SAPANTA the merry cemetery

The merry cemetery from Sapanta

    The worldwide fame of Sapânta is due to the unique cemetery that has become an important tourist attraction. Some days the throngs of tourists that assault the cemetery with their cameras ready make one wonder if it really is possible to rest in peace here!

The original character of the cemetery is first of all suggested by its name: Cimitirul Vesel that means The Merry Cemetery. This paradoxical name is due to the vivid colours of the crosses and the amusing or satirical epitaphs carved on them. It is said that this joyful attitude towards death is a legacy of the Dacians who believed in the immortality of the soul and that death was only a passage to a better life. They did not see death as a tragic end, but as a chance to meet with the supreme god, Zalmoxis.

The cemetery dates back to the mid-1930′s and is the creation of the local folk artist Stan Ioan Patras, sculptor, painter and poet rolled in one. Patras used all his skills to create this masterpiece. For half a century the master created hundreds of wooden crosses, carved in a distinctive style, so famous today. After his death in 1977, his work has been carried out by his apprentice, Dumitru Pop Tincu.

The material used for the crosses is oak, which, after being properly cut and dried, is carved by hand. On the upper part of each cross is a bas-relief with a scene that describes the life of the deceased. The scenes are simple and naïve in style, but have an undeniable power: they bring back to life the inhabitants of the village and present their main occupation or a relevant aspect (either a virtue or a flaw) of their life. There are women spinning wool or weaving rugs, housewives baking bread, men cutting wood, farmers ploughing the land, shepherds tending their sheep, carpenters working the wood, musicians playing their instruments, butchers chopping lambs, teachers at their desks, alcoholics drinking, and so on.

After the carving is done, the cross is painted. The background colour is a distinctive vivid blue, called “Sapânta blue“. Then the scene and the geometrical and floral decorations of the borders are painted with vibrant colours, yellow, red, white and green.

    No cross is complete without a short poem, a few simple rhymes (between 7 and 17), carved under the image. The epitaphs are written in the local dialect. Sincere, spontaneous and written in the first person, they are messages from the dead persons to the living world. The style is usually lyrical, but ironic or satirical rhymes are also frequent. Each poem contains the name of the deceased and presents briefly an essential aspect of his/her life, personality or habits; they can even talk about things that happened after the death of the person, at the burial for example, or describe how death occurred. Bad habits are humorously presented, but with a deeply moralizing intent.
One famous epitaph is:
Underneath this heavy cross
Lies my mother-in-law poor
Had she lived three days more
I would be here and she would read
You that are passing by
Try not to wake her up
For if she comes back home
She’ll bite my head off
But I will act in the way
That she will not return
Stay here my dear
Mother-in-law.



   Other poems


The grave marker of Stan Ioan Patras,
the creator of the Merry Cemetery



Ever since a little boy
I was called Stan Ion Patras
Please listen to me good folks
What I say are not lies
All the days that I lived
I never wished ill for anyone
But all the good that I could
To whoever asked for it
Oh this poor world of mine

   Other poems:

So hard was my life in it.
Here I rest
And Gheorghe Pop is my name
Like a handsome mountain fir
I was in my parents’ yard
Young and kind-hearted
There were not many like me in the village
When I finished the army
I bought myself a car
And the whole country I toured
Many friends I found
Many friends that were kind
The way I liked
When I was to live my youth
In the earth I rot.
 
   With these images and the short poems, Stan Ioan Pătraş and Dumitru Pop Tincu have managed to recreate the entire village at the cemetery and give the people a second life beyond the grave. The more than 800 painted crosses constitute a vast archive that preserves, carved in wood, the stories of the people of Săpânţa.

NICOLAE CEAUSESCU The dictator



NICOLAE CEAUSESCU



    Nicolae Ceauşescu ( 26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian politician and dictator who was the Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, President of the Council of State from 1967, and President of Romania from 1974 to 1989.

His rule was marked in the first decade by an open policy towards Western Europe, Israel, and the United States, which deviated from that of the other Warsaw Pact states during the Cold War. He continued a trend first established by his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, who had tactfully coaxed the Soviet Union into withdrawing its troops from Romania in 1958.

