Jones

Humor Monastery (colours: red and brown) was being repaired. 

Signs directed us round the back to the tradesmen’s entrance. 

Holy water was on offer as usual. Later I was to wish I’d filled a flask – surely it’s an excellent hangover cure, ideally alongside a holy bacon sandwich. (Note the spelling, a holey bacon sandwich would just leak ketchup all over you. A normal one makes you feel better for 10 minutes, after which you feel just as bad, but with processed meat regrets. Maybe a holy one prolongs the good feeling all day? I will try to find a nun to oblige with a blessing.)

Still, inside the monastery, the paintings were as fantastic as ever. I’ve focussed on a couple of details here.

On to the first job of the day – a supermarket (Lidl) where we stocked up the supplies in Jones’s fridge / freezer and bought beer and a bottle of red wine for later. (Dramatic foreshadowing – although the red wine will survive the night, other wines, beer, cider and plum liquor may not.) 

We did decide against buying this healthy treat, even though it didn’t have added monosodium glutamate.

Then we found a bankomat to replenish our supply of lei. Romania is certainly more card payment friendly than Germany, but that’s not a massive boast, and the steady influx of painted monasteries was leading to a steady outflux of lei from my wallet.

Fourth order of the day – meet up with Raul and Tina and view the most famous of the painted monasteries – Voroneţ.

Raul is a Romanian who we “met” on Motorhome Fun – he’s a British citizen and lives most of the year in the UK, but has a house near here, and, as luck would have it, his stay there coincided with our trip. Tina is from Wales originally, and has lovely traces of her Welsh accent left.

First things first though – while we introduced ourselves, Flynn had a much needed bath in the river. 

Tractors are banned from the road up to the monastery, so this farmer used the river instead. 

The outside of Voroneţ was badly faded. Tina said she could see a clear difference from just three years ago. 

The far side, away from the sun presumably, had fared a lot better. Voroneţ’s colour is blue, and is of such an unusual shade that the colour itself is actually named after the monastery. It uses lapis lazuli, among other secret ingredients. I’d quite like to redo my bathroom in it, actually, if any painting nuns reading this would like to send in a quote.

The big draw at Voroneţ is the Last Judgement fresco, which fills the entire exterior western wall of the Voroneţ Monastery, and is often judged to be the best of a very large bunch.

Angels at the top roll up the zodiac signs, indicating the end of time, while humanity is brought to judgement in the middle. On the left, St Paul escorts the believers, while a stern Moses takes the nonbelievers on the right. Heaven and the Garden of Eden is on the bottom left, the Resurrection is on the bottom right.

We wandered back through the souvenir stalls…

… and stopped for lunch at a restaurant just outside the monastery. Tina turned out to be a woman after my own heart as she loved the tripe soup, so three of us indulged ourselves in that, while Raul had some delicious roast pork. (Apparently you can buy it already slow-cooked in the shops, so that’s a note for something to try later.)

The tripe soup, Ciorba de Burta, was delicious – creamy, rather than tomatoey like French stews. Here’s the recipe – I’ll definitely be trying this at home.

The weather had set in as fairly grim, with grimmer patches, so Raul & Tina kindly invited us to spend the night outside their house. First stop, Lidl, where we trying to help with supplies for the evening – lots of sausages, kebabs, white wine and a massive cheesecake.

Then we stopped for honey. Spot the light blue trailer behind Raul and me – that is full of beehives, and the owners tow it to wherever the best location is for flowers at that particular time. Mobile bee hives! It was a new one for me. I bought a jar of the mountain flowers variety stuffed with honeycomb – a treat for home.

Flynn finally got to let off some energy in Raul and Tina’s massive garden, but then as ever disgraced himself by chasing a little cat away, and had to be more closely supervised thereafter.

We had a lovely afternoon that turned into a lovely evening drinking white wine / beer according to gender. At one point this came out – delicious and actually tasting of plums, which is pretty rare!

Tina cooked us a fantastic meal, and we went to bed stuffed and happy. What a fantastic evening! The next morning (dramatic foreshadowing) we will not feel quite so lively…