Nadlac is a town ...

   that shares a border with Hungary.

   It is about a mile or one and a half kilometers
from the center of town.

   There is a border crossing and it is a pretty busy
place. There are regularly big trucks transporting goods
and many tourists passing through town.

   The main road ... as you can see in the picture below
is actually the beginning of the international road. With
Romania joining the European Union they are plans to
make this road into a larger highway that will cross the
country from here in Nadlac to the Black Sea city of
Costanta.
           
    In the above picture you can see the road that is coming
from the border. If you go down this road by car you
will be at the border in about 5 minutes. Also there
was a little excitement as you can see freshly painted
lines on the road. That happened just this week.
           
     In the picture above you see the road that leads into
Romania. All you need is approximately 900 kilometers
and 14 hours to Costanta. The next biggest city that you
will encounter is about 45 kilometers and it is called Arad.
   
   You can see a burgundy car on the right hand side.
It is really more like you can see about 75% of a car.
That car is the famous 'Dacia' built in Romania. It was
exclusively a Romanian built car but now it is in partnership
with Renault. I am not sure exactly when but I think that
it has been 5 or 6 years since the merger. I will try and
create an article about the Dacia soon. It is one of those
staple oldies that just keeps on going. People criticise it
as kind of junky but those things just keep running.

   Again with the European Union coming there is going to
be changes. In Nadlac one of the big changes will be
concerning the customs entry station. I have been told that
in a few years they will phase it out. That means that a lot
of people making a living from it will be out of jobs. A lot
of the Rroma (Gypsy) population make a living there. So
it will be interesting to see what they do when the border
station closes. I guess now is the time for them to think
about options. I don't know if I will be here when that
change occurs but if I am I will fill you in on how it affected
especially the Rroma.

In Nadlac there is an approximately ...

   200 year old Slovakian Lutheran Evangelical Church.
To be exact the church’s construction began in 1812
and was completed in 1821. The church itself
(congregation) began in 1803 and it received a
great boost in 1808 with the arrival of approximately
200 families from various towns in Slovakia.

                    

   As you can see on the plaque below that it was built by the
Slovakian population that arrived in Nadlac and that they
laid the first stone in 1812. The plaque also states that the
church was declared an historical monument in 1977. The
language on the left is Romanian and on the right it is in
Slovakian.

          

    I hope that the first picture does justice to this beautiful old
church. But the real purpose of this posting is to describe one of
it’s truly unique traditions. For almost two hundred year this
church has had a continuous practice which I have not seen or
heard of before. This is not to say that it doesn’t exists anywhere
else but as of yet no one has been able to say that they have seen
or heard of a similar practice in another locality. Ok, what is all this
stuff I am speaking about ? What is this unique practice that has
been going on for so long? Let me give you a little hint … it has
something to do with the next picture. I am sure that anyone could
guess what it is by now. To tell you the truth, I doubt if you could.

               
    Let me try another hint. In this picture you can also see two sides
of the walk way that surrounds the steeple. I think I am making this
too easy for someone to guess. Where is the fun, huh?

   If anyone guessed what you see in the next picture then give
yourself a pat on the back.

                    
                    Mr. Kochan Dusan sounding out the
                    time (5 p.m. September 19, 2006)

  There you can see the almost 200 year habit of having a person
with a trumpet sound out the time of day from the clock tower of
the church. It was told to me that this custom has been ongoing
from the time of the church’s completion, maybe even before. It
also continued non-stop during the WW II.

  This custom of announcing the time requires that a person
with a horn sound out an equal amount of beats that correspond to
the actual time of day. For example: 7 o’clock will bring 6 steady
distinct beats with the seventh being held for about twice the amount
of time as the other prior beats. It is also sounded out in the four
directions. A person will also, on the quarter hour, blast out beats in
conjunction to the time. For ¼ after there will be one beat, ½ past
will give you two beats and ¼ of will give you 3 beats.

  Of course to say that this happened all day at every hour and
quarter hour for 200 years would be an incredible story, but
untrue. Occasionally there are circumstances that could make
it impossible to sound out the time. But those circumstances
are practical ones. The guy may have to go to the field to harvest
his crops. That usually happens this time of the year. Also, the
church parish is building a retirement home and the guy that
sounds the horn is also aiding in the construction of that
structure. But what does happen is that even despite the fact
that they didn’t announce the time regularly they do sound it at
least a few times daily so as to carry on the custom.

  Here are some other tidbits of information concerning this
practice. The usual schedule (especially in winter) starts at 6
in the morning and continues till 11 at night. Right now there are
4 men that are sharing the duties of sounding out the time. Also
in the past there where families that lived in the church and took
the responsibility of keeping people informed of the time of day.

