us – eclairs! Home baked by his wife! Not! But still, very sweet, literally and figuratively. We give some to a monk sitting on the stone wall outside the monastery, mill around a bit as some folks go into the gift shop, then take our leave for the hour plus ride back to the hotel.
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