Ceauşescu's second decade was characterized by an increasingly erratic personality cult, nationalism and a deterioration in foreign relations with the Western powers as well as the Soviet Union. Ceauşescu's government was overthrown in a December 1989 revolution, and he and his wife were executed following a televised and hastily organised two-hour court session. One of the executioners later said: "it wasn’t a trial, it was a political assassination in the middle of a revolution."

  
     Early life and career

   Born in the village of Scornicesti, Olt Contry, Ceauşescu moved to Bucharest at the age of 11 to work in the factories. He was the son of a peasant . He joined the then-illegal Communist Party of Romania in early 1932 and was first arrested, in 1933, for agitating during a strike. He was arrested again, in 1934, first for collecting signatures on a petition protesting the trial of railway workers and twice more for other similar activities. These arrests earned him the description "dangerous communist agitator" and "active distributor of communist and anti-fascist propaganda" on his police record. He then went underground, but was captured and imprisoned in 1936 for two years at Doftana Prison for anti-fascist activities.



Arrested in 1933, when he was 15 years old
for "active distribution of communist and
anti-fascist propaganda

   While out of jail in 1940, he met Elena Petrescu, whom he married in 1946 and who would play an increasing role in his political life over the years. He was arrested and imprisoned again in 1940. In 1943, he was transferred to Targu Jiu internment camp where he shared a cell with Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, becoming his protégé. After World War II, when Romania was beginning to fall under Soviet influence, he served as secretary of the Union Communist Youth (1944–1945). After the Communists seized power in Romania in 1947, he headed the Ministry of Agriculture, then served as Deputy Minister of the Armed Forces under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. In 1952, Gheorghiu-Dej brought him onto the Central Committe months after the party's "Muscovite faction" led by Ana Pauker had been purged. In 1954, he became a full member of the Politburo and eventually rose to occupy the second-highest position in the party hierarchy.

   Leadership of Romania

      Three days after the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in March 1965, Ceauşescu became first secretary of the Romanian Workers Party. One of his first acts was to change the name of the party to The Romanian Communist Party, and declare the country the Socialist Republic of Romania rather than a People s Republic. In 1967, he consolidated his power by becoming president of the State Council.
Initially, Ceauşescu became a popular figure in Romania and also in the Western World, due to his independent foreign policy, challenging the authority of the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, he ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact (though Romania formally remained a member); he refused to take part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, and actively and openly condemned that action. Although the Soviet Union largely tolerated Ceauşescu's recalcitrance, his seeming independence from Moscow earned Romania maverick status within the Eastern Bloc.


The presidential couple is
received by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham
Palace in June 1978



During the following years Ceauşescu pursued an open policy towards the United States and Western Europe. Romania was the first Communist country to recognize West Germany, the first to join the International Monetary Fund, and the first to receive a US President, Richard Nixon. In 1971 Romania became a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Romania and Yugoslavia were also the only East European countries that entered into trade agreements with the European Economic Community before the fall of the Communist bloc.



Meeting between US
 president Richard Nixon, US vice president Gerald Ford
and Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1973



A series of official visits to Western countries (including the US, France, United Kingdom, Spain) helped Ceauşescu to present himself as a reforming Communist, pursuing an independent foreign policy within the Soviet Bloc. Also he became eager to be seen as an enlightened international statesman, able to mediate in international conflicts and to gain international respect for Romania.Ceauşescu negotiated in international affairs, such as the opening of US relations with China in 1969 and the visit of Egyptian president Anwar Sadad to Israel in 1977. Also Romania was the only country in the world to maintain normal diplomatic relations with both Israel and the PLO.

