3442 ROMANIA (Maramureş) - Life in the countryside

In recent years, I have met more and more people, both in social networks and in reality, who claim to envy those living in the country, in the bosom of nature. For the overwhelming majority of them, this is either hypocrisy or simply a lie, because I am convinced that lacking the comfort of the city would leave life in the countryside in a few days. In these isolated villages, where the water does not come from the tap and the heat from a button, where autumn you swim in the mud and winter in the snow, where you have to grow vegetables and animals if you want to eat, life is not at all bucolic.

1406, 3217 ROMANIA (Maramureş) - Vaser Valley Mocăniţa

1406 CFF Vişeu de Sus - Locomotive 764.421 Elveţia (Switzerland),
in Valea Scradei, on July 15, 2008.

Posted on 11.01.2015, 14.12.2017
A mocăniţă is a narrow gauge railway in Romania (most notably in mountainous areas in  Maramureş, Transylvania, and Bukovina), and the locomotives operating on them. The word is a term of endearment, derived from mocan (meaning shepherd or one who lives in the mountains), and suffixed as feminine and diminutive. Many of these forestry railways were built in the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially in the Carpathians. They followed the rivers, often necessitating tight curves, and the tracks were constructed so as to enable small locomotives to pull empty logging wagons up into the mountains and to let heavily loaded trains roll down under gravity to the saw mills.

3217 CFF Vişeu de Sus - Locomotive 764.435 Bavaria

The most well-known mocăniţă runs in the Vaser Valley in Maramureş County, in the far north of Romania, close to the border with Ukraine. CFF Vişeu de Sus (CFF is the abbreviation for Căile Ferate Forestiere, meaning Forestry Railway) is the last remaining forestry railway in Europe. The industrial use of timber in the Vaser Valley began in the 18th century, during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. German-speaking settlers explored the forest, harvested the timber, and transported it in log rafts down the river to the saw mills of Vişeu de Sus.

2839, 2950, 3211 ROMANIA (Maramureş) - Moroşeni

2839 Moroşeni from Şugatag village
in traditional clothes

Posted on 25.10.2016, 13.02.2017, 07.12.2017
Maramureş is a geographical, historical and ethno-cultural region situated along the upper Tisza River, and partitioned between Romania and Sub-Carpathian Ukraine after the WWII. With its picturesque countryside of small villages, rolling hills, pastures, and meadows full of wildflowers, Maramureş epitomizes all that the rural lifestyle encompasses. It is a small and unique location in the geographical heartland of Europe that has carefully and distinctively preserved the culture, traditions and lifestyle of a mediaeval (or even older) peasant past.

2950 Little girl from Maramureş

Little has changed in the centuries gone by. Families remain in the same villages as their ancestors. Traditional skills and crafts are passed down from generation to generation. Traditional hand-woven clothing continues to be practical. The church continues to be the soul of the village. Neighbours know one another and continue to lend a helping hand. The mystery of rural traditions unfolds before the visitor as a living museum that is at once within reach yet simultaneously beyond the grasp of the traveller.

3211 Maria

The traditional costumes of the Moroşeni, as the people of Maramureş call themselves, are impressive through beauty and simplicity, and each region has a local specific. For instance, the costume of the Land of Lăpuş is much more elegant and sobre. The defining elements of the women's clothing are: kierchief, white shirt with sleeves ended in cuffs and flounces, ample skirts, covered by the two aprons (zadii) with horizontal stripes (usually black alternating with red, yellow or orange). Over the shirt, women wear a jerkin (pieptar) richly decorated. Often have at neck collars of colored beads.

0572-0573, 2726 ROMANIA (Maramureş) - Wooden churches of Maramureş (UNESCO WHS)

2726 Wooden churches of Maramureş: 1. Poienile Izei; 2. Şurdeşti;
3. Ieud; 4. Plopiş; 5. Bârsana; 6. Rogoz.

Posted on 24.03.2013, 01.09.2016

In the entire Carpathian area which stretching from Maramureş (Romania) to Southern Lesser Poland, through Zakarpattia (Ukraine) and Eastern Slovakia, the locals developed over time the craft of building wooden churches. This craft transcends not only the countries borders (which have changed many times throughout history) but also the ethnic affiliation and religious beliefs, such churches being built by Romanians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Hutsuls, Slovaks and Poles, be they Orthodox, Catholics, Greek Catholics or Protestants. They represented a viable alternative for rural area of the stone churches built in cities.

0572 The wooden Church in Plopiş

UNESCO recognized the importance of these churches, including no less than four sites among World Heritage Sites: Wooden Churches of Maramureş (1999) from Romania, Wooden churches of Southern Małopolska (2003) from Poland, Wooden Churches of the Slovak part of the Carpathian Mountain Area (2008), and Wooden Tserkvas (Churches) of Carpathian Region in Ukraine and Poland (2013). All these churches are divided into three parts (the narthex, the nave, and the sanctuary) and include an iconostasis (a wall of icons). The outer shape is often cruciform, but will always include a central dome.

0573 The wooden Church in Rogoz

The historical Romanian region of Maramureş, partitioned between Romania and Sub-Carpathian Ukraine after the WWII, is situated along the upper Tisza River, covering the Maramureş Depression and the surrounding Carpathian mountains, and had autonomous traditions since the Middle Ages. Its wooden villages and churches, its traditional lifestyle and music, and the local colourful dresses still in use make Maramureş a living museum. The almost 100 wooden churches extant today (about one third of their total two centuries ago), reveal the existence during the 17th and 18th centuries of at least two main family schools of church carpenters.

2246 ROMANIA (Maramureș) - Sighet Prison

Sighetu Marmaţiei (Hungarian: Máramarossziget), until 1964 just Sighet, is a city located in north-western Romania, along the Tisa river, on the border with Ukraine. In 1897 the Austro-Hungarian authorities (at that time the region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) built here a prison, on the occasion of the "First Magyar Millennium". It was a prison for common criminals, but during the WWI was used also for the incarceration of political prisoners.

1186 ROMANIA (Maramureş) - The craftsman in wood Cuza Perţa

Maramureş, the region which covers the Maramureş Depression and the surrounding Carpathian mountains, along the upper Tisa River, now divided between Romania and Ukraine, with autonomous traditions since the Middle Ages, is one of the places where traditional log building wasn't interrupted and where a rich heritage in wood survives. Its well-preserved wooden villages and churches (eight of them were designated an UNESCO World Heritage site - Wooden churches of Maramureş), its traditional lifestyle, and the local colourful dresses still in use make Maramureş as near to a living museum as can be found in Europe. Therefore, in Maramureş wooden carving was and is on a place of honor among traditional crafts. Alexandru Perţa-Cuza is the long-lasting wood craftsman in Târgu Lăpuş (do this for six decades), known among Romanians in communities around the border for his triptychs.