Romania : Part 4 - Day 6 : Astra National Museum

Day 6 of Romanian Drive

Here is a summary of what is spent on Day 6. 

20/9 Day 6: Astra National Museum in Sibiu

We stayed 3 nights in Sibiu. 

Must-Incur Costs

(1) Entrance fee to Astra National Museum - LEI12 per person / EUR2.66 / RM12.42 (We went on a Tuesday where it is an off-day for the staff who mans the Park i.e. no games and fun activities. Off-days are on Mondays and Tuesdays. From Wednesday till Sunday, it is LEI17 because there will be activities in the Park. How unfortunate because I really would have enjoyed to participate in some of the activities)

Optional Costs 

(1) 20/9 Lunch in a Tavern in Astra National Museum - Grilled Pork Chop LEI22 / EUR4.87, Pork with Sausage LEI24 / EUR5.31, Pepsi LEI6 / EUR1.33, Tea LEI6 / EUR1.33 

(2) 20/9 Dessert in the same Tavern - 2 plates of Cheese Pancake LEI28 / EUR6.20, Pepsi LEI6 / EUR1.33

(3) 20/9 Tips for Astra Lunch - LEI1 / EUR0.22 (Prof Sweet Tooth tipped at almost every eatery we went to)

The Story

This is the Pensiunea we stayed in for 3 nights in Sibiu. We found it by good luck the night before while driving around town.

The reason we chose to stay longer in Sibiu was because Sibiu is one of the most important cultural centres of Romania and was designated the European Capital of Culture for the year 2007, along with the city of Luxembourg. Formerly the centre of the Transylvanian Saxons, the old city of Sibiu was ranked as "Europe's 8th-most idyllic place to live" by Forbes in 2008. Sibiu's museums are organised around two entities: the Brukenthal National Museum and the ASTRA National Museum Complex. Source from Wikipedia.

I wanted to see the cultural city.

200916 - Today, we are headed to Astra National Museum. 

"ASTRA" National Museum Complex (Romanian: Complexul Naţional Muzeal "ASTRA") is a museum complex in Sibiu, Romania, which gathers under the same authority four ethnology and civilisation museums in the city, a series of laboratories for conservation and research, and a documentation centre. It is the successor of the ASTRA Museum that has existed in the city since 1905. Its modern life started with the opening of The Museum of Folk Technology in 1964, now The "ASTRA" Museum of the Traditional Folk Civilization.

The "ASTRA" Museum of Traditional Folk Civilization (Romanian: Muzeul Civilizaţiei Populare Tradiţionale "ASTRA") is located in the Dumbrava Forest, 3 km south of Sibiu, on the road towards Răşinari, and is easily accessible by car, bus or tramway. Occupying an area of 0.96 square kilometres, it is the largest open-air museum in Romania and one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. It contains houses and workshops of the traditional Romanian folk culture from the pre-industrial era. Over 300 houses and other buildings are situated in the forest around two artificial lakes with over 10 km of walkways between them. Source from Wikipedia.

In today's post, I have invited Prof Sweet Tooth to write because this is his favourite place in Romania. Pardon his Swenglish.

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At this very day, I realised how optimistic about the weather I have been when I did my packing at home in Sweden. It was raining, and even if the wind wasn't that strong, the slightest breeze made it feel cold. My brilliant co-driver would freeze anyway because she is a tropical fruit, unless we would have a summer heat. And during summers, it can be really hot in the valleys of Romania. That's not the case now. We had only read about that in the guide books...

Today, we are visiting "Astra Museum of Traditional Folk Civilisation" in the city of Sibiu. It is an open-air museum, and content a great collection of what belongs to the history of this land. I don't say Romania explicitly, because this district  (of Transylvania) was for the time of the museum's scope belonging to Hungary, with a lot of Germans in the population. Borders have moved since then, but traditions and folks has survived in what is the shape of today's Romania. In fact, it is not strange to meet someone here that speaks German or Hungarian and isn't a tourist.

The entrance building of the Astra Museum is modern and welcoming. In fact, it is only a few years old. Thanks to the weather and off-season moment, we thought for a while that we had the museum only for ourselves. 

