Tag Archives: Monastery

Putna in the damp, Part 1

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Wednesday 24 September – The gloomy predictions of the chap on reception – and Accuweather – turned out to be spot on. Yesterday’s sunshine was the merest memory, summer was over, clouds had descended to ground level

and the hotel had taken precautions against there being actual rain.

The forecast was for merely damp but not actually raining this morning and tomorrow afternoon, and the strong likelihood of rain this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Accordingly, we’d made an outline plan to get up and out early today to beat both the weather and the putative invasion of the breakfast room by the bloody tourists in the coach party. (The hotel’s normal breakfast arrangements had been replaced by a buffet, we assume because of the coach party.) Sadly, whoever was planning the coach itinerary seemed to have had the same idea, so when we got down to breakfast, it was still bedlam in the restaurant. We retired for a while and came down again later. Although it was much quieter, it was clear that the hotel staff were well on the back foot when it came to keeping the buffet refreshed. We eventually cobbled together something approaching the requisite sustenance as we watched the coach depart outside.

It was damp but not actually raining as we finished breakfast, so we donned light waterproofs and sallied forth. There were a few items we’d noted as being worth a visit. Because of their religious connotations, calling them “attractions” seemed to me to demean them a bit, so “items of interest” they were. The first one we planned to visit was called Chilia Daniil Sihastru, Daniil Sihastru’s hermitage. Its official opening time was 10am so we made our way towards it in a leisurely fashion, so as not to arrive there too early. En route, we passed a, or perhaps the, local market, where mainly food produce was on offer, although there were a couple of non-food stalls as well.

We had both had the Romanian “cabbage salad” at various restaurants during our time here. I was a little surprised on getting my first one to see that its ingredients were limited to one – cabbage – my normal expectation is that a salad is a varied thing, but there you go. Anyway, cabbage salad is definitely A Thing in Romania, and we were delighted to find that one stall had a machine for making it.

That is really quite an industrial-strength mechanism for making a bit of salad, which underlines the popularity of the dish here. The state of the guy’s van also demonstrates the ubiquity of the vegetable. The market was a pleasant distraction from the mainstream of today’s litany of religious site visits.

The hermitage is only 1km outside Putna. The thing itself isn’t huge, a tiny chapel hewn from the rock above a cave,

but is sited within a park area with benches and so forth, which contributes to an air of calm about the place. Whilst we were there, it remained locked, but I was able to get a shot through the door

showing a simple interior. Daniil Sihastru lived in the cave beneath for some twenty years of his life, in the mid 1400s, creating the chapel above; later he withdrew to the monastery in Voroneț. Whilst we were there, a handful of other people came to visit the site, one of whom was dressed in monk’s garb. As he left, he did the traditional Orthodox Romanian obesiance of three bows and crossing himself.  The religious import of the place stems from the fact that Daniil Sihastrul (Romanian for “Daniel the Hesychast”) was a renowned Moldavan Orthodox spiritual guide, advisor of Stephen the Great, and (latterly) hegumen of Voroneț Monastery. He is regarded as a saint and it was on his advice that Stephen the Great built the Putna monastery.

I’m learning all sorts of religious vocabulary on this trip. “Hesychasm” is a contemplative monastic tradition among the Eastern Christian traditions of the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches in which stillness (hēsychia) is sought through uninterrupted prayer to Jesus. (I have to say that when I pray to Jesus, it’s rarely in a moment of stillness.)  “Hegumen” is the title for the head of a monastery in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, or an archpriest in the Coptic Orthodox Church, similar to the title of abbot. Stay tuned for more arcane religious terminology, by the way.

After the hermitage, we headed back towards downtown Putna, with the next objective being further exploration of the handsome parish church we’d passed yesterday. In doing so, we passed a selection of the interesting and attractive houses in the village.

A short cut took us towards the church, past a promising entry in Google Maps, MishuCoffee, a small but perfectly-formed establishment where we stopped for a flat white. Another customer, a local, on hearing our Englishness, started chatting with us. He had worked for seven years in Wembley, “in construction” (i.e. a Romanian builder) and we had a pleasant few minutes talking to him before moving on.

