My romanian trips - Iasi, Chisinau and Oddesa - part. 2

After we've arrived to Chisinau we were really surprised by the poor conditions of the roads in the city. It was after all the country's capital and the acces road that we were going on was in really bad shape. After we got off the bus, we still had like a 2 km of walking to our hostel. The other unpleasent suprise that we've encountered was the fact that there were city lights only by the mainroads, so to our hostel we had to walk almost in complete darkness. After we checked in in the place of our accomodation, we asked the hostel's stuff for the directions to the closest restaurant and we went to eat something.
The third surprise that we had that day was the price of our meal. Everything was so affordable that we decided to order some drinks too!

Our meal

Next day we went to see the city and it turned out that in this day there was a great manifestation in the city square. People gathering on this event were showing their support for reunification of Republic of Moldova and Romania. The day of protest was no an random one. It was 1st December which is the biggest romanian national holiday - the day of unification of all three romanian states: Wallachia, Transilvania and Modlova.

As we all knew the problem we decided to join the manifestation. For me it was extraordinary experience because during my studies I had to do some research about unification trends in Republic of Moldova. Together with protesters we held one kilometer long romanian flag and we've been yelling out pro-unification slogans.

It may not look that way but this flag was way heavier than it seems to be. I had to hold it with a bare hand because otherwise it would slip out. We were standing there for maybe an hour and we started to feel how cold it is. Then our pro-unification zeal faded away and we decided that we are going to eat someting.

After feeding ourselves with good moldovan cuisine we went to see the city. It looked better then during the night but I have to admit that it had very socialist type of architecture - even stronger then Bucharest. After seeing some monuments we've bought tickets for tommorow's bus to Odessa and we went back to our hostel.

My romanian trips - Iasi, Chisinau and Odessa - part.1

So at the end of the November the friends of mine and I wanted to go on a longer trip. We have been thinking for a while where to go and after several days of debating that issue we finaly have decided that we will go to visit Iasi, Chisinau and Odessa, from where we will come back to Bucharest with a direct bus.

We took a night train to Iasi at the 28th of November and we arrived there next day at the morning. We have been really exhausted with the journey so after we've left the train we went directly to the hotel. Unfortunately only one room out of two was available, but we've managed somehow to squeeze in one. We've slept few hours and we went off to see the city.

In train

Palace of Culture in Iasi

After sightseeing the city we went to a store near our hotel to buy a couple of drinks and we went to drink them in the place of our accomodation because Iasi, in contrast to Bucharest got a little bit empty in the night. We also coudn't party all that much because the day after we had to catch a bus to Chisinau, which was a little harder then we expected.

Next day, after we got on the bus station we were informed that going to Chisinau from Iasi is not that simple at all. The only buses that had courses on that route were those in a type of "marshrutka" - small buses typical for the countries of former Soviet Union. We wanted to go to Moldova day before Romanian day of unity - the biggest national day, and of course, a day off. The number of people that wanted to cross the border was stunning - most of them were workers returning to Republic of Moldova for holidays. We weren't able to get to any of those buses so we went to the train station but they told us there that the first train goes to Chisinau in two days. Having no other option we went back to bus station and, after 3 hours of waiting we managed to leave for Chisinau.

Albanian Gjakmarrja

Albanian Gjakmarrja is an name for a social obligation to commit a murder in order to restore a honour of a family that was questioned by an earlier murder or some kind of moral humiliation. This principle is dictated by albanian Kanun.

Although the concept of killing people in the name of family's honor seems barbaric we have to remember that albanian blood feud was regulated by many laws. First of all, when we read on internet about albanian Gjakmarrja we offen can find informentions about cases in which one murder leaded to unending chain of crimes that could last even for generations. I have to agree that those situations indeed have occured in the past but we have to emphasize the fact that they are unaccebable by traditional Kanun. According to albanian customary code a family creates basic cell of society. Well being of a family is often determinded by a number of a grown-up men that it has. If a man from one family kills a man from another family, he's making a blood debt that he and his relatives have to pay.

I think it will help us understand this principle better if we would explain it on a example: so let's say that two men have argued in a bar, one of them takes out his gun and in fury kills the other incuring blood debt to his family. The frist thing that he does after comiting a crime is probabbly running away to his home where acording  to Kanun he can not be harmed because "a man's home is his fortress". In the first 24 hours after a murder the assasin's family has to be extra caution - this is a time of so called "hot blood" when a victim's family can vengance their loss basicly without any regulations.

