The life level
The man that sets out for a trip, the man that experiences intensely all the alternations produced by every new achievement of our cosmic era, the man enchanted by the scenery’s beauty stops excited in front of some life and culture proofs whose origins carry us deep into the past. It tells us about the ancestors culture and way of living, about the specific lifestyle of our people across the centuries.
Making a comparison between past and present, the population’s material and cultural standard of life has changed a lot. Starting with the outer look of the buildings and households and finishing with the house furniture and nourishment, anyone can feel the change.
The place of the households with straw roofs, consisting of two rooms separated by a vestibule and plastered with clay was taken nowadays by finer and finer houses, with more rooms, kitchen, bathroom, storage room and cellar. Beside the gas and electricity penetrated also the prosperity. Instead of the old fumigating stoves and clay ovens, most people have today gas ovens, electric heaters and electric irons. The electric light replaced the old candles and gas lamps. The radio and television broadcasts complete the knowledge of the peasant, educate him, and raise him on the civilization’s scale.
Modern furniture, adapted to each room’s type has replaced the old one, made up of bed, table, chairs and a wooden couch.
The outhouses have also changed, looking out more civilized. The stables and barns are spacer and beautiful as they were houses.
The village people have a comfortable life, comparable to that in towns. A single thing is missing and gradually disappears, a thing that fades us away from the Romanian specific, a thing that our folk had sacredly bewared for so many centuries: the national costume and house decoration.
Inside the new houses, although adorned with beautiful handicrafts, you won’t see anymore clay dishes, meticulous woven towels, icons painted on glass or wood hanged on the walls, numerous cushions lying on the beds. You will find this only in older houses or in some of the houses belonging to intellectuals who have taken over these Romania specific elements from the peasants.
The national costume has also been abandoned. Today, the peasants wear ready-made clothes. Although inside the houses of some hardworking women you’ll find in the winter the characteristic loom where they weave linen, woolen, cotton and more seldom hempen fabrics (the hemp was intensely cultivated in the past). They cut shirts used at the land work, different clothes, towels and newly suit cloth, carpets, etc. In this aspect, the women from Lumins, Sasa, Dolheni, and Rogna are notorious.
The old costume is made up of large pants, thick cloth trousers and coats, large white shirts with tassels and Romanian seam for men and women, boleros (black thick waistcoat for men of silk for women, adorned with beads and spangles), the winter shaggy fur coats that could only be found in the hilly villages as Sasa, Maleni and Luminis or conserved in chests.
A pretty important issue nowadays is also the nourishment that in the past cut down many human lives, especially those of the children due to subnutrition.
O problema destul de importanta si in zilele noastre o constitutie alimentatia, care in trecut a secerat multe vieti omenesti si mai ales de-ale copiilor datorita subnutritiei.
We know that today things are different. In the past, the birds and their products – the eggs were only for sale, but a t the present they are component of the peasant’s daily nutrition. Also sugar was seen as a luxury good. Today, shops are pretty well supplied with all kind of goods, available to all people. The households compete in preparing all types of food and cakes that are traditional for these places; curly pie finely prepared by the women in Luminis, the specific “sarmale” (force-meat rolls in cabbage or vine leaves) and tzuica (plum brandy).
The visitors coming to these places should not leave without having tasted these culinary marvels.