The parish church seemed to be closed, but actually we were also interested in a building in its graveyard, a wooden church, formally dedicated to “Dragoş Vodă”, according to some commentaries the founder of Moldavia, who reigned in the middle of the 14th century.

It is dated from the early years of the 15th century, and tradition has it that it was brought by Stephen the Great from Volovăţ. It is the oldest and only medieval wooden church known in Romania. It was closed, so all we could do was to peek in through the windows.

The graveyard itself is a thing of beauty.

The parish church was closed, so we didn’t get a chance to look in, and instead moved on to the monastery, intent on looking inside the museum and the chuch there.

En route, we of course passed through the white portal that we first saw yesterday, but today stopped to look in more detail at the memorial beside it.

The memorial, consecrated in 2018, commemorates the Fântâna Albă massacre, which took place on 1 April 1941 in Northern Bukovina, which had been forcibly occupied by the Soviet Union under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939. A number (disputed but hundreds if not thousands) of Romanian villagers were killed by Soviet Border Troops as they attempted to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania near the village of Fântâna Albă (now Staryi Vovchynets in Ukraine). Many more of the area’s villagers were subsequently deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

In the monastery area itself, the church is an active one; there had been a service going on whilst we were there yesterday

and thus we couldn’t sensibly have gone in anyway. So, today we had the chance. Entering the doors takes you into the narthex – another new word for me. A narthex is the vestibule of a Christian church, typically located between the main door and the central nave. Historically, it served as a place for unbaptized people to stand and listen to the service, as they were not allowed in the nave.

This narthex is spectacular!

As you might infer from the state of the narthex, the church itself is a remarkable place.

It includes the tombs of Stephen the Great and his wife

The church is rather darker than the pictures show – the camera has allowed me to bring out the colours from the gloom.

We also went into the museum there. As one would expect, it has many devotional items on display: elaborately worked crosses;

icons;

a display of hand-crafted gospels from the 15th and 16th centuries, inscribed and illuminated on parchment;

and some extraordinarily elaborate embroidery work.

Here is a detail from the right-hand one above, which dates from 1510.

It’s astonishing to contemplate how something so elaborate, intricate and finely-crafted could come into being – the work of just three monks.

As you exit the museum, you see a pretty much life-size protrait of Stephen the Great himself.

That’s a fitting way to exit the museum, after which we headed back to the hotel, via a mini-market to buy some milk for the mugs of Twinings finest Earl Grey which would sustain us through the rainy afternoon to the point where we could decently go for an aperitif (slightly modified by the fact that we had drunk all their tonic yesterday, so it was gin and bitter lemon instead) and dinner. The rain had arrived during the afternoon, so our plan thus far is intact. Let’s see what tomorrow afternoon brings….

Zărnești to Putna – getting to the start of Phase III

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Tuesday 23 September 2025 – The start of the third and final phase of this trip was reached via a long car journey, as we had to travel 400km to the northernmost reaches of Romania. The delightful but incomprehensible Ioana had set up our breakfast for us prompt at 8am and so we had our various egg orders there for us, amid quite a spectacular spread, including little sausages, slices of bigger sausages, ham, various cheeses, tomatoes, cucumber, chicken goujons and some croquettes of some description. There was also bread and jam, so we were able to construct ourselves toast and tea to go with the eggs, and we left the rest of the spread substantially untouched. The lounge area is a nice place to breakfast in, anyway.

Prompt at 9, our driver arrived to whisk us away. He could speak English, but largely chose not to, instead concentrating on getting us to Putna, our destination, as efficiently as he could, allowing for three stops for breaks on the way. The stops were all at petrol stations, and I noticed with a little amusement the slightly old-fashioned nature of these places. They still offered squeegees at the pumps to clean the windscreens,

and the shops offered things that no self-respecting British service station offers any more:

stuff that motorists might actually need, like oil and windscreen wipers. One of the service stations had a guard cat.

On the way over, I contented myself with reading the papers (and dozing – Ed), and Jane tried to capture photos of the passing landscape – not easy when you’re whizzing past it at 80kph.

