Paşte Fericit

Orthodox Easter is a many-fold event. It is preceded by over a month of fasting, and days of frantic, thorough cleaning and food preparation, all of which would be of absolutely absurd proportions out of context. The celebration of Easter, itself, is the sweet fruit of those labors. Then there is a week of feasts and celebrations, concluded with an Easter for the Dead. Of this latter, I still know relatively little, but I'll make sure to share interesting experiences and adventures in a later post.

But let's start from the beginning.

Orthodox Easter began at midnight, on the first moments of Sunday, and continues through sunrise. I would love to tell you everything about the ceremony: the singing and chanting, the prayers, and passing of fire. I would love to do so, but I'm afraid it's a secret. And by "secret" I mean that I slept through it. Bah! I suppose I was simply too exhausted to sufficiently respond to the myriad alarms I had set to go off at 11:45 Saturday night. So, instead of participating in a celebration for which I had long been waiting, I caught a few senseless hours of sleep. Luckily, all was not lost.

The Easter service is held at the church, and can be divided into at least two sub-ceremonies. The first, of which I may have dreamed but certainly did not see, involves about four hours of singing prayers and receiving blessings from the priests. This is the part that meant the most to me, and I will be beating myself up about missing it until next Easter. Still, I hear it's exhausting, difficult to bear, and absolutely wonderful. The conclusion of this part of the Easter service is marked by the sharing of a holy flame which is brought from Jerusalem. Last year, a person actually carried the fire by plane from Israel to Moldova, and then distributed it throughout the towns and villages. This year, I don't know.

What I do know is that the church rings bells to mark the beginning of the second sub-ceremony. I know this because it was these bells, ringing at about 4:45 am, that finally pulled me from my sleep. I heard the bells, saw that it was quite dark outside, and thought maybe it was almost midnight. A short, panicked paralysis following the discovery of the actual time, and I rushed to get dressed, hoping to catch whatever was left of the service.

I arrived in time for the the blessing of the Paşca (pashka, pronounced with 'a' like pasta), a special Easter cake. Not everybody goes to the midnight service, but as I hurried toward the church, small groups of shadows also worked their way up the road to the church, quickly filling the small church grounds and then forming two long rows on the street leading away from the church. It was a clear night out, but only a sickle moon, so most of the light came from the hundreds of candles people had lit and stuck into their Paşca. I arrived just as the priests were beginning to splash holy water over the cakes and their owners.

As with the school blessing ceremony, the priests were accompanied by a small entourage: the head priest carried the holy water, which he flung using a small bundle of basil; another priest (this one my friend) carried the little metal ball of incense familiar to Orthodox and Catholic, alike; yet another priest carried a box for monetary donations. All sang prayers as they made their way down the lines, occasionally stopping to fetch another pail of holy water. Apparently, it is proper to shower the holy water liberally, quite without reserve. Understanding the significance, I appreciate that the priests are not stingy with their blessings, even if I need a towel, afterward. (Some volunteers, and probably some Moldovans, detest getting showered with holy water, but I am not among them in this.)

That's pretty much it for the ceremony. But Orthodox Easter is far from over.

Taking the Paşca home, my girlfriend and I cut pieces of the sweet bread and enjoyed some non-drowsy (thanks to the holy shower) conversation with very strong coffee. Eventually, the rest of the house came alive, and the Easter celebrations could be seen quite clearly on the horizon. I had a couple invitations for Easter feasts, and ultimately decided to join a couple from one of my adult English classes. One semi-unforeseen catch on this decision was that they would be taking me to a primarily Russian-speaking household, and while everybody there was able to speak Romanian to me, it is neither their mother tongue nor their language of choice. Another (completely) unforeseen catch was that, despite living in the middle of one of the best wine-producing regions of Moldova, this Russian family generally prefers vodka. The Russian wasn't a problem, and the vodka was simply a matter of preference, for me. So, in all, it was a great feast.

