Written Romania

Romania enters Guinness World Records with HUGE Flag

Romania entered the Guinness book of World Records, on Monday, 27th of May 2013, when press offices all around the world talked about the Biggest Flag in the World. Among others, the Washington Post wrote an article dedicated to this historic act:

It took about 200 people several hours Monday to roll out the flag, which measured about 349 meters (1,145 feet) by 227 meters (744.5 feet), about three times the size of a football field, according to Jack Brockbank, an adjudicator for Guinness World Records who measured the flag before pronouncing it the biggest flag in the world.

Throughout the day, Romanian officials went to the village where the flag was placed, to view it.

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Designer Philippe Guilet inspired by the streets of Transylvania

Collection inspired by Romania's ancient peasant and Gypsy traditions

Foto: Daniel Mihailesc/AFP

One model dressed as a Transylvanian roof, while another sashayed in an outfit meant to resemble the streets of Bucharest.

Welcome to fashion, Romania-style

Romanian-based French designer Philippe Guilet, who has worked with the likes of Jean-Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld, has created a collection inspired by Romania's ancient peasant traditions and modern urban jungle.

His "Prejudice" collection showcases in Paris early next year.

Beyond fashion, Guilet aims to present a more beautiful Romania, a country whose image is blighted in France and elsewhere by images of aggressive beggars, social welfare scroungers and computer hackers.

The collection, which premiered at the French embassy last week, thrilled Romanians, leaving some in tears over the spectacle of their humble village crafts being whipped up into world-class couture.

The collection features a chiffon-lined women's suit covered in tufts of wood which evoke a Transylvanian roof and a figure-hugging dress embroidered with an applique design resembling a colorful Romanian Easter egg.

Hat inspired from „Calusarii” - a traditional outfit from Oltenia

The bridal gown was concocted from 20 handmade virgin-white tablecloths of cotton and silk. A model walked down the catwalk in a dress wreathed in black cables, meant to conjure up the chaotic tangle of Bucharest's streets.

"We have produced something beautiful ... It's a passport for Romania," the 47-year-old Guilet, a former research director for Jean-Paul Gaultier, told The Associated Press in an interview.

Guilet shared the stage with other designers, united in the theme of celebrating Romanian culture.

Underprivileged Gypsies crafted metal bracelets from tin drainpipes, while Romanian shoe designer Mihaela Glavan created shoes and boots with heels that are a miniature of sculptor Constantin Brancusi's most famous sculpture, the "Endless column."

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Mystical tales from Transylvania

BBC travel reveals traditions as told in tales and superstitions from Transylvania. The article talks a little about Transylvania's rich history, writing:

Sprawling along the edge of the snowy Carpathians, Europe’s last truly wild mountain range, Transylvania is a land that is rich in myths and legends. A region of Romania since 1918 but historically an independent province, Transylvania’s history has been shaped by the many transient populations that have passed through over the centuries: Saxons, Ottomans, Hungarians, Jews, Serbs and Roma Gypsies. With them came stories collected on their travels: tales of goblins and giants, fairy queens and woodland nymphs, unearthly phantoms, man-eating ogres and predatory ghouls. Venture out on a moonlit night and you might encounter the pricolici, the devilish werewolves said to be the restless spirits of violent men. Even more terrifying are the samca, wizened hags with dagger-like fingernails that sometimes appear to children and women during childbirth; their appearance signifies certain death. And then there are the legends of the strigoi, or vampires – undead creatures risen from the grave to feast on the blood of the living – which fired the imagination of an Irish writer by the name of Bram Stoker, and inspired him to write his Gothic bestseller, Dracula, in 1897.

As far as traditions go, 

Like many rural corners of Europe, Transylvania has a tradition of oral storytelling that stretches back centuries. In a pre-scientific world, these allegorical tales served a dual purpose. They helped explain otherwise inxplicable events – disease, death, natural disasters – but also offered a source of entertainment to pass the long winter nights. Often, legends also provided moral guidance: one tale tells of the bau-bau (also known as the omul negru, or ‘black man’), a spindly figure dressed in a cloak who steals naughty children and hides them in his cave for a year.

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You'll Die Laughing, if You're Not Already Dead

An article in The New York Times writes about the merriest cemetery in the world, where

 Death, when it visits [...], comes laughing - in the guise, almost, of a comic book.

Talking about Săpânţa, the village were not even death is taken seriously the author of the article explains:

On Sundays they distill copper vats of fermented fruits for their potent liquor, tuica (pronounced TSUI-ka), attend Orthodox church services and gossip at the bus stop or the cafe dressed in colorful folk costumes.

But when a citizen of Sapanta dies, Dumitru Pop, a farmer, woodcarver and poet, gathers his notebook, chisels and paintbrushes and prepares to carve a poetic and pictorial homage of the deceased onto an oak grave marker in what villagers now call the Merry Cemetery, beside the Church of the Assumption.

The 800 or so carvings - a festival of color - show the dead either in life or at the moment that death caught them, while the poems, mostly in a simple iambic tetrametre, are a final apology for an often ordinary life.

The article also gives examples of what's written on these funny tumbstones:

Ioan Toaderu loved horses, but, he says from beyond the grave:

One more thing I loved very much,

To sit at a table in a bar

Next to someone else's wife.

Read the rest of this article, here