St. George's Day- Transylvania

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Romania | Saturday, August 21, 2010 | 5 photos

I spent last February thru June studying abroad in Budapest, Hungary. I loved living and learning in vibrant Budapest, though I did sometimes grew tired of the non-stop city lifestyle. Thus, a program excursion to rural Transylvania proved to be an incredibly eye-opening and unique experience, especially juxtaposed with a fast-paced existence in Budapest. Located in present-day Romania, much of Transylvania used to be part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire before WWI. Despite Ceausescu’s harsh policies of forced collectivization, I was fortunate enough to observe one of the annual traditions that survived the Communist era. The St. George’s Day sheep milking is an important annual event for the sheep-raising community of Mera. The shepherds and most of the village’s men and sheep spend the night before St. George’s Day living it up in the hills surrounding the village. The next morning, the shepherds don their wool capes and escort the sheep in a processional down to the center of the village. Musicians, children, and other villagers accompany the shepherds on their way down, while on-lookers throw water on the shepherds as a sign of good-luck. When the sheep arrive at the village’s main pen, each family’s sheep are milked and the amount of milk they produce on St. George’s determines the percentage of the flock’s milk they will receive throughout the coming year. I was lucky to be part of this centuries-old tradition, even if only for one year, and was comforted by the existence and persistence of traditional ways of life in communities that have witnessed tremendous political and social uncertainty throughout the last century.