We had been discussing Hram for the past two weeks in the weekly Primaria meeting, and both times they mentioned the căruţă and asked me whether I'd like to ride in it - obviously, and the mayor had known this already for quite some time. The căruţă is just a cart pulled by a horse - I don't know why I'm so obsessed with it and people use it for real life and work and stuff, but I just think it's the greatest. So naturally I wanted to ride in one.
I had the day off and after lunch I heard a knock on the door - it was the mayor! He took one look at me and said, I'll give you 5 minutes to get dressed. In my defense, I was absolutely dressed. All I had to do was put on a sweater, but tank tops are just really scandalous apparently.
We went to the House of Culture and there was the căruţă! With men in national costume decorating the horse and everything - my one regret in life is that I was really awful about taking pictures so there aren't any.. It got dark eventually and then I regretted it more because the mayor "took" a bunch of pictures but I can 100% tell you that he doesn't know how to use a camera so I don't think any actually exist. There's always next year?
Anyway, a woman ushered me into the House of Culture and dressed me in costume too! I did manage to take a selfie after she left the room, because, duh.
I stood outside the House of Culture for a while (looking fantastic, obviously) waiting for the men to come back, as they had left to get more decorations (and probably wine) because waiting on a woman is virtually impossible, as you all know, so they had to start without me.
Casa de Cultura decorated for the evening |
Then they picked me up and away we went! No one spoke English, and I said very few words the entire time, but we (a few men, one boy about 16, and two girls younger than the boy) went all through the village inviting people to Hram. This consisted of bringing them a shot of wine and some cookies/candy and occasionally some shouting and banging on a broken drum. They knew we were coming, because most houses had another jug of wine to share with us, more candy and cookies, and even real food at some.
The inside of the cart - complete with a bunch of corn and a jug of wine |
The young boy would push the girls forward and say, look, we have ladies too, and even a foreigner! He was quite confident in all that he did and it was adorable. Even though I was the foreigner. Nici o problema. It was a lot of fun to ride through the village, especially when we went to the side I had never been to - we went up the hill and you can see the whole town from that side! So pretty, and I'll definitely be walking up there later.
The gypsies dancing |
There were many more people after dancing - I think we kind of sneaked in for our first round |
Here's hoping my next căruţă ride is sooner than a year away! I'd really like it to be my main form of transportation, if possible.....
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