   

      Foreign debt

    Ceauşescu's political independence from the Soviet Union and his protest against the invasion of Czechoslowakia in 1968 drew the interest of Western powers, who briefly believed he was an anti-Soviet maverick and hoped to create a schism in the Warsaw Pact by funding him. Ceauşescu did not realise that the funding was not always favorable. Ceauşescu was able to borrow heavily (more than $13 billion) from the West to finance economic development programs, but these loans ultimately devastated the country's finances. In an attempt to correct this, Ceauşescu decided to repay Romania's foreing debts. He organised a referendum and managed to change the constitution, adding a clause that barred Romania from taking foreign loans in the future. The referendum yielded a nearly unanimous "yes" vote. In the 1980s, Ceauşescu ordered the export of much of the country's agricultural and industrial production in order to repay its debts. The resulting domestic shortages made the everyday life of Romanians a fight for survival as food rationing was introduced and heating, gas and electricity black-outs became the rule. During the 1980s, there was a steady decrease in the living standard, especially the availability and quality of food and general goods in stores. The official explanation was that the country was paying its debts and people accepted the suffering, believing it to be for a short time only and for the ultimate good.

The debt was fully paid in summer 1989, shortly before Ceauşescu was overthrown, but heavy exports continued until the revolution in December.

    Tensions
   By 1989, Ceauşescu was showing signs of complete denial of reality. While the country was going through extremely difficult times with long bread queues in front of empty food shops, he was often shown on state TV entering stores filled with food supplies, visiting large food and arts festivals, while praising the "high living standard" achieved under his rule.
Special contingents of food deliveries would fill stores before his visits, and even well-fed cows would be transported across the country in anticipation of his visits to farms. In at least one emergency, he inspected (and approved) a display of Hungarian produce, which apart from some corn and several melons, was largely constructed of painted plastic and/or polystyrene. Meanwhile, staples such as flour, eggs, butter and milk were difficult to find and most people started to depend on small gardens grown either in small city alleys or out in the country. In late 1989, daily TV broadcasts showed lists of CAPs ( collective farms) with alleged record harvests, in blatant contradiction to the shortages experienced by the average Romanian at the time.
Some people, believing that Ceauşescu was not aware of what was going on in the country, attempted to hand him petitions and complaint letters during his many visits around the country. However, each time he got a letter, he would immediately pass it on to members of his security. Whether or not Ceauşescu ever read any of them will probably remain unknown. It was common knowledge that people attempting to hand letters directly to Ceauşescu risked adverse consequences, courtesy of the Securitate. People were strongly discouraged from addressing him and there was a general sense that morale had reached an overall low.
   
        Revolution

    Ceauşescu's regime collapsed after a series of violent events in Timisoara and Bucharest in December 1989. In November 1989, the XIVth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) saw Ceauşescu, then aged 71, re-elected for another 5 years as leader of the PCR.

     Timişoara
     Demonstrations in the city of Timişoara were triggered by the government-sponsored attempt to evict Laszlo Tokes, an ethnic Hungarian pastor, accused by the government of inciting ethnic hatred. Members of his ethnic Hungarian congregation surrounded his apartment in a show of support.
Romanian students spontaneously joined the demonstration, which soon lost nearly all connection to its initial cause and became a more general anti-government demonstration. Regular military forces, police and Securitate fired on demonstrators on 17 December 1989. On 18 December 1989, Ceauşescu departed for a visit to Iran, leaving the duty of crushing the Timişoara revolt to his subordinates and his wife. Upon his return on the evening of 20 December, the situation became even more tense, and he gave a televised speech from the TV studio inside Central Committee Building (CC Building), in which he spoke about the events at Timişoara in terms of an "interference of foreign forces in Romania's internal affairs" and an "external aggression on Romania's sovereignty".
The country, which had no information of the Timişoara events from the national media, learned about the Timişoara revolt from western radio stations such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and by word of mouth. On the next day, 21 December, a mass meeting was staged. Official media presented it as a "spontaneous movement of support for Ceauşescu", emulating the 1968 meeting in which Ceauşescu had spoken against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces.
  
     Overthrow  


Nicolae Ceauşescu flees Bucharest
by helicopter on 22 December 1989



   The mass meeting of 21 December, held in what is now Revolution Square, degenerated into chaos. The image of Ceauşescu's uncomprehending expression as the crowd began to boo and heckle him remains one of the defining moments of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. The stunned couple (the dictator and his wife), failing to control the crowds, finally took cover inside the building, where they remained until the next day. The rest of the day saw an open revolt of the Bucharest population, which had assembled in University Square and confronted the police and army at barricades. The unarmed rioters, however, were no match for the military apparatus concentrated in Bucharest, which cleared the streets by midnight and arrested hundreds of people in the process. Nevertheless, these seminal events are regarded to this day as the de facto revolution.



