topum

We stopped in this town to stock up on water and food and saw this wedding procession. This part of Transylvania is mostly Hungarian.
The groom walks three paces behind the bride and is looking straight into my camera.

"I also use Kabballah, numerology and the occult. Jung’s archetypes. Social engineering. It’s not the technology but the human factor that makes the difference.”

One of the most successful hackers of all time is not an IT guy, he is a Romanian cab driver. He hacked Clinton, Bush and Powell among others. We visited the famous Hackerville he operated from during our trip to Transylvania http://topum.livejournal.com/22997.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/hacker-who-exposed-clintons-private-email-bush-paintings-appears-in-us-court/2016/04/01/85c55c9a-f798-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html

In Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania

The tradition of transhumance - the seasonal movement of sheep - is still practised in Romania. But shepherds say a law restricting the number of sheepdogs they are allowed to use could threaten their way of life.



Romania is one of the few countries in Europe where this seasonal movement of livestock, or transhumance, is still practised but the tradition is dying out. New roads and the enclosure of privatised land after communism have made the walks covering hundreds of miles more difficult, even dangerous.

"Do you want to see my house?" asks Ion at the door of the cowshed. I'm a bit nonplussed. We'd just been inside his house, on the sofa in the best room eating cake and poring over photo albums.

"No, no!" he says noticing my confusion. "I mean my real house!" He lifts a shaggy grey fleece off a wooden peg and throws it over his shoulders. The sleeveless sarica, as it's called, is made of four sheepskins sewn together. When I try it on, the cloak comes down to my ankles and is so heavy I can barely stand. But suddenly I'm immune to the knife sharp wind blowing off the mountains. "I slept in that even when it was snowing," says Ion. "Very cosy."

"If I don't see my sheep for more than two days and leave them with my helpers I can't stand it - I start having dreams about them," he says. "Do you have a favourite?" I ask, feeling a bit foolish. "Every shepherd has a favourite sheep - one you pick and name and feed from your hand. It is just like a woman when you like her, your eyes shine and the feeling goes straight to your heart."

But he admits he was never lucky with his chosen ones - they would either die from overeating or be snatched by wolves. "Maybe faith teaches you not to love one sheep, you have to love your whole flock," he adds.

Yesterday on BBC:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35834183

At Tattoo Expo in Sibiu, Transylvania

We took a road trip through Transylvania last summer and learned a lot of interesting stuff. Including that in Romanian they have different types of singular 'you': 'dumneavoastra', 'dumneata', 'mata', 'matale' and 'tu'. And they all have slightly different flavours.

'Dumneavoastra' is the most respectful or formal. 'Tu' is the most informal. The others are somewhere in between. I understand that 'mata' and 'matale' are very close to 'dumneata' but still slightly less formal. It gives the Romanians huge flexibility in managing the tone of a conversation and the distance between its participants just by using the right 'you' and sometimes jumping between them.

In cities everyone seemed to use 'dumneavoastra' in formal situations, with older people and with adults they just met. Not necessarily so in the villages. But there people very often used it with their parents.

They used 'dumneata' with people of their own age they just met in informal situations. But sometimes also between friends. I understand that it also depends on who else in addition to the two friends participates in the conversation.

Sometimes it is straight to 'tu' if it feels right. People much older than you are very likely to jump straight to it with you. But then so are the kids very often.

The choice does not seem to be straightforward and seems to depend on many things but it is completely intuitive to Romanians.

We took a road trip through Transylvania last summer. Wow, what a beautiful place! The cultural diversity there is amazing. Germans (Saxons), Hungarians, Romanians, Jews and Roma (Gypsies) have all been living there together for centuries. We met very interesting and unusual people from small and vanishing communities we have never heard about.



Caldurari are a closely knit community of Roma coppersmiths from the Brateiu town in central Transylvania. They still strictly observe the old laws and traditions and do not mix with the larger Roma community from there who they consider 'defiled' Roma that have forgotten the Roma law and have mixed with the Gadjo (non-Gypsies).