Orthodox Easter follows more than a month of fasting. For strict adherents of the faith, this means a completely vegan diet, no alcohol or other intoxicants, and a bunch of other sacrifices that generally make protestants cringe. Following such dietary suffering, most Orthodox Christians celebrate with appreciable overcompensation: more food than you can shake a stick at, and (sometimes) insane amounts of alcohol consumption. I'm not a large guy, and despite my highly-active metabolism, there's really no possible justification for the absurd quantities of food and (alas) vodka that gradually filled my mouth, stomach, and even that hollow left leg. *wink*

I'm inexpressibly glad that I was able to participate in at least some part of the Easter ceremonies, and I had a great time at the Easter feast. But it's not over yet. As I said, this next week will consist of further feasting and celebration, concluded by Easter for the Dead. Thus, I'm sure many more adventures will find and corner me before it's over. Wish me luck!

Preparation for Easter

In this part of the world, Easter is just about the most important time of year. It's not all about bunnies and candy, as the secular culture of the USA has made it. Instead, it is a mixture of highly-serious religious observation and light-hearted family and community celebration. I have yet to experience either aspect of the holiday, first-hand, so I'll wait to explain the history, ceremony, and customs of Moldovan Easter until after Sunday. Right now, people are preparing. And how!

Maybe "preparing" is too soft a word. It's more like turning the houses upside down in a spring cleaning to trump all spring cleanings, and preparing for the biggest and most wonderful feast possibly imaginable. The cleaning doesn't require further explanation. Everything must be proudly sparkling and brimming with pure cleanliness before Christ rises. I'm still not fully on-board with this concept, but I guess I understand why it is important the others.

The most visible (and curious) aspect of this pre-Easter cleaning is to be found on the roads. Every respectable curb is coated a brilliant, shining white. Or, at least, it is brilliant and shining for about a day. The curbs are not painted with "paint" per se; rather, they are whitewashed with what seems to be a chalky water. I'm pretty sure this is the same annoying substance covering the walls of most non-wallpapered rooms (such as schools). Benefit: it's cheap and easy to apply. Reason it's not worth it: it's chalk. A brief and gentle grazing of a wall covered in this stuff leaves an embarrassing white mark on everything. But to paint a curb with this chalk is a whole new level of senseless, as the first wash of rain strips away 100% of the glorious whiteness. Well, but it looks good for a few days, so there you have it.

The food is another matter, though. While I may feel ambivalent about the cleaning and the white curbs, the culinary exposé of tomorrow's holiday is entirely something to be anticipated with glee and rumbling stomach. Said rumbling stomach is amplified by the period of fasting leading up to Easter, known in Romanian as "Post" (equivalent to Catholic Lent, but much more extreme: people are strict vegans for over a month). Moldova has a rich tradition of sweet cakes, roasted meats, knotted breads, and excessively sugary candies with which to break Post ("post" with a lower-case 'p' simply means "fast"). The last day of Post, today (Saturday), people are supposed not to eat for the entire day, until after the mid-night Easter service. Then, immediately after the service (which ends around 6:00am), each household digs into the biggest masa (feast, or literally "table") of the year. Oh boy!

I'll be attending the Easter services, here, and I am very excited -- not just for the food, and certainly not for these spring cleaning rites. This will be my first Orthodox service since I arrived, and I am very much interested in learning more about this particular faith, and perhaps partaking in regular services and even a catechumin.

That's all for now. More on Easter after the fact, so stay tuned.

A long overdue review (Part I)

It's been almost a month since my last post, and I can't believe how time has flown by. Since that last post, much has happened, the highlights of which I will now recount. Without cheating and reading the last post, I think I can remember that it was a failed attempt to convey some wonder of my short vacation in Romania. Let's start again, shall we?