To start with, the scenery was distinctly agricultural,

as we were crossing a large (and, as you can see, very flat) plain. Corn or maize was a major crop, as were sunflowers, which, having flowered, were patiently lined up in the fields awaiting their doom.

Another major crop was potatoes, as evidenced by this not untypical lorry load.

There were also churches, of course,

various roadside decorations

and many interesting buildings, which were of course, vanishing into the distance behind as soon as one realised that there might have been a photo there if we’d been able to stop. Jane did register that several roofs featured the same sort of wooden tiling that had adorned the barn we’d seen as we left Măgura.

The towns featured, as one might expect, some unattractive communist-era apartment blocks, but Jane particularly noted that the rural villages appeared to have escaped unscathed; there were lots of buildings of wood or brick, which (while in some cases in need of renovation) displayed wonderful architectural details and ornamentation – including crosses on every possible high point – which we imagine might have characterised pre-communist Romania.

One signpost we passed outlined why we were headed on this long journey.

Keep reading. All will become clear in good time.

We got to Putna, which, incidentally, is less than 10km away from the border with Ukraine, at around 4.30pm and checked into our accommodation, the Pensiunea Mușatinii.

With time to kill before dinner, we decided we’d go for a walk. Obviously. The nice man on reception applauded this move on the basis that today’s nice summer weather was emphatically going to end tomorrow. So, off we went, with the main objective being, of course, to visit what Putna is best known for whilst the sun was shining,

En route, we passed the village’s very handsome church

and some attractive houses.

We puzzled a little as to what the thing was outside the house above – Jane had noted several of them in the towns and villages that we’d passed through. We walked by another one

and closer examination showed that it was a well.

Soon, we reached the gateway to Putnas’s main attraction:

and indeed its rather handsome portal.

In we went, and were greeted by this magnificent building.

This is the church part of Putna’s monastery. The monastery premises house this and several other photogenic corners.

The monastery was founded by Stephen the Great in 1466 and consecrated in 1470 as one of the first and most important monastic establishments of his reign. It houses Stephen’s own tomb along with those of his family and other Moldavian rulers. Over the centuries the monastery has suffered damage from fires, earthquakes and invasions, but it has been repeatedly rebuilt and strengthened, preserving its role as a stronghold of Orthodox faith and Moldavian culture. It’s one of several monasteries for which this area is well-known, among monastery buffs at least, and our plan over the coming days is to visit a few more, each of which has its own story to tell.

We wanted to get a brief look at the monastery while the weather was decent, hence the swift visit today. We got back to the hotel in the nick of time to get dinner before a coachload of bloody tourists arrived to cause utter bedlam.

Tomorrow, as the weather propects are uncertain, we plan to look inside the monastery’s church and museum. We may also get to see some of the other significant buildings around here. You’ll have to come back and find out.

Day 4 – Santiago de Compostela

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Wednesday 1 May 2024 – The target for the day was to retrieve the panzer from its car park spot, use it to get us to Santiago Airport (via A Thing To See that Jane had identified as a diversion for us) and thence be wafted to our hotel in downtown Santiago on a pre-booked taxi.  We achieved much of this, though not entirely without incident.

Our first concern was that someone or something might have damaged the tank in the car park, but all seemed fine when we got to it. The two days’ parking charge was a princely €12, which I’d say is remarkably cheap for parking inside the walls of an ancient Roman city.

The first incident concerned getting out of Lugo.  Whilst we were wandering around, we noticed that there was a huge amount of road maintenance/repair/upgrade work going on.  While I suppose it’s good that crappy old roads are being upgraded, the result looks a bit like this.

It’s a lovely smooth surface, but it seems a bit sterile in the context of the traditional buildings that surround it. The combination of frequent roadworks and such surfaces also means, as we found out, that such a surface gives the tank driver no clue as to where the nearest route might be that would enable him to squeeze out through the walls. Satnavs were of no use, as the brand new roadworks perpetually conflcted with the on-screen directions given.  All in all, it was reminiscent of an episode in the Canary islands when we drove round a town called Arucas for what seemed like several hours trying to find an exit which wasn’t blocked by roadworks.

