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Preparing to restore an old wooden church

November, 1999:

Our village has two old wooden churches. The older one has been around for almost five hundred years.

Its eastern gothic paintings are in need of restoration and some of its wooden timbers are rotting. So the government is sending restoration experts from Bucharest to restore and preserve the old parts of this historic monument.

But first, the villagers needed to remove all the day to day stuff they've got hanging inside.

So our family pitched in with their carutza (horse drawn wagon) and a bunch of other villagers pitched in with their backs.

Here they've unpacked the church jewels.

Brides wear the crown at their weddings.

Everything had to go, and there's no way down to the road except by foot.

Though they now have lots of reproduction art, their churches are still filled with these old paintings on wood.

They call them "icoana."

They carefully walked with these several hundred year old pieces of art to the foot of the church hill.

Where they piled them into the horse cart.

One right on top of the other.

They'll be kept in a volunteer's attic for a year while the men from Bucharest renovate the church.

Back to Village Life

Scooping up worthless 'bani' that fell
from an old collection stand. It's like Confederate money.
Interesting to them only because we were there.