24 hours after the murder is it customary for the victim's family to give the perpetrator's relatives some time of peace so they could regulate their personal matters. This promise of peace is called "besa" and braking it is one of the greatest crimes according to albanian Kanun. It is also customary for the murderer to attend the victim's funeral and also the victim's wake. After the time of besa, all men on the side of the perpetrator have to stay in home for this is the only place where according to Kanun they can not be harmed. In traditional albanian law feud aplies only to grown-up males for only they have value to the family - they can work.

Albanian rules of blood feud are based on the laws of talion. For example, if person designated for providing a vengeance (alb. gjakos) tried to assassinate one of the perpetrator's relatives but only injured him he no longer gets to kill someone from murder's family (one murder+one injury is more then one murder). He can not also kill someone by delivering several injuries - he has to do it in one clean shot. If he fails family no longer has a right for murdering relatives of actual perpetrator. However, it doesn't mean that the debt is paid - in those cases village elders were deciding what should be done: rest of the debt could be paid with money or livestock.

However, if the avenger was a good shooter and he managed to kill the murderer's relative with one clean shot he still had some things to do. He had to approach the body, lie it flat on the back and place his weapon near his head. He also had to tell the closest person that is a "blood avenger" and that he took the blood that the other family owned his family and then he was allowed to leave. For negligence of those principles he could incur other blood debt - this time ti his own family.

My romanian trips - Vulcanii Noroioşi

During my stay in Bucharest I've heard alot about interesting mud volcanoes that were located apparently really close to the city that I was living in. I've asked some friends that have already been there about directions and I took a train from Bucharest to the town Buzau, from where we were supposed to go with a local train to the small village of Berca.

After we've got to the Berca, we were quite lost. We were in the middle of nowhere, without any clue where to go. We roamed around for a while until we've encountered some middle-aged romanian people. Fortunately, one friend of mine and I knew romanian so we where able to ask those people for directions. They told us that those mud vulcanous where around 20 km away and there's no way to reach them on foot. Moreover I was leaving the train in such a rush, that I've left my backpack there where I had food for entire day of traveling.

Magnificent flags of Berca

Luckily those local people were so hospitable that they offered us a lift to the volcanoes. Moreover, they gave me food and water when I told them about losing my backpack. They were eight of us, so we all wouldn't be able to fit in a one car, fortunatley they had a pick-up. The three friends of mine and I got to the pick-up trunk and we were on our way!

Getting closer..

When we got there we've eaten something in the mountain shelter and then we left for the volcanoes. On our way we've bought some homemade liquor from local shepard and provided with the booze we were ready to see some romanian nature!

After reaching the volcanoes I was so thrilled with their unspeakable beauty that I didn't pay attention where I was stepping. I thought that the only dangerous places are vulcanos themself. As you can predict I was wrong. When I relalized what I had done I was already up to my ankles in the mud. Involuntarily I wanted to go foward in order to get out of mud and then I lost my balance (legs where stuck in mud) and I fell down. Fortunately my hand landed on a relatively clean place and I didnt fall entirely in mud - only my hands and boots where got dirty.

After visiting the volcanoes I've clean myself up with some water, and we walked to the closest road to catch a bus for Buzau. From there we took a train back to Bucharest.

Albanian sworn virgins

Albanian sworn virgins are women who take a vow of chastity and wear male clothing in order to live as men in the patriarchal northern Albanian society. To a lesser extent, the practice exists, or has existed, in other parts of the western Balkans, including Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Dalmatian hinterland (Croatia) and Bosnia.

The tradition of sworn virgins are part of albanian code of conduct - the Kanun. 

