The Wood Art Museum in Campulung Moldovenesc

The Wood Art Museum displays a large collection of  wooden objects for daily use in a rural society. All objects show the love and care that went into the making. Some are real works of art.

From all the things that were on display I just want to mention a few. After all visiting a museum and taking pictures (flash is to harsh / without flash you have to use the tripod that you don't carry) is no fun. So, there is the cute little table…

And the chair that made me think of the chairs I saw in the hide out of Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra. I looked up the picture. The chair of the Romanians sure looks a lot more comfortable.....

Chair of Fidel Castro

The mugs of birch bark and the little pot….

The beautiful chest….

      Carvings….

The hammer of an oil press…..

But did you ever see a lock that was completely made out of wood? In this Wood Art Museum you can see how it worked. In “the old times” people locked the house when everybody was out. You locked the house just to show that no one was there. And when somebody wanted to wait for you to come home? Everybody new the key was there above the door anyway…..

The salt mine in Turda

Being afraid of heights means automatically that you are afraid of depths. So I was on “red alert” going into the salt mine at Turdo (Romania). I had no idea what surprises to expect. Just a picture in a guide of something deep down in the mine that to me looked a bit “alien”.  A nice hide out for the Martians. 

At the entrance there is a staircase with (around) 100 steps. Long corridors that shine in the light of the lamps. 

When you touch the walls they feel smooth and wet. In the upper part of the mine (Franz Joseph) there is the altar for the miners that prayed there before going down. 

There is also an old machine to extract the salt and some other rests from the mining times.

An old wooden staircase is covered in salt. 

To go further down you can choose between wooden stairs and two elevators. The first elevator is busy. This means waiting for some time on a wooden platform (partly metal). 

The view was killing. It takes some time, but then you adapt a bit. The urge for taking pictures starts to equal the fear…..  Then you notice that you can walk around the mine on wooden platforms along the walls…..

Finally you get into the “safe” elevator. Don’t think of the depth of about 40 meters underneath this thin metal floor you are standing on. Down at last in the Rudolf mine you discover that there is another elevator….  There is a wonderful view of the Martian space station (some 90 meters below) in the Theresia mine from there. There is the balustrade to lean over……

Yes, after the second elevator you arrive at the space station. It is almost a surrealist experience. A sort of fun park in a mine. 

The lake is 10 meters deep. The view up is astonishing.

Some people complained that there were no salt statues cut out in the mine, "like in Poland"…..  But sure Romania is Romania! I like the mine as it comes. It is fun being there. So different from what I expected. This fantasy space station for the Martians……..

Painting eggs in Romania

One of the most interesting lunches we had in Romania was the one at the house of a lady - Viorica Semeniuc - who is an expert in painting eggs. We first ate a picknick lunch in her garden. The weather was sunny. The white wine was perfect.

Then she came with her very modest utensils. A tin with an electric lamp to heat the wax. Some wooden “pens” with very small pipes at the end. These pipes held the fluid wax to put on the eggs.

The technique is like the Indonesian Batik. You put wax on the parts that should stay unchanged / uncolored. So put on wax and color the egg with one color, put on another layer of wax and paint again in another color….  

  Every layer you put more wax and the pattern gets more intricate. 

Yellow.....

Red.....

Black.......

Finally you warm the egg above the lamp and remove the wax with a cloth.....

This time the result is a colorfull pattern.

Afterwards this demonstration she brought in some very elaborate painted eggs. 

Thanks to Viorica Semeniuc (Moldovita - Romania)

Painting Easter Eggs