Maglavit: Day Two

Our second day in Maglavit was every bit as busy and exciting as the first. It began with a trip to the village community center, where we were treated to a special performance by Valentina’s Romanian folk dancing troupe. In their traditional costumes, the girls travel around the country and the region to compete with other folk dancing groups. Their recent performance in the nearby village of Călăfat attracted an audience of nearly three hundred people, and they are planning to attend a competition in Turkey later this year. Imagine how special we felt when they got up on a Saturday morning and donned their costumes just for us!





Me and Andreea with some of the dancers

We also got to see a short comic sketch, which was still quite funny even if we didn’t understand all of it. Andreea’s sister Cristina gave a hilarious performance as a crazy man with a serious stutter talking to an official in a train station.



At the community center, we also got the visit the local library, where Valentina is the librarian.

Next we met Andreea’s boyfriend Marius and his family at their house on the outskirts of the village. Marius’s father is a beekeeper, and he enthusiastically explained the inner workings of the colony to us.

Getting ready to see the bees!

Another bee-hat picture, just for fun.

Marius's father shows us a colony. We got to see worker bees, drones, and the queen, and we learned to recognize the difference between cells full of honey and cells with eggs in them. At this time of year, there were a lot more eggs than there were pockets of honey. The peak season for honey is later in the summer.

Pointing out the queen. She is larger than the worker bees and the drones, and she has a green dot on her head, which was put there by the laboratory where she was hatched. The detailed tour of the colony that we received reminded me of trips to the science museum in elementary school, only entirely in Romanian!

Rows of hives or stupi, as they are called in Romanian.

Like Ionel and Valentina, Marius’s parents grow all of their own food. They preserve and use most of the produce from their garden, and they sell the honey from their bees at local markets and through a company in Germany.



Our last stop in Maglavit was a picnic near the lake. The village lies right along the Danube, which marks the border with Bulgaria, and there is a large lake the branches off the river near Maglavit. We cooled off in the weedy lake before enjoying a feast of sarmale and mămăligă with smântană (sour cream) and homemade wine on the lakeshore. Sarmale and mămăligă are classic Romanian dishes. They are some of my favorites, and I’m pretty sure that they were a big hit with Mike as well.

Looking across the lake towards the village.

After our picnic near the lake, we had to catch the bus back to Craiova, and then a train to Bucharest. We were sad to leave Maglavit and our new friends there, but after seeing and doing so much in less than a day, we were exhausted. Andreea and Marius's families urged us to come visit again someday, and they sent us on our way loaded down with fresh produce, honey, and homemade wine and brandy. For our part, we didn't know how to thank them enough. Our visit to Maglavit was by far one of my favorite travel experiences. Talking with our hosts and translating was excellent practice for my Romanian, and in retrospect, it was far and away more rewarding than visiting castles in the mountains, as beautiful as they may be. We made some great memories, and I think that it was the perfect way to introduce Mike to Romania.