Vacation started on December 25, just in time to enjoy what Moldovans refer to as 'new calendar Christmas' -- the celebration of a certain savior's birth according to the Gregorian calendar, as distinguished from the slightly later celebration of the same event according to the Julian calendar (the 'old calendar Christmas'). For Moldovans, this wasn't much a problem. Most Moldovans celebrate Christmas according to both calendars, but the celebration is drastically different. Imagine a Christmas without all the wild consumerism, without the spiked eggnog, and without highly-decorated fire hazards in the central room of every house in the neighborhood. That's Moldovan Christmas, as far as I can tell. I wasn't in attendance at any Christmas parties or family celebration, but I got the sense that it is considered primarily a religious holiday here. Imagine that. There were concerts in Chisinau and enormous Christmas trees in city centers everywhere, and the street decor was impressive (although almost impossible to capture on camera without getting hit by passing buses and such). But whatever flare and craze we Americans exhibit during the Christmas season, Moldovans seem to save that for bringing in the New Year -- which is good, because they do it twice (new calendar, old calendar).

I know many Americans were put off by the inception date of vacation, as it ruined many a plan to spend Christmas somewhere outside of Moldova. I, on the other hand, enjoyed staying at home and calling my family to wish them a merry one, half a world away. Christmas is a good time in my family, but not being huge consumers or extremely religious, it is mostly just an opportunity to huddle together, drink hot spiced cider, admire the fire hazard in the sitting room, and sing traditional 'American' carols (many of which actually come from Eastern Europe). I spent a few days in Chisinau with somebody special, and then boarded a train bound, eventually, for Romania.

My first impressions of Romania included smooth roads, relatively spacious country-side, and cities apparently governed by the somewhat more noticeable presence of coherent building codes and urban planning. Romania is part of the European Union, so their relative financial stability and development (compared with those of Moldova) probably account for most of these first impressions. However, it is important to point out that my vacation did not wander beyond the borders of Moldova. Let me explain. In medieval times, Moldavia was a relatively small territory that I don't quite have the right word for. Principality, maybe? As with the Romans, traditional Moldovan culture abhorred mention of a 'king' and therefore referred to their medieval heads of state as what English-speaking people would call 'rulers' or 'lords'. Thus, it couldn't have been a kingdom. Wikipedia says 'Principality', so let's go with that. Moldavia no longer exists. Most of the eastern half is where I live (the Republic of Moldova); regions in the north and south belong to the Ukraine; and most of the western half served as the host to my Romania vacation. My vacation party consisted of me and four of my friendly Peace Corps colleagues.

First stop was in Suceava, a large town and raion (district) center in Northeast Romania. The town is absolutely gorgeous and absolutely worth the trip. Lacking excessive industrial build-up, Suceava instead enjoys aesthetic and historical plenitude. As is common in this region of the world, the raion center is surrounded by several handfuls of small villages, monasteries, and more farmland or empty terrain than you can shake a stick at. One of the stunning sites we visited is the Voroneţ monastery, considered by many to be the little-known treasure of this part of the world. The church at the Voroneţ monastery was constructed in the 15th century by none other than Stefan cel Mare (Stephan the Great, the single most important figure in Moldovan history), and is remarkable for its detailed frescoes covering not only the walls and ceiling of the interior, but also the entire exterior.

Following the visit to Voroneţ, my colleagues and I stopped at the remains of the Citadel of Suceava, where Stefan cel Mare and his peers sat on the throne overlooking their beloved Moldova. This was my first visit to an actual castle of the non-sand variety. Much of the castle was destroyed, and while I haven't done my research to find out how, I would guess it had something to do with the Ottoman Turks. Still, much of the castle remains, including what I think was the sanctuary of the chapel, which catches the light of the setting Sun in a most striking and indescribable way. My post-castle sentiment was one of wonder that we, with all our modern technology and materials, build our structures today to last 40 or 50 years. The Suceava citadel would still be standing today (and probably in pretty damn good condition) had the Turks not torn it down.

Visiting Suceava in the Winter was beautiful, but I would love to return when the vast tracts of land are covered in various shades of life and the people can frolic around without the burden of heavy coats and perilous sheets of ice.

