Today, we went to a fortified church.  These churches were surrounded by high walls, often up a steep hillside.  In case of attack, the town’s folk could go to the church and be protected.  At this first fortified church we saw a little house with two rooms where couples contemplating divorce were locked into for two weeks.  One bed, one table, small quarters.  They worked it out – or killed someone is my guess.  Food and well water would have sustained the people during a siege.  At a later fortified church, apartment like housing was built for every family in the town.  Even today, food is stored on the church grounds in case of a disaster.  We saw Bram Stoker’s house where he lived in Transylvania.  Toured a beautiful church that is under reconstruction after being burned.  The town has statues of big Emus that are painted…sort of like the Pegasus statues in Dallas…or cows…is it in Chicago?  At some time, the town was famous for their emu farms.  I. Sorry I don’t have the names of the town’s rolling off my tongue…but Romanian is pretty unpronounceable for me…and the spelling has different letters that our alphabet doesn’t have.  I will say that every Romanian town we have been in has been clean, with wide streets and beautiful parks.  And flowers are everywhere.  They are in gardens, pots, hanging baskets, window boxes, in and around churches.  At home this time of year, all the flowers would be cooked…but this country is a-bloom!  One of Romania’s biggest crops is Sunflowers.  Huge fields of them all over.  Now for a little Italian lesson…in Italian, sunflowers are called girasole.  Gira means to turn – where the words gyroscope and gyrate comes from – and sole means sun.  And, in case you don’t know, sunflowers turn to follow the sun during the day.  And, when it rained, the sunflowers all bowed their heavy heads toward earth.  More to come….

Will be telling you about the houses and food later.