Baia Mare is a little city in the county of Maramures. It’s very calmed and relaxed, almost like a big town. But to live here is very nice. I mean you don’t have too many things to do but is a confortable place. In spanish we say “hogareño” that means the it feels like home. But also we are lucky because Baia Mare is in a very historical region, full of nature and things to visit. The last weekend we went in a little trip around Maramures to see some things.

Our visit starte with a wooden monastery. Here, in this region we have a lot of this kind of buildings we went to see one of the most famous. It was very cold but the place had a lot of charm. First of all when I do tourism I have to say that I am very randoms with the things that I like. Sometimes you can find me staring at a street lamp or an specific tile in a building as they are master pieces in a museum. And you can find me passin through famous pictures in the Louvre without stoping to see more than one second. Even that surprised me at the beginning, I could not know what is the pattern that decide if something is interesting to me or not. But some years ago I realised that what atract me in a trip are the things that stimulate mi imagination. So if what I am watching plant a seed in my head to invent an story or make me imagine some surrealistic thing then I like it and I stays in my mind. Well in this case, with the wooden monastery, it happened.

Here you have a picture

A few wooden buildings in the middle of the nature, wit a little but charming church, a big building to live, a garden with a little pond and a precious bandstand with wood scarvings. It is a magical environement and it made me imagine an wizards cult living in this place. Eating in the tables, reading in misterious libraries, doing magical rituals in the bastands, teaching magic in the church, taking care of the forest in the surroundings etc. All of that came to my mind when I was there even with the cold. And that fictional environment still remains in my mind and make me dream about the adventures of little acolits investigating about some tempting demons or an old wizard trying to save the spirit of the forest from a unknown threat or the pound’s god trying to revenge the wizards because they trapped him to use his magic… And I enjoy a lot to imagine all this things when I am travelling 😀

The next stop after the monastery was the comunism memorial. That made me think a lot about the future of the human beeing and the way we behave. Even the best ideals can have a violent behaviour. By the way, that day were the andalusian elections and the fascists won 12 places in the parlament. After a fascists dictatorship for 40 years, the fascists have political parties and have a lot of votes. Very sad. That made me thing that maybe we need more gulags like the one we visited in Maramures. So, I have mixed feeling abput the subject and I think this is not the place to develop it , at least at the moment.

And after a nutritive ciorba (I love ciorba, specially ciorba the burta <3) we went to the merry cementery. Some maybe think that “merry” and “cementery” cannot be together, but I disagree. After some talks with my mentor about death I found out that I am very death positive and because of that I like a lot to visit cementeries. I like how different cultures understand the death and how the build this charming and sacred spaces for the one that passed away. In concrete, this cementery is very colorful, with a lot of crosses with images that reveal how was the life of the deads.

And I loved the fact that they celebrate the life of these people with beautiful tiles that shows their common lifes. Yo can see people reading, working in the country, taking care of animals, cooking… etc. It’s beautuiful how they worship this ordinary things making a puzzle full of life in a place that is full of death. I would like to be buried there. I don’t know what kind of image can I have but yes, is a good place to rest. And also because is very touristic and ususally is full of people. I like the idea of random people coming to visit my tomb just to see and enjoy the environment of the cementery. Of course, this stumulated my imagination too so another stories and feeling came to my mind in this place. Maybe some day I will tell you…

La revedere!