Although the television broadcasts of the "support meeting" and subsequent events had been interrupted, Ceauşescu's reaction to the events had already been imprinted on the country's collective memory. By the morning of 22 December, the rebellion had already spread to all major cities. The suspicious death of Vasile Milea, the defence minister, was announced by the media. Immediately thereafter, Ceauşescu presided over the CPEx (Political Executive Committee) meeting and assumed the leadership of the army. He made a desperate attempt to address the crowd gathered in front of the Central Committee building. This was rejected by the rioters who forced open the doors of the building, by now left unprotected, obliging the Ceauşescus to flee by helicopter.

During the course of the revolution, the western press published estimates of the number of people killed by the Securitate in attempting to support Ceauşescu and quash the rebellion. The count increased rapidly until an estimated 64,000 fatalities were widely reported across front pages. The Hungarian military attaché expressed doubt regarding these figures, pointing out the unfeasible logistics of killing such a large number of people in such a short period of time. After Ceauşescu's death, hospitals across the country reported an actual death toll of less than one thousand, and probably much lower than that.

 
   Death

  

Ceauşescu and his wife Elena fled the capital with Emil Bobu and Manea Manescu and headed, by helicopter, for Ceauşescu's Snagov residence, from where they fled again, this time for Targoviste. Near Târgovişte they abandoned the helicopter, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's air space. The Ceauşescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually turned over to the army. On Christmas Day, 25 December, the two were sentenced to death by a military court on charges ranging from illegal gathering of wealth to genocide, and were executed in Târgovişte. The video of the trial shows that, after sentencing, they had their hands tied behind their backs and were led outside the building to be executed.



Ceauşescus executed



     The Ceauşescus were executed by a firing squad consisting of elite paratroop regiment soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cirlan, while reportedly hundreds of others also volunteered. The firing squad began shooting as soon as they were in position against a wall. The firing happened too soon for the film crew covering the events to record it. After the shooting, the bodies were covered with canvas. The hasty trial and the images of the dead Ceauşescus were videotaped and the footage promptly released in numerous western countries. Later that day, it was also shown on Romanian television.

Nicolae Ceauşescu's grave in Ghencea Cemetery

   The Ceauşescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on 7 January 1990.



   Their graves are located in Ghencea cemetery in Bucharest. They are buried on opposite sides of a path. The graves themselves are unassuming, but they tend to be covered in flowers and symbols of the regime. Some allege that the graves do not, in reality, contain their bodies. As of April 2007, their son VALENTIN CEAUSESCU has lost an appeal for an investigation into the matter. Upon his death in 1996, the elder son, NICU, was buried nearby in the same cemetery. According to Jurnalul National, requests were made by the Ceauşescus' daughter ZOIA and by supporters of their political views to move their remains to mausoleums or to purpose-built churches. These have been denied by the government. On 21 July 2010, forensic scientists exhumed the bodies of Nicolae and Elena to perform DNA tests. Later it was determined that they were indeed the remains of Nicolae and Elena.







ABOUT DANUBE DELTA



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    The Danube Delta romanian Delta Dunării; is the second largest river delta in Europe, after the Volga Delta, and is the best preserved on the continent. The greater part of the Danube Delta lies in Romania(Tulcea county), while its northern part, on the left bank of the Chilia arm, is situated in Ukraine (Odessa OBLAST). The approximate surface is 4152 km², of which 3446 km² are in Romania. If the lagoons of Razim-Sinoe (1015 km² of which 865 km² water surface; situated in the south, but attached to the Danube Delta from geological and ecological perspectives, as well as being the combined territory of the World Heritage Site) are to be added, the considered area of the Danube Delta grows to 5165 km².





