Voronet - Last Judgment
The Bell Ringer
Email 23 – Suceava. Romania
Overnite train from Sighisoara to Suceava with an early arrival time of 7:30 am. I then took a bus from the train station to the McDonald stop!? The bus does stop very close to a Mc Donald and I decided to wait a few minutes for the 8:00 am opening time. After coffee and apple pie I was ready for the short walk to the hostel. The hostel is run by Monica, a fairly young woman who is a very keen gardener. There over 1000 tulips in her yard plus a many other flowers and vegetables. She is also somewhat of a celebrity as she acted as a guide for Michael Palin (of Monty Python’s fame) tour of the Bucovina Monasteries . Palin wrote a new book about his visit to Eastern Europe and one of the picture shows Monica and Palin. Now of course she will be even more famous after my visit (I hope!).
Suceava is not a very interesting town and the streets and sidewalks are for the most part in a very sorry shape. To make things even worse, they had a water supply problem and they were digging holes all over the street where Monica’s hotel is located. The street and the sidewalks where covered with mud.
The only reason to come here is to use it as a base convenient for visiting the Bucovina Painted Monasteries. Monica would conduct an all-day tour of four of the main monasteries for a total of 100 euros, a substantial sum. But I decided to wait out as woman from Singapore was scheduled to arrive in the evening. During the day a couple showed to get information about the guided tour, then they left, then they came back later and said they were interested in Monica’s tour. I just know they left to try to find a better deal. So, Monica scheduled the trip for the next day. Later that day Monica got a call from the Singapore woman who wanted to be picked up at the station? I could not understand why, until the woman showed up with an enormous plastic piece of luggage and a handbag. I was wondering what she might be carrying. I found later that this little woman not only carried most of her food with her (noodles of course plus some other stuff), but also some kitchen’s utensils and even one of those electric carafe to heat up water for coffee or tea! I could barely lift the plastic luggage. It is a good thing that she is only travelling for a few weeks!
The woman also decided to join the next day visit to the monasteries. This made this all-day trip a very reasonable 25 euro each.
We left around 9:00 am under a grey ski and one of those light but persistent rain that would last the whole day .It wasn’t the ideal conditions to take picture but it wasn’t too bad. The Painted Monasteries are very beautiful and Monica is a great guide. We stopped at a restaurant and I had one of my best vegetarian meal so far in Eastern Europe! Mashed aubergine, a white bean puree, a stir-fried mix of mushroom and other veggies, a large fancifully sliced tomato, and a dark beer. All very well presented meal at a very reasonable price. All and all a very nice all-day trip. Four monasteries in one day is enough, as the painted motives for the most part a basically similar in all monasteries. They all of their outside walls painted as well as the inside walls. You can expect that the largest painting (just like in the Sistine Chapel in Rome) will be the Last Judgment where the good people a resurrected and the other go permanently in Hell! The rest of the paintings represent the stories of Christianity. It is not really know why the Bucovina Monasteries have most of their frescoes painted on the outside walls. Not enough space inside maybe?
One of the monasteries as one of its wall mostly unpainted. The story is the painter fell off the scaffolding and killed himself. They took this as some sort of a message and no other painter dare to continue the work.
A very worth while visit. Next Kamayavets - Podilskyy in Ukraine.
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