Romania

 

From Armenia we took a train across Georgia to Batumi, and a freight ship across the Black Sea to Varna Bulgaria, and a train to Brasov, Sighisoara, and to Cluj Napoka, Romania. Another first class city in Eastern Europe, somewhat like Tbilisi or Yerevan. 

But we also have connections here. Unitarian connections. While we’re Unitarian-Universalists from the US, and I’ve visited with Unitarians in the Khasi Hills in India, the Transylvanian Unitarians are their own branch. 

So let’s back up a few centuries. In the year 0 CE, Christianity begins. In 301 CE it becomes the official religion of Armenia. We visited the church where that started. We call this the Apostolic Church, after the twelve apostles. 

Next came the Council of Nicea in 325, which was centered on figuring out just what was meant by the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, a.k.a. the Trinity. This marked the first major split between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox. 

Skip ahead several centuries, and things go haywire under the Catholics, with Martin Luther nailing his thoughts to the church door in 1517 which begins Lutheranism, followed shortly by Calvin around 1530-40, and in 1568, Francis David openly rejects the Trinity in favor of Unitarian thought. He brings this idea to his people living in Transylvania, which today is part of Romania, but they are really two distinct peoples. Look at a map and you’ll see the Carpathian Mountains make a semi-circle across Romania, with Transylvania on the inside and the rest of Romania on the outside. I’m oversimplifying here, but that’s a good start. Oh, and David and the Unitarians used to be part of Hungary to the West, so they mostly speak Hungarian, but they’re Romanian. I hope this makes sense. Also, Romanian is not Roman, although they are related; and they’re not Roma or Romani, which is completely different, but they live nearby. 

Kristen and I often attend services at Unitarian Universalist Churches in the US, including Durham NH, Bedford MA, Concord MA, and Ann Arbor MI. Several of these churches have official partnerships with churches in Transylvania, and share ideas, supplies, donations, and ambassadors on occasion. 

We knew that our return travels from Armenia back to the US might bring us into or close to Transylvania, so we collected a few contacts before we left. But once we were sure of our route, and of how close some of these Unitarian cities and towns are to the train lines, we knew we had to stop. 

So here we are in Cluj Napoca, Romania. Cluj is a vibrant city, reflecting the transition of commerce and prosperity moving east within Europe, as France, Spain and Germany falter, and Poland, Hungary and Romania rise. Agriculture, clean air, abundant water, and a new focus on tech are driving this.

On Sunday we attend the service in the big Unitarian church a short walk from our AirBnB. It’s all in Hungarian, but with our translation apps, we’re able to follow along quite well, thanks to tech.  Today they’re honoring those in the congregation over 80 years, and the sermon is all about age, respect and the telling of stories and wisdom.

Our contact is Zsolt Elekes, a minister, teacher, student and ambassador between the US and Transylvanian Unitarians. We join him for dinner at a nice restaurant for traditional Romanian cuisine. Very good, and a good time to chat about our travels, his work here, and what ideas we might bring back. Ukraine is right next door, and we’ll be making a donation for them to forward onward. 

For me, this marks a third leg of Unitarianism, as in 2001 I had visited the Unitarians in Meghalaya, India. The three branches are very different, and come out of different origins, but through convergent evolution have come together in mutual support. All three strongly support science and education and freedom of thought. Zsolt showed us around the Unitarian High School where he works, including a one-room natural history museum with stuffed birds and animals, local minerals, fossils of mastodon pieces and other bits of bone, plus their latest acquisition, a butterfly collection. Twas really more of an old fashioned curiosities collection than a proper museum, but it’s available to the students for their study. The next room was for physics, and held a collection of demonstration pieces, to show gyroscopic stability, worm gears, refraction through lenses, manometers, color, microscopes, and other tools a teacher might want for demonstrating principles. 

But for the language barrier and inability to obtain citizenship here, I would put Cluj near the top of cities to move to. It’s in the EU, outstanding transportation, a vibrant and growing economy, wonderful architecture and lots of parks.