We made it, eventually, and without any damage to the beemer, thankfully.

So, the Thing To See was next: an ancient temple in the tiny village of Santa Eulalia de Bóveda, a few kilometres off the main drag between Lugo and Santiago. Exactly how ancient seems to be a matter of debate; many sources claim it was Roman, but at least one other I’ve seen talks about it as a Visigoth site. Who knows?  Maybe visiting it might help clarify?

Nope.

The satnav took us along successively narrower roads until it swore we were in the village of Santa Eulalia. We drove very slowly through it on a very narrow road, trying not to run down a beagle which was intent on being friendly. The building which Jane thought might be the temple seemed a bit covered in scaffolding, but there was nowhere to park and no way of turning round to go back and look again to see if that was the temple. Eventually some people, not unconnected with the beagle, came along and Jane had a chat with them, as a result of which we discovered the place was closed today.

Bugger.

Jane had checked that it was open on Wednesdays, but this Wednesday was May 1st, a holiday – International Workers’ Day; or International Non-workers’ Day as it should more properly be called. Anyway, the practical upshot was that our best move would be simply to carry on to Santiago, which we did, along beautifully-surfaced but alarmingly narrow roads and with short but lively debates at each intersection between country lanes as to whether we should believe TomTom or Google Maps’ advice about which was the better route to Satiago airport.

The route we ended up driving along was the road that led through many of the towns that the Camino Francés winds through. So we drove through Medlide and Arzua in some 15 minutes, as opposed to the several hours it took us on foot last Autumn.

From there on, our journey to our hotel in Santiago proceeded smoothly.  Enterprise car rentals agreed that we hadn’t damaged their precious beemer, and Jane persuaded our pre-arranged transport driver to turn up early to take us from the airport into town.  (The driver did a good job of actually coming to find us rather than skulking outside whilst we searched for him).  The taxi was one of these vast van-sized Mercedes people movers, and I have to say I’m glad it was he who was driving – getting through the streets of Santiago old town is not a job for the faint of heart. But he managed it without any crashing, swearing or gesticulation and deposited us outside our hotel.

This is the very fine Mosteiro de San Martiño Pinario, an absolutely vast establishment which was once a monastery and which dwarfs the very substantial cathedral opposite which it stands.

The red blob above is the entrance; the blue blob is where our room is. Ignore the “temporarily closed” – I can vouch it’s open, because I’m currently sitting in the bar, drinking gin served by a very courteous and generous barman. Because it was originally a monastery, the rooms are agreeably monkish; this is the sight that greeted us as we opened the door to our room.

and the room is comfortable enough, but luxurious? Nope.

That’s why I’m writing this in the bar, altogether a more appealing environment for content creation. And I am indeed content.

As one would expect, there are many monasterical touches: stone-floored and wooden-beamed corridors

rows of monkish cells;

cloisters;

(note the Camino sign in the middle);

and agreeable spots for sitting and contemplating.

So we’re well set up for an overnight stay before embarking on the meat of this sojourn in Galicia – the Camino Finisterre. For nostalgic reasons, we did take a stroll through Santiago, to reacquaint ourselves with the cathedral

and opposite it the Pazo de Raxoi, a French neoclassical palace which now serves as the town hall, now free of the scaffolding which disfigured it when we were last here.

We also took a bite of lunch at the Taberna de Fuego Lento, a lively downtown eatery. All this wandering around had to be done paying due respect to the Galician weather which was being very, well, Galician; sunshine one minute and the next…

…one is glad for nearby shelter.

I seem to have found quite a lot to write about in what I had actually expected to be an unremarkable day. It may be a case of displacement activity to stop me thinking too much about tomorrow; as usual, day one of any extended walk always seem to be the tough one, and tomorrow will have its challenges. I will of course write about them so that you can sympathise with my pain, as I’m sure you’re only too certain to do. So be sure to keep an eye on these pages so you can have a good laugh about our exploits.