Next came Iaşi, a large municipality that served as a more modern capital for the region before it was unified with Wallacia and Transylvania to form what we now know as Romania. While Iaşi is certain no London or Moscow in size, it still has the feel of age and regality, as well as that of practicality and industry. My stay in Iaşi was, perhaps, tainted by two unfortunate facts: our hotel was woefully suburban, meaning long and expensive taxi-rides to get anywhere interesting; and I was there for New Year celebrations and the days following, in which the entire city was virtually out-of-order. However, these two misfortunes did not stop my travel-buddies and I from enjoying the exterior visual pleasures of the city. The Church of the Three Hierarchs and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Moldova were absolutely unparalleled by any other religious structures I have yet seen (but I've also never been to Paris, for that matter). The Palace of Culture certainly demanded an hour-long photo shoot, despite the fact that the inside was closed.

One aspect of Iaşi that we Peace Corps Moldova volunteers celebrate is its Pizza Hut. I don't much care for Pizza Hut in the States, due to the poor quality of food and suspect service. However, the Pizza Hut in Iaşi was truly as close as any fast-food establishment can possibly come to being gourmet. From beautiful ambiance to friendly, sit-down service to wine recommendations on the pizza menu -- this must have been the king of all Pizza Huts.

With that, I'll take a short break, and pick up the review with my post-Romania adventures. Look for the follow-up (Part II) to this post in the next few days. It's a busy week for me, but I'll make sure to squeeze in some blog time, somewhere.

Thanksgiving in Non-USA

[Note: Apologies for the delayed post. My internet was down, and I had to go to Chisinau to post, this week.]

The deconstructionist in me takes every opportunity to cast doubt on the significance of anything by examining the value of everything in every way. The romantic in me wants to feel, and in doing so works in perfect counter to my deconstructionist side. My approach to holidays is therefore torn, and end up valuing my holidays substantially, but not usually for the common reasons.

I'm sure we can all identify holidays that are important to us. Among international (not to say 'global') holidays, I'm sure the Christian flagship celebration of a certain individual's birth jumps out to a lot of people. Somehow, the 'secular' though historically-Christian-based American culture has managed to give their Christmas to non-believers by turning it into a celebration of both miraculous birth and incomprehensible consumption. Hence, Christmas isn't really my favorite time of year. I enjoy the opportunity to connect with family and friends, though. Giving gifts is a great concept, too, but I appreciate that my family doesn't go over the top on the commercial side of this holiday.

I identify Independence Day (4 July) and Thanksgiving as the two most significant American holidays. All the others are either relatively minor religious holidays or little more than weak excuses to have a day off of work or get drunk or both. The Fourth of July is a blast, and I have a fondness for the fire-risk. But ultimately, I'd have to say that Thanksgiving is my favorite, among holidays.

Whether I'm studying at university or living in downtown Portland, I see little of my family. Thanksgiving is one of the only times of the year that I get to catch up with those most important to me. We gather at the house with the largest table, labor over amazingly simple traditional family dishes (made complex only by their vast quantity), and rediscover all the qualities we love and hate about each other.

This year, I'm volunteering half-way around the world in a country which either doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, or celebrates it so frequently that it no longer considers the feast a holiday. Because it is not a holiday in Moldova, we volunteers do not get the time off. Nonetheless, several of us have banded together to create a belated feast this Saturday. There was turkey, stuffing, huge mounds of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (if you're into that sort of thing), warm rolls, pies, and all the trappings of a standard Thanksgiving dinner. We connected with each other like some sort of family: dysfunctional and slightly estranged, but generally happy to be in good company.

In all, it was great success -- I now feel tired and weighed down by the excess of food I consumed. Look for pictures, to come.

P.S. -- my contribution was a Zundel family drink recipe: Orange Slush. It was a great hit, and I have been asked to pass the compliments along to those who shared it with me. Thanks dad!