Preparatory visit, 15th May. Report 1.

A short visit in May to start preparing the workshop. Her you find some first impression that we had when we`ve seen the place.

Participants: Bálint, Zsófi, Attila (driver), Tamás (interpreter)

See photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/juhaszbalint/RosiaMontana#

You can not be in Roşia Montană without knowing about the Gold Corporation and the mine issue, even if by some surprising circumstances the information wave of the media avoided you. First of all, there are the mountains with pieces missing here and there. The actual mining of gold hasn’t started yet, but there are parts of the mountains bit off, maybe for taking samples or for marking the area.

There is not a soul on the street. It seems as if the buildings were living creatures like the people: you can see young ones, buildings in the prime of life but also elderly, tumbling and ruined. Some of them are surrounded by red and white bands like a shroud. You can only tell that a building is dangerous when it is already caved in somewhere. There are houses that are still standing but in the inside they are dead, they should get a shroud. It is wiser not to enter but a caring hand locked them up. Spying through the broken windows you can see dust, building debris, lonely wires and sometimes artistically painted walls.

Whether they are living or dead, the houses emit information. A little brown plate with a white rhombus. Orange or green plates with signs. Huge banners and information boards, “Art relic”, “We are here”, “Property of XY” and who knows what else. Secret codes that probably have a very important meaning if they are posted so many times with such huge letters.

I wonder whether the meaning these is secret as well for those who live here. Do these signs help them orientate through the labyrinth of interests and opinions? Do they know who is friend and who is enemy? Or in the contrary: are these plates the incomprehensible and blurry signs of one deeper system which lies behind the normal surface of things? They belong to somebody who desperately wants to transmit something and uses the village as a writing board for his/her message? Maybe the author of the two types of signs is indeed the same person? To whom is the message addressed?

Our first stop is the pub of course, this seems to be the most logical step. The place doesn’t have the appearance of a catering unit. It looks rather like a tumble-down shop built together with an even more battered apartment. There are three or four unarranged tables, every one of them is a different type. Lace curtains hang on the small windows. It feels exactly as when somebody uninvited enters a dull private party. The melancholic beer drinking guests are sitting at two of these tables. At first glance they look unemployed. There is a freezing silence and some cockeyed looks. The bartender lady is not so inviting either. We sit there for twenty awkward minutes. It is raining outside. Not too heavily, but persistently. We don’t really dare to speak even among ourselves. What if they understand Hungarian? The worst is that we are not welcomed with curiosity nor with kind hospitality. There is an elderly man sitting holding lilac in his hands. He seems nice and he is looking quite friendly at as. But he doesn’t talk either. We drink our coffee and choose the rain instead. David Hasselhoff in his primes smiles down at us.

The first place where they speak to us is at the hostel-like place at the lower end of the village. Surprisingly the owners are young. At first they look like environment protecting volunteers (but they are not). They are friendly but suspicious until we tell them who we are and where we come from. When we ask them about the mine project and the point of view of the villagers, they only say: “Everybody has the right to think what they want. But there is no war here, or anything of that sort, we have to live together.” We can tell of course from the way they speak about the four wheel drive car of the Gold Corporation or about the blue uniform of their employees what their opinion might be (and of course they have the right to think what they want). They scare us when they are saying that the villagers are reserved and tired of questions and inquiry. (Our following experiences don’t seem to verify this statement. Everybody is quite friendly and communicative. This might be of course because of the season and we will have to fight more for their attention in the summer.) To tell the truth I didn’t expect to meet young people, especially not ones who think that it is better to live in Roşia Montană then elsewhere (actually when I tried to ask for their reasons, they somewhat fend off the question). The slogan of the day will be: we have to look for Eugene who might be able to host us since his house is bigger than theirs. We are naive to say after the unclear navigation: no worries, we will find him.

After our first unsuccessful try to find Eugene we ask for help. The woman we find must have been very beautiful ones: she has playful eyes and regular, harmonic, Slavic face. The bad teeth, the dirty-grey hair and the excess weight show that she is an elderly village woman. She is lighthearted and full of energy. She speaks so much that it is impossible to translate, the words are just flowing out of her. Even if you don’t speak Romanian, you can tell that she jumps from one subject to another, and she is not really interested in replies. We are only looking for Eugene, the potential host, but since he did some digging in his own garden we can pass by Gold Corporation on the excuse to get help finding our way. The mysterious Eugene tricked them: he is not supposed to dig, since it is considered mining, but he was digging in his own garden on which they don’t have the authority to ban. But why aren’t we wearing a hat when it is raining? You cannot distinguish a boy from a girl these days, everybody has long hair (maybe she thinks I am a boy which is rather funny than offending). “The drop... is falling...”, says suddenly in Hungarian with almost a perfect accent. Then after a few tries: “Raining, raining, raindrops falling, mice are dancing.” She went to Hungarian preschool, her parents were Hungarians but she doesn’t dare to speak Hungarian anymore because she forgot. Saying it as a compliment, she adds: she tells everybody that Hungarian is the most difficult language, even more difficult than English or German. According to some sources there are no more Hungarian speakers living in Roşia Montană . The language change took place about twenty years ago. Others say that there are about 20-30 elderly people who speak Hungarian. Somebody was very proud when the Catholic priest gave him a compliment for saying the God Our Father so nicely in Hungarian. It seems that the ethnic differences do not matter here even if there are still some Hungarians living here. Raining, raining, raindrops falling, mice are dancing.

Roşia Montană, as small as it is, the surprising it is. Following Eugene’s tracks we are climbing higher and higher and suddenly we find ourselves in front of a lake. Here there are beautiful landscapes, mountains, green, everything you need. There stands a newly renovated building on one shore while gorgeous little benches and barbecue lie on the other. The best in Roşia Montană may be that with whatever expectations you might come here, you will find something controversial to it. In one moment it is an Austrian touristic village, but two streets further it is a warzone, three streets further it is an idyllic open-air ethnographic museum.

At last we find Eugene and it is not really raining anymore. We have to climb up by some kind of brook. The place is inaccessible by car. We tried to call Eugene of course, but he hang up. We don’t give up. We are standing ten minutes in front of his house, then we even enter the garden. And when the discretion really dictates us to leave Eugene and his magic castle, he appears covered with manure. He is almost two meters tall. He waves for us to enter and before even saying a word, with great care he places a time-worn sheep-blanket over a stump, lights his cigarette and invites us to sit down. He is polite without being fawning. His garden is full of strange sculptures. A few years ago there was a sculptors’ meeting in the village (I think it was an initiative objecting to Gold Corporation) and they left their sculptures here. It is wonderfully surrealistic to see this weather-beaten man in peaceful symbiosis with a dozen abstract contemporary works of art: the practical, the realistic and the art for art’s sake, not even aesthetic beauty together.

Raining, raining, raindrops falling, mice are dancing.

(Nádor Zsófi)