Easter of the Dead

My host mother popped the question yesterday as to whether I wanted to get up early and head out with her to visit her family in the neighboring village for Paște Blajinilor, or Memorial Easter, and since I had nothing else to do I jumped at the chance to get out of my village.

We got up at 6:00 drank some coffee and left the house by 6:30, making our way through our back garden and across the hillside to meet up at about the halfway point with her brother-in-law who gave us a ride to his house in a horse drawn cart. I was very glad I made the decision to make the trip simply based on the beautiful weather and beautiful scenery, but the caruta ride was the cherry on top.

Like last year we went to the cemetery and paid our respects to those who had passed by passing out gifts in their memory and having the priest bless their graves. Since everyone in the village comes to the cemetery to celebrate it is an opportunity for everyone to meet up with people they might not have seen all year so there were a lot of people making their rounds greeting people and usually offering a gift they had placed on top of the grave of a love one or a glass of wine in their memory.

After the cemetery we ate a big lunch together with her family and eventually caught a ride with one of her relatives that were heading in our direction and they dropped us off at the intersection of the road to our village and we hitch hiked the rest of the way.

I am also happy to inform you that we now have a new member of the household, a big white fluffy bunny rabbit. My host mother is retiring this year and said she used to have loads of rabbits but she got rid of them when she started to have too much work to do and not enough time for more house work. So now that she is looking forward to having more time on her hands she wants to start another rabbit farm. Although she only has one rabbit at the moment and I'm pretty sure she will need at least two...but I guess that will resolve itself soon enough.

Pictures