  As you can see by the other plaque in this last picture (which is
mounted on the right hand side of the main entrance, and is written
in Slovakian) that confirms that it has been over 200 hundred years
since the people who immigrated from Slovakia founded this church.

                    

  So in conclusion I have to say that I am pretty lucky to be in a
place like Nadlac that has such a custom. I am sure somewhere in
the world there is something similar and maybe even somewhere
else in Europe. Despite that chance, this 200 year old ritual of
announcing time with blasts of a trumpet, still makes Nadlac
a little city with a pretty big tradition.

Usually when you start out in a Peace Corps tour

... especially when you’re the first one in your site, it takes a little
time to get some work/projects going.

  I am no exception to this rule and after being here in Nadlac for
almost 2 months it is still a process to get things rolling. The results
of it all is that I end up with some quantities of  free time on my hands.
The Peace Corps has three goals and the second and third goals are
to share cultures. So what better place to share cultures than at the
local coffee shop.

  Every morning between 9 and 10 I head out of the house to the
regular low budget coffee joint which you can see in the first picture.

                

  The proprietor is a lady whose name is Radi. Every morning
she suffers through my not so good Romanian and for her it
gets worse as I am trying to learn some Slovakian. Every
morning it is ‘ o cafea, ve rog’ (a coffee please, in Romanian)
and now it is ‘prosim si yedenu kavu’, which means the
same in Slovakian.

  This time of the year school has started and I am left daily with the
‘pensioners’ or what we call in the States ... retirees. You can see my
three coffee drinking buddies in the third photo. From left to right is
‘The Colonel’, Stefan and Michel. We are basically the regulars that
are there every morning killing time.

               

  One of the great things about having time to sit and drink the coffee
is that you get a chance to really get to know someone. Stefan (the
guy in the middle) worked in TV during his career. Michel drove big
trucks and ‘The Colonel’ was exactly what the name implies. He was
a Colonel for 32 years and he is a very educated man. He showed us
the fourth picture. He is in the middle with the sunglasses and behind
and above him is the head of defense from Czechoslovakia. Looking
again at the picture you can see to the left of the Colonel is the head
of defense for Romania and to the immediate right is the equivalent
for Slovakia. The person to the right of the Slovakian is a military
representative from Russia. The Colonel was translating between
Romanian and Slovakian. The picture dates from 1984 during the
Ceaucescu era.

               

  The final picture is of a lady that happened to be there during the
photographing. Her name is Maria and she was excited about
having her picture taken and kept wanting to see her picture in the
viewer of the digital camera.

               

  I have to say that it is fun to hang out with these guys and they are a
wealth of knowledge. After I post this blog I promised to print out a
copy so that they can see the it. Radi the owner says that she is going
to tape it on the wall.

  So far I can’t say that I have been saving the world but I do hope
that I can make these people a little famous around the coffee shop.

Time to make ‘ Tsoika ’

   … as promised in a prior posting there would
be an upcoming entry describing the making of what is called here
‘Tsoika’ and what we in the States call ‘moonshine’.

     As you can see in the first picture you take all the plums and
grapes you have and place inside the heater section of the ‘still’.
This particular one has about a 100 liter capacity.

      

   The blue barrel in the background is the condenser. The steam
comes from the heater and passes through a coil that is submerged
in water. This is where the vapor is cooled down to form a liquid.

     In the second picture you can see the complete assembly with
the tube connecting the heater section to the condenser. The tub
on the right hand side is used to drain out the plums after they
have extracted all they can from the respective batch.

     

   Also, you can see the big wooden vats in the foreground. All toll
there is about 2300 to 2500 liters of plums and grapes. So it
will take about 25 batches to finish all that is there. Each batch
is taking about 3 hours which they mentioned is longer than it
took last year. They are planning on going around the clock till
it is finished. The nights are starting to cool off, so being near the
fire ought to be nice.

     In the third picture you can see the tsoika/moonshine as it
leaves the condenser. This tsoika/moonshine is from the first
distilled batch.

               

     At this point they said that the alcohol content is an average
of between 40 to 45 %. Also, at this stage the name they call the
liquid is ’Vodka’. They know it is not actually vodka,
it is just the name they use. What will be done with the ’vodka’
is that they will take it and distill it again till it comes out at
approximately 60%. The final alcoholic content they desire is
something like 54%. This they do by some form of smeckeria.
I asked what smeckeria it could be but they said that this was
a ’secret smeckeria’. I’ll try and find out and if I do I’ll pass it along.

     The fourth and fifth pictures speak for themselves I would say
it is depicting him just literally drinking in the fruits of the labor.

      

   It is what this was all about and you can see the look of
accomplishment and satisfaction after all the hard work it
took. At the taking of these pictures there was only another
2300 more liters to distill.

     

   I am sure that he is going to have more than one more chance to get
that look of satisfaction.