topum

The most beautiful Gypsy girl (not in any of the photos in this post) in the Roma community in one of "our" villages got engaged today. She is seventeen. The Roma women put on their best dresses and the whole thing was a huge deal and definitely an event that deserves a separate post later.



The Roma girls are not into subdued colours or a lot of grey. I know very little about fashion but my guess is that Armani would have a massive coronary just looking at this for more than two seconds.



The village was full of colour, singing, dancing and laughter today.



The groom brought a lot of presents for everyone from the bride's village. I got a super wide hand-made leather Gypsy belt and Helga got a huge shawl.

Basically we had a lot of this today here (this is a snippet from an old but still very much loved Moldovan movie by probably the most famous Moldovan director Emil Loteanu about a comparable event):



Whoever said that village life is boring clearly hasn't visited any of our villages. Something new is on everyday here and we often even dream about a bit of boring to sober up properly.

This is not a family with two kids. The kid on the right is a Roma (Gypsy) kid who approached this woman because she was having a pretzel and she gave it away to the kid. The woman's own kid is hanging off her husband's back (you can see the feet dangling).



Roma (do not confuse with Romanian) kids in Romania were awesome. They were so free and always happy and cheerful, roaming the streets on their own full of energy and laughter, super curious about everything and smart too. They are incredibly street smart and can take care of and fend for themselves from a very tender age. Do not mistake one of these kids for a kid as you probably know it, every one of these little fellas can do way more than you would expect.



Miercurea Ciuc, Szekely Land, Transylvania, Romania.

In Moldova

Moldova's and Romania's Roma (Gypsy) villages are home to some of the most hideous architecture I have ever seen. We are going to a Roma wedding in a main Roma town in Moldova soon and I hope to do a detailed report on the famous architecture of the Gypsy Hill.

This house in a small Roma village I drove past today is modest and tasteful compared to the typical palaces on the Hill:

The Roma boys in Transylvania are easily recognisable by their hats, they always have them on. And you cannot miss a Gypsy girl, their dresses and headscarves are very colourful, often to the point of trippy.

In Sibiu, Romania

I am going back home to London for two days tomorrow. After that I will hop over to Copenhagen for my friend's birthday party and then I am coming back to Moldova, we still have a lot of exciting work to do here.

Today we got invited for a Gypsy wedding. The wedding will take place in July in the town of Soroca, which is home to a large Roma community. They live separately from Moldovans there on a "Gypsy Hill" in the town's centre where they build enormous and bizarre houses. There is almost no intermarriage between Roma and Moldovans. We were told that the groom and the bride will be really young, which is traditional for this community. I tried to research this a bit, but not too much, I like to be surprised when I visit places and not know everything in advance. But below is a taster for you (just first one minute is enough). Yes, the guy you see from the beginning of the video is the groom and the girl is his bride. I bet this little dude will be the coolest when he goes back to school after this wedding and will have all the attention of his buddies to tell them about all the things they really wanted to know.



And of course I will be back with pictures from the Gypsy Hill.

We took a road trip through Transylvania last summer. Wow, what a beautiful place! The cultural diversity there is amazing. Germans (Saxons), Hungarians, Romanians, Jews and Roma (Gypsies) have all been living there together for centuries. We met very interesting and unusual people from small and vanishing communities we have never heard about.



Caldurari are a closely knit community of Roma coppersmiths from the Brateiu town in central Transylvania. They still strictly observe the old laws and traditions and do not mix with the larger Roma community from there who they consider 'defiled' Roma that have forgotten the Roma law and have mixed with the Gadjo (non-Gypsies).