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       Distributaries of the Danube

  

The Danube branches into three main distributaries into the delta, Chilia, Sulina, and Sfantul Gheorghe (Saint George). The last two branches form the Tulcea channel, which continues as a single body for several kilometers after the separation from the Chilia. At the mouths of each channel gradual formation of a new land takes place, as the delta continues to expand.Main Distribuitores of Danube

Chilia, in the north, the longest, youngest, and most vigorous, with two secondary internal deltas and one microdelta in full process of formation at its mouth (to Ukraine).Sulina, the central and thus the shortest arm, which consequently led to its extensive use for traffic and severe transformation. At its mouth is located the main port and the single settlement with urban charactersitics of the Romanian part of the delta. Because of the alluvium deposited at its mouth, a channel gradually advancing into the sea (presently it has 10 km), was built in order to protect the navigation.Sfantul Gheorghe (Saint George in English), in the south, is the oldest and more sparsely populated. Its alluvium has led to the creation, beginning with 1897, of the Sacalin islands, which as of today measure 19 km in length

History
  
    Recorded history first noted the Delta under Dacian control before being conquered by the Romans. After invasion by the Goths the region changed hands many times. During the 15th century, the Danube Delta became part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1812, following the Russo T urkish War the borders of Ottoman and Russian Empire were set by Kilia and Old Stambul Channels of Danube, and in 1829 by St George Channel. The Treathy of Paris of 1856, which ended the Crimean War, assigned the Danube Delta to the Ottoman Empire and estabilished an international commission which made a series of works to help navigation. In 1878, following the defeat of Ottoman Empire by Russia and Romania, the border between those two was set by the Kilia and Old Stambul Channels.
In 1991, the Romanian part of the Danube Delta became part of the UNESCO list of Wold Heritage Sites. Around 2,733 km² of the delta are strictly protected areas.
In 1998, under UNESCO,Programme on man and Biosphere the 6264.03 km² of Danube Delta were established as Biosphere Reserve shared by Romania and Ukraine.
Historically, in Romania, part of Danube Delta was marked as a reserve back in 1938.
In Ukraine, the Danube branch of Black Sea State Reserve was established in 1973. In 1981 it was reorganized into Natural Reserve "Danube Fluxes", and in 1998 it was extended into Danube Biosphere Reserve.

the romanian people

• Romania is a friendly country
• The country has a huge potential and is under constant development in all fields
• romania girls are among the most beautiful in the wold
  
  

   

  
  

     Thei are the most famose romanians:

NADIA COMANICI

ILIE  ,,NASTY,, NASTASE

GHEORGHE HAGI

CRISTIAN CHIVU AND ADRIAN MUTU

INNA a romanian sexy singer

If you like mountains, you must come here

 

 

        The Carpathian Mountains or the Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly 1,500 km (932 mi) long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second longest mountain range in Europe (after the Scandinavian Mountains, 1,700 km (1,056 mi)). They provide the habitat for the largest European populations of brown bears, wolves, chamois and lynxes, with the highest concentration in Romania, as well as over one third of all European plant species.

The chain of mountain ranges stretches in an arc from the Czech Republic (3%) in the northwest to Slovakia (17%), Poland (10%), Hungary (4%), Ukraine (11%), Romania (53%) in the east, to the Iron Gates on the River Danube between Romania and Serbia (2%) in the south. The highest range within the Carpathians are the Tatras, on the border of Poland and Slovakia, where the highest peaks exceed 2,600 m (8,530 ft), followed by the Southern Carpathians in Romania, where the highest peaks exceed 2,500 m (8,202 ft).
The Carpathian chain is usually divided into three major parts: the Western Carpathians (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia), the Eastern Carpathians (southeastern Poland, eastern Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania), and the Southern Carpathians (Romania, Serbia).
The most important cities in or near the Carpathians are Bratislava and Košice in Slovakia; Kraków in Poland; Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu and Braşov in Romania; and Miskolc in Hungary

ROMANIA IN EUROPE

    Romania is a country in eastern Europe. 

• Romania is bordered by Ukraine and Moldova in the northeast; Hungary in the west; Serbia and Bulgaria to the south along the Danube River. 
• Romania has a stretch of sea coast on the Black Sea and the eastern and southern Carpathian mountains run through its centre.

       Romania has been a member of NATO since 2004, and is a member of the  European Union.