Don't miss the Merry Cemetery

Today is a good day to mention the place I first heard about on The Hairy Bikers show (series 2, episode "Transylvania Part Two"): a Merry Cemetery in Sapinta (also spelled Sapanta) in the Maramures region of Romania. The bikers thoroughly enjoyed visiting it and called it, if I remember correctly, "a true celebration of life". The gravemarkers illustrate in vivid colors how the buried persons lived or died; brief text summaries follow. Apparently, many are hilarious and visitors leave the cemetery smiling. The place, originally virtually unknown, became one of the officially recognized tourist attractions of Romania. Click here to see the funny gravemarkers, including the above, which I copied to my blog.

Scrubbing graves

Arrrgh.. I am having raspberry tea with some white Bacardi rum in it. Finally, I am getting warm again. I spent two hours of a sunny midday at the cemetery scrubbing the stone on my grandmother's grave, and the temperature did not exceed 9C/48F. Luckily, there was no wind. The grave had not been scrubbed for years, so it was quite a lot of work, rubber gloves, a stiff plastic brush and a special liquid for cleaning stone. Then I sat down to cool down a bit and I got cold, even colder due to the fact that I was wearing rubber Wellingtons with very thin socks.

The cleaning was in preparation for All Saints' Day this weekend. I also left potted flowers, the gorgeous yellow mums you see in the picture, and lights, burning in small red glass containers, on both my grandparents' graves. The cemeteries tend to look really nice at this time of the year, when most people come to commemorate their dead by decorating their graves with flowers and burning lights. On All Saints' Day, it's best to visit a cemetery at dusk to admire a sea of lights and flowers in its full glory.

(It hasn't even been 30 minutes and I have a throbbing headache caused by the rum. And I only used one tablespoon.)