When we left the entrance building, we were met by the cold weather again, but also with the impression of being sent back in time for hundreds of years. No other visitors disturbed the vision of a rural Hunedeora, where farmers may wait indoors just for the better weather to get the harvest. I guess during the summer season, one can feel less gloom, and maybe the museum is crowded with visitors.

But we weren't at Astra Museum because of having a party. No, my co-driver wanted to experience some culture, and me because I simply like old stuff. We both got very pleased, even though we had to find out by ourselves how the objects have been working or used in the good old days. We arrived at a day when there was no demonstration of the objects. 

Being a petrol head, it was nice to see the collection of old wagons, the embryo of modern road cars. But in those days being "motored" by horses, mules, oxens or... and in some cases, by strong husbands and their sons, if the cargo wasn't too heavy. Safe under the roof of a lovely house with open sides, the Astra museum exhibit those wains from the really old days. And no signs of  "Don't touch"-messages, although I think kids wouldn't bother to obey such order. This means one can get very close to the objects. Too bad that we didn't had any written information about the origin of the wagons, but it seems that this is one of the finest collections in Romania, with the oldest one looking like anything that someone of the Flintstone family had designed. And we could follow the development of the carriages til the mid-18th Century. The simplest one is called "Leiterwagon", named from its German origin, because it looks like the sides are ladders. That one was used to transport hay in the past.

I thought I missed one wagon in the exhibition. Where is the "Varob" that the nomadic Romanian gypsies are so famous to use in the old days? Well, my lighthearted research says that those wagons - colourful small houses on wheels, so to speak - were more common in United Kingdom and the western Europe during 18th and 19th Century, and they were also used by travelling circus companies. Maybe the Romanian gypsies were less nomadic in Romania country, explaining why their wagons fails to come to this museum's collection?

Next, we saw the amazing collection of windmills on the field next to the human-made pond. I started to look out for hobbits and wizards, because this gave me the vibes of a Tolkien Amusement Park, if there exist something like that. And it is not only windmills and water-mills; on the pond, there are a couple of saved floating-mills that are harboured for the visitors to explore. A very smart concept that made it possible to move a mill along the river where it was needed. The stream of the river made it work.

Although I really enjoyed seeing the mills, seeing the many different kinds of homestead for shepherds, farmers, fruit growers, hemp processor, the weaver, the silkmaker, the ropemaker, amber cutter, *taking a deep breath*; I mostly enjoyed visiting the traditional taverna which sent me back into my favorite novels about travellers having a rest in a warm house after a long journey. The bard or the fiddler I expected to see if I had made a real time traveling was not there, but instead the radio played some old Romanian Schlager music. My co-driver said it was different songs, but to me it sounded like the same was played again and again and again.

"Traditional Roman dishes" were promised. I have not travelled around the world with a spoon like my lovely co-driver, but my limited knowledge about food and geography told me that the menu had a German touch. Which - again - is explainable because of the German influence over this part of Transylvania in the history. Grilled chicken, roasted pork, schnitzel, pork chops, most of the dishes were in my taste. As in many other European countries the garnish as potato, pommes frites or cabbage is option, and you mix as you wish. But yet again I noticed that the Romanian cuisine don't serve the dishes with any sauce or gravy as we do in Sweden. And I am addicted to sauce... sigh! Instead I had to learn to eat my pommes with vineager. A complete new experience. And not bad neither.

The co-driver better introduce her choice of meal her self, but I went for the pork chops. The walking had made me hungry. Too hungry actually, so I had a little bit of pain while waiting for the food. But after a few bites my humor was back again, and we both left the plates almost clean after us. I better confess before the charges being thrown at me; I did took some spoons of my co-drivers dish just to get some culinary diversity beside my plate. By the way, the pork chop was carefully grilled outdoors.

This is our traditional local lunch of polenta with fried egg, sausage and pork. I have never seen a polenta before and it was pretty yummy eating it hot.