Under the Kanun women are stripped of many human rights. They cannot smoke, wear a watch, or vote in their local elections. They cannot buy land, and there are many jobs they are not permitted to hold. There are even establishments that they cannot enter. The practice of sworn virginhood was first reported by missionaries, travelers, geographers and anthropologists who visited the mountains of northern Albania in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A woman becomes a sworn virgin by swearing an irrevocable oath, in front of 12 village or tribal elders, to practice celibacy. Then she is allowed to live as a man and may dress in male clothes, use a male name, carry a gun, smoke, drink alcohol, take on male work, act as the head of a household (for example, living with a sister or mother), play music and sing, and sit and talk socially with men. A woman can become a sworn virgin at any age, either to satisfy her parents or herself.  Breaking the vow was once punishable by death, but it is doubtful that this punishment is still carried out now. Many sworn virgins today still refuse to go back on their oath because their community would reject them for breaking the vows. However it is sometimes possible to take back the vows if the sworn virgin has finished her obligations to the family and the reasons or motivations which enabled her to take the vows are no longer current. 

There are many reasons why a woman would have wanted to take this vow, and observers have recorded a variety of motivations. One woman said she became a sworn virgin in order to not be separated from her father, and another in order to live and work with her sister. Several were recorded as saying they always felt more male than female. Some hoped to avoid a specific unwanted marriage, and others hoped to avoid marriage in general. Becoming a sworn virgin was the only way for women whose families had committed them as children to an arranged marriage to refuse to fulfil it, without dishonoring the groom's family and risking a blood feud. It was the only way a woman could inherit her family's wealth, which was particularly important in a society in which blood feuds resulted in the deaths of many male Albanians, leaving many families without male heirs.  It is also likely that many women chose to become sworn virgins simply because it afforded them much more freedom than would otherwise have been available in a patrilineal culture in which women were secluded, sex-segregated, required to be virgins before marriage and faithful afterwards, betrothed as children and married by sale without their consent, continually bearing and raising children, constantly physically laboring, and always required to defer to men, particularly their husbands and fathers, and submit to being beaten.

A widow without sons has traditionally had few options in Albania: she could return to her birth family, stay on as a servant in the family of her deceased husband, or remarry. With a son or daughter who became sworn virgin, she could live out her life in the home of her adulthood, in the company of her child. 

Prevalence The practice has died out in Dalmatia and Bosnia, but is still carried out in northern Albania and to a lesser extent in Macedonia. The Socialist People's Republic of Albania did not encourage women to become sworn virgins. Women started gaining legal rights, coming closer to equaling men in social status. By the time the communist government fell in Albania, women had as many legal rights as men, especially in the central and southern regions. It is only in the northern region that many families still live within the traditional patriarchal way. Currently there are between forty and several hundred sworn virgins left in Albania, and a few in neighboring countries. Most are over fifty years old. It used to be believed that the sworn virgins had all but died out after 50 years of communism in Albania, but recent research suggests that may not be the case, instead suggesting that the current increase in feuding following the collapse of the communist regime could encourage a resurgence of the practice.

Albanian Customary Law

For most Europeans the concept of law is really easy to explain: for majority it is understand as statutory law, a set of rules estabilished by state that they have to obey under the threat of some kind of punishment. In that case the legislator is the state itself and the country's government

establishes rlues that pepole living under it's jurisdicion must obey. This understanding of law is quite obvious for most of today's Europeans and, in different variants, it has spread almost on the entire continent.

It there any other form of law then the one established by state then?

Before the people were conected under the juristiction of first govermental institutions that forced their rules upon then they where gathering in smaller comunities. To establish a order among those groups of people they needed some rules that everyone had to obey. The basic principles of coexistance where dictated by customary law that was based on the tradition and history of a given group. This form of law didn't need any type of any institutional backing - it apllied to any person that wanted to be a part od a given social group. 

As the world developed, they were fewer, and fewer places where traditional law survived. This type of jurisdiction preserved in places that were harder to reach for country's administration such as islands, deserts and.... mountains.

In today's Albania there are still some mountaionous regions where people practice traditional law in place of that regulated by state. Esspecialy in the northen part of the country people often  find customary law even more efficient. Due to country's poor comunication it's sometimes really hard for country's officials to reach some mountanioes regions. Moreover, customary law is deeply rooted in Albania's tradition. It is belived that it is practiced in the country in almost the same formt since almost XV century. The set of albanian traditional laws is called Kanunu i Leke Dukagjinit (eng. The Code of Leke Dukagjini, or simply the Kanun) and it regulates every aspect of life. The code contains many controversal principles such as the one that regulates the blood feud or the practice of sworn virgins.