Church Tour

My home church in Idaho has a partner church in the western part of Romania. This is Transylvania which used to be part of Hungary but was ceded to Romania as part of the Treaty of Paris after WW I. Since then it has been subject to a policy under the communist and post-communist governments of encouraging settlement of ethnic Romanians in the region with the result that the original Hungarians are now a minority in their homeland. Over the preceding centuries it was a battleground for various Christian religions and political conflicts dating back to the 30 Years War. Every year my home church sends a group to visit and since I live so close, I decided to use some of my vacation to join this year’s trip.

It is an incredibly scenic area of natural and historic sites. We took the gondola to the top of a ski area. We climbed hills and walked through gorges. We visited a palace and a monastery, a castle straight out of Dracula (where I stood in the garden trying to take a photo of lightning striking the tower during a thunderstorm) and a fortress church that had withstood over 100 sieges. The architecture was the ornate, classical style of the Hapsburg Empire surrounding large cobbled squares with fountains and formal parks. We visited multiple churches of various denominations; Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox and Unitarian.

We stayed a good part of the time with families in the village of our partner church. I would estimate the area we visited to be 10 to 15 years ahead of Albania in development, with good roads, reliable water and electricity, restoration and management of tourist areas and environmental protection. Our village hosts were very hospitable and shared the tradition of overfeeding guests, which, I am beginning to suspect, is common throughout Eastern Europe. The food was very good, but much heavier than the Mediterranean fare in Albania.

We heard a lot about ethnic divisions and suspicions which are almost never heard in Albania. Following the Balkan Wars that preceded WW I, the country of Albania was carved out of a much larger area of ethnic Albanians that now includes Kosovo, and parts of Macedonia and Greece. Maybe attitudes would be similar in the Albanian ethnic enclave in northern Greece where they were forced to adopt Greek names for families and geography and forbidden from using the Albanian language. I was surprised by how there was no mention of Albania in the Orthodox museums I visited in Athens and Corfu. I wonder how southwestern Idaho would feel if a chunk of territory were carved off and given to Oregon. Of course, border tensions occurred when Japanese living in Oregon were put in internment camps during WW II, but those living east of the Snake River in Idaho were not. Some of their Idaho neighbors rose to the occasion and traded farms for the duration and the Japanese community was quickly reestablished after the war to a greater degree than in many other parts of the west. At much greater personal risk, many Muslim Albanians sheltered their Jewish neighbors and refugees from other countries during WW II, although the survivors largely immigrated from the communist regime to the new Jewish state after the war.

I wonder how the evolution of the EU will change attitudes as traditional nation states of Europe become more ethnically diverse with freedom of economic migration like we have in the US. Will resentments resolve if the only difference between being an ethnic Hungarian in Romania and an ethnic Hungarian in Hungary is in the choice of postage stamps? I suppose one should never underestimate the militancy of serious philatelists.

I enjoyed spending time with people I know from back home and the host families in the village were great. They invited me back in a few months if I needed a break from life in Albania. That was nice, but I don’t, not really, and I miss my friends back there. I think I am getting a foretaste of the dilemma that many Peace Corps volunteers face at the close of service. They have generally adjusted to the vagaries of life in the host country; housing, diet, work, transportation, language, etc. Their sense of home has become a blend of the third world, the US and their cohort of volunteers, and one has to anticipate a period of accommodation post service. Mid-service conference is coming up in August and I am sure that issue will begin to be addressed at the meeting.

The trip ended with a very long train ride across Romania, back to Bucharest. It was made longer as large parts of the track are being reconstructed and my train had to wait hours on side tracks for opposing traffic to pass. We arrived near midnight at our hotel near the airport. I slept a couple of hours and then caught an early shuttle van to the airport to arrange an earlier flight back to Tirana where I was to meet visiting friends on their way home after more than a decade of missionary service in Papua New Guinea.

They spent a couple of days touring Tirana and then we took a bus back to Korca. I showed them around my city over the weekend. To their eyes, accustomed to a primitive, South Pacific jungle island, Albania seems highly developed. They enjoyed the coffee shops, restaurants and museums. They especially enjoyed the walks after it cooled a bit and we joined the citizens of Korca out for the evening stroll. This was not something they could do safely in the cities or towns of New Guinea. One night we stopped for ice cream, and the next we sat on a balcony, overlooking the city and sipped cocoa.

On Saturday, we were invited to a lakror feast (a traditional layered pastry with cheese and a wild, leek-like herb baked in a covered pan over a wood fire). Dr. Isufi and his friends were hosting an official from the EU at the ski area near Dardhe. Local and regional officials attended as well as representative patients and family members from the recreation group that frequently uses the area. They are trying to get funding for a better lift system and other improvements. They have big plans and high hopes and their enthusiasm is such a contrast to my high school students who seem to have adopted the Greek attitude towards their country.

I hope the EU acts favorably on at least some of their requests for help with their projects. It would help in so many ways; tourism, recreational opportunities, pride in their accomplishments and recognition of their potential. A summer thunderstorm showered rain and hail over the mountain, but I think the EU representative enjoyed the food, music, dancing and talk inside the day lodge. I showed him winter pictures that were on my digital camera. Outside water and mud washed down the slopes.

The rain stopped and the EU entourage left for the long drive back to Tirana. My friends and I picked our way up to the top of the ski hill where we could see north to Macedonia and south and east to Greece. We helped minimally with the clean up and then, as the sun was setting, lighting up the lingering clouds, we made the short trip back into Korca.