“How can a mother be happy if it’s a cemetery”?
The words of an “aunt” who sells her wares in front of the cemetery. As a Bucharest resident, all my life I have heard of “where the map hangs” and yet I have never linked this to the merry cemetery in Sapanta. I think if I drove another half an hour I would fall off the map. The Merry Cemetery! So famous, so “advertised”, one of the great points of interest not necessarily in Maramureș but in the whole of Romania. It is fought on an equal footing with Bran Castle, Peles or Mamaia. I mean no… with Mamaia no! That’s where you want Ibiza now… Enough there is relatively simple, even if you don’t use GPS, take the direction of Sighetul Marmației, cut the city in the center and in about 20-30 minutes you get there. It’s not hard and the road is good. At some point you come across a curve and it appears in all its splendor… what do you expect it to appear ?? There are a few stalls, two or three buses, a concrete fence and some people… It’s probably not right to speak ill of such a place and I will try not to exaggerate but the expectations far exceed reality. It’s not what you think and you’re a little disappointed with the simplicity of the place.
Maybe it’s my fault because I imagined my place differently, maybe it’s my fault because I don’t understand the rules of the market economy but… let’s say I accept that inside it’s relatively different… it’s something special!… But outside everything is yours the kitsch. It’s hard for me to understand what Dracula is looking for and a few miles, next to the magnets with Bran Castle or the Merry Cemetery is right, shown on the beautiful tin stalls, guarded by bowls with all kinds of small items, lighters and other plastic toys. … Or how can you eat “Maramures cheese pies” when in fact they are absolutely banal cheese donuts… But maybe I’m grumpy…
For a few lei you can enter the famous cemetery which also houses the wooden church under renovation / reconstruction. There are two points of interest.
Cross with mother-in-law
The tomb of Stan Ioan Patras who founded this place
Otherwise… are the colored crosses, that blue predominating, but how did a local woman answer the question “why is she happy”? it’s a cemetery! “Who wants the mother to come here?” Who enjoys it? ” Perfectly true and in reality the merry cemetery in Sapanta bears its reputation, it seems from some Japanese tourists who in the 60s and 70s visited and impressed with the colors gave it that name. this is a legend. Even now funerals are held and there are three craftsmen who write what the family thinks fits on the cross of the past in the world of the righteous.
All in all I understood exactly the word “advertising is the soul of commerce” and even though many of those who will read this article will not agree with me, I was disappointed with what I found there and I promised to write only the truth on this blog. I will end up going to Bellu on a pilgrimage because it is the most beautiful cemetery in Bucharest. I mean… for real! Aren’t I going to spend my eternity in a yard like this? Do you really have to visit him before he’s happy? The cheerful cemetery is not happy at all and one of the maximum points of interest of Romanian tourism did not seem to me to deserve its fame. Maybe at night it’s a big party and the entrance is full of songs… It remains an important objective for foreign tourists but I see it as “Dracula’s Castle” in Bran.
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