Polenta is made from a corn variety that grows in Italy known as flint corn. It holds its shape better than the Southern US corn used for grits, which is called dent corn. This means that grits often come out on the mushier side while polenta is generally a little coarser. Polenta usually gets cooked low and slow on the stove (though there IS an instant version) with any combination of water, milk, cream and butter. It can be served creamy, chilled and cut into squares and then baked or fried. Source from Huffington Post.

This is Prof Sweet Tooth boring meal of fries and grilled pork chop.

There is some ongoing construction to rebuild some old houses.

Close to the taverna was a basic ferry wheel with seats hanging on three arms. A fall from the highest position would sure be enough to break a bone or a neck, why I can guess it must have been an exciting experience to have a run around with this one. To my luck, this one was not supposed to be used at all by the visitors, why my courage was never put to the test.

A little bit offside to the rest of the exhibition is a road along a big group of monumental sculptures that we missed. For anyone that wants a condensed view of the Romanian history and tradition, this museum is a must to visit. It really kicked my interest in history. We missed that exhibition of sculptures, because the lovely taverna caught our attention again. Ok, to put it straight, I was hungry again. We went back in again for the next culinary adventure. Pancakes.

I think we were served and dropped our jaws. Here we had a dish that had nothing in common with the Scandinavian pancakes, except for the eggs perhaps. If we Swedes think the pancake is flat, the Romanian says it is round and topped with jam and whipped cream. This time we did not lick the plates. Actually, it felt like the eyes would pop-out; we were so stuffed. But the concept of our eating was good. A walk, some meat, more walk, filling pancakes and yet more walk. Yay, that's how the life should be lived.

Guess what is this place? Prof Sweet Tooth forgets to input this in his narrative, but I shall share with you - this is a hut to store ice! I was so surprised to see it because it is made of straw. Won't the ice melt anyway? 

Ice houses or icehouses are buildings used to store ice throughout the year, commonly used prior to the invention of the refrigerator. Some were underground chambers, usually man-made, close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes, but many were buildings with various types of insulation. During the winter, ice and snow would be taken into the ice house and packed with insulation, often straw or sawdust. It would remain frozen for many months, often until the following winter, and could be used as a source of ice during summer months. Source from Wikipedia. 

As for my sense of humor, I couldn't resist to put a hat on a friend that we met in the village. Let me introduce you to Mr Sunflower. Yes, it seems that he is retired now.

The last part of the museum was the village with lots of homesteads, and each house said to be belonging to different occupation of the owner. The garden did not said any much about it, except for the home of the pottery-maker, but the signs showed the facts. Well, someone could - with a sense of bad humor - had moved around the signs without us noting any incorrect information. So if one is more interested about how people really worked, you better check out on the webpage of the museum and find out which days the demonstrators/guides are on duty.

From the mills, the step to the industrial era is not far, although one was still dependent in water power in those days. Oil presses, textile machines, saws, etc. Close to the entrance from/to the zoological garden is a site dedicated for the kids to see how things are supposed to work, thanks to some models with moving parts. This display is a must to see even for adults to get a grip of how the other sleeping objects has been supposed to work once upon a time. Because there are no signs that gives pedagogical information, and the one who wants a deeper understanding may perhaps walk with a guide, which we didn't. Anyway, we had fun while finding out facts by our own observation. At least me, because I think my co-driver hide one or another dozens of yawning from my view when I went into the professor mode...

In general, I mostly enjoyed the Astra Museum because it wasn't anything of an amusement park. No dancing Mickey Mouse- or Donald Duck cosplay that distracted our curious eyes. I think this museum is important, not only to connect us modern life humans with our ancestors life, but also conserving the knowledge of how people solved their need to produce useful stuff without electricity. There is lot of basic understanding of how things works that one can study at this museum.

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I felt happy being able to set foot here, but I was disappointed that there was not much information on the exhibits on display. Also, the fact that I went there on an off-day made it slightly boring for me because I would have loved to see some demonstration or local games. The best open-air museum that I have ever been is Skansen in Stockholm, Sweden. In fact, all museums in Sweden that I have been to has become my benchmark whenever I visit a museum.