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 Activities
Flora and fauna: traditions, folklore, mythology
As one of the few places where people live in great harmony with nature and what it offers, Transylvanian countryside has preserved quite a lot of, for instance, use of local plants in traditional cooking, medicine or magic. You can learn about Romanian ‘tea’: local plants or combinations of them used to cure or heal a wide range of body disorders; use of ‘magic’ plants in different rituals throughout the year.
Examples:
• Lady’s bedstraw-national celebration of the flower on 24th June
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Saint John’s Wort: treats depression, stomach and liver disorders; yields red dye for
traditional Transylvanian rugs
Wolf image in traditional Transylvanian culture has a strong positive side, something that is met only in traditional native Americans’ culture. Birds like Grey-headed Woodpecker, Cuckoo are important characters in our folktales.
Learn more about that through courses with Luminita and Dan Marin: we have contributed to magazines, travel guides, international TV programs on these issues
Traditional cooking lessons
Luminita Marin is very highly appreciated for her great different skills. One of them is the cooking-she combines the recipes that belong to different ethnic groups living in Romania with very interesting information related to ingredients, origins or stories of the various dishes. Here are some comments from
our visitors related to this:
"Ici se trouve la 'queen' de la cuisine pour la Roumanie - veritable cordon bleu" Yves Lanceau, French professional photographer"
"Thank you for a fantastic few days-it's a great combination of hiking, wildlife, local life plus traditional cuisine.
We'll be back!" Ros and Dan Lewis, London UK
Wildlife tracking courses
With an experience of working for three years together with the former Carpathian Large Carnivore Project, Dan Marin can offer a program that will help you acquiring or improving your knowledge on different signs and tracks of the wild animals or birds around here. We get the basics at our place, working with photos,documentation and presentations on various specific issues. Then we take walks in different parts of the extensive forests around here to try finding and interpreting these signs and tracks.
"I congratulate you on your award and hope you and your wife are well.
I’m grateful for your information many months ago about a Finnish website for bears but so far I have not found a Finnish “Dan Marin” for wildlife in Finland generally" Anthony Martin, Belgium.
"I signed up for a trip to Romania with the National Wildlife Federation.It was the best thing I ever did. Our guide was Dan Marin who took us on walks through the Carpathian Mountains, explained the flora and fauna,the lives of shepards in modern day Romania, and folk lore of past years." Ann Hedberg, Michigan USA
Gypsy party -The level of poverty in the Romanian Gypsy communities is very high; on the other hand, most of them have managed to preserve very well their own language, culture and traditions. Based on these realities we started up a few years ago a program called 'Rroma party'; it is a program addressed to groups of foreign visitors in our area-it helps them get a right perspective over the life of the Gypsies in Romania; we had Romanians as well as part of the audience, trying to build up communications bridges between the two communities that otherwise do not know very much about each other. The Gypsies are of course paid for their contribution to the program-so it is helping them in using their native skills to improve their living. The program works like this: we start from our guesthouse in horse-and-carts over to the Gypsy village (about 5km away).We walk through the village meeting the Gypsies and their leader. We then pick the musicians and dancers and come back to our place, where we have a campfire and a barbecue, lots of traditional Gypsy music and dance. During the breaks there are presentations about different aspects of the Gypsy life (everyday life, traditions, history).
Note - this program is part of Fundatia Rowan Romania charitable work for disadvantaged groups in Zarnest (more detailas on the 'Charity' section of this website) |
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