Erdély induló : PART TWO

Marosvasarhely / Tirgu Mures has been around for hundreds of years, and has existed since 1332, first as a papal estate, then as a royal settlement under King Matyas Corvinus, who was half Hungarian, half Rumanian and a huge hero to everyone. It was the home of the principality court during the Austro-Hungarian era. The Germans who settled there during that period call it Neumarkt am Mieresch. All of its names basically connote "market on the River Maros". In the first part of the Communist era, it was named the capital of the Hungarian Autonomous Province, which barely existed beyond a paper surface. After 1989, there were ethnic clashes between Hungarians and Romanians that made world news.



The town's symbol, which is a dragon's head on a stake. The other is a plaque commemorating "Latinity". While it's debatable whether or not Romanians have Roman genes, their ancestral people adopted a very Latin language. In the Renaissance period, a Latin based alphabet replaced the Cyrillic one (this can be attributed to Hungarian influence, but it never is), and in 1989, the alphabet was adapted once again, so as to rid words of "Slavic" letters as much as possible...hence the new spelling: Targu Mures.



Romulus and Remus suck on the teats of their mother, the Golden She-Wolf (not gold for this occasion).



I'm Jewish on my father's side, so we found the Jewish cemetary, dug deep into the hill on an unmarked road. It's run by an old woman and her husband, and she knows exactly where everyone is buried. She helped us find them, and it's a good thing she was there. It was a treacherous find, as walking between the tomb-like grave stones was near impossible. Whole stones were covered in ivy, and brushing back the leaves would reveal entire families killed at Auschwitz.



There's a statue in one of the commemoration room sculpted by Iszak Marton (or Martin Issac), a friend of my grandmother's, who used her family as his inspiration. The final version of the memorial can be found downtown.



The synagogue, open only for holidays since the 1950s, and occasionally vandalized by neighbourhood anti-Semites of all stripes, can be found by the memorial at the corner. On the memorial, the Holocaust is blamed solely on Hungarian Fascists, which only tells part of the story. As if the Romanians Fascists had any more love for the Jews?



"It's all a pissing contest", as one of my uncles likes to say. Squabbles aside, both cultures exhibit high degrees of artistic merit when commemorating their dead. The Romanian cemetary (not sure if it's Catholic or Orthodox) is a sight to see, especially the numerous photographs of the deceased encased into the stone surfaces.



The Hungarian Catholic cemetary is also a highlight of local craftsmanship. It's incredibly traditional, adopting Szekely symbols and runes. Much of my mother's family are buried there, as well as colleagues and friends. Let's not forget early Hungarian champions of the nation-state concept, hanged by the Austrians after 1848.



My mother's family are wonderful. Her nephew is married and has two hilarious, delightful kids who like AC/DC and Scooby Doo. Their mother is a fantastic actress at the town theatre, and has worked with some famous people in Romania.

Another of my cousins, closer to my age but a bit older, spent a couple of summers in America, and his English is much, much better than my Hungarian, but we learned a lot from one another. He was an amazing host, and gave up his room for me to stay with his girlfriend (a rehearsal for when they get married?). The two of them are the nicest peeople I can think of, and a symbol of the new successes people have found there. He's a real estate agent who just finsihed business school, with a talent for making jewelry, while she's starting her own dental practise, reopening her family's clinic that they owned before the wars.



While awaiting the completion of their new house on the outskirts of town, the kids and their parents had to stay with my uncle and aunt in a small apartment. There was always happy commotion there, meals galore, way too much booze and apparently, a couple of turtles.



I loved hangin' with the fam at both apartments, one downtown and the other on the hill. At the downtown location, some of the *ahem* less educated members of society use the courtyard as a personal W.C. while they wait for the bus. The city won't build a fence, and it's no consolation that they send someone to clean it once in a while. The city, it seems, is still figuring out who's job it is to clean up shit and build fences.

While there may be Number Twos in the bushes, there's still good times upstairs, like pipe smoking and drinking shots or alarmingly clear alcohol. On the streets, we can goof off and make funny faces and no one cares. Across town at the other apartment, we sing CCR songs, and drink more shots of alarmingly clear alcohol.



Then we party...



...and get crazy medieval.

More to follow...meanwhile read PART ONE.