A Romanian celebration of life and death

BOTIZA, Romania — Spend time in any of the villages in the rural Maramures region, and chances are good you'll be included in a wedding, funeral or some other Romanian Orthodox religious celebration.

Here in Botiza, a Maramures village known for its hilltop wooden church and views to the mountains of the Ukraine, we've checked into a new guesthouse for our last few days, and have been wandering around soaking up village life.

People are friendly and curious. Everyone returns a smile and greets us with a "buna ziua," or "good day."

We watched as 100 or so turned out for a funeral that started with a long procession through the streets, and ended with a feast in the town hall below the church.

Women left their houses carrying dozens of knot-shaped round loaves of bread. "Familia," one said to me, putting her hand to her mouth in a gesture inviting us to share in the meal.

(Death isn't necessarily a sad occasion. At the Merry Cemetery in the village of Sapanta, more than 800 painted crosses celebrate the life of the deceased, often humorously, with carvings and inscriptions recalling the person's love of drinking, dancing or playing music.)

Inside the hall, long tables were set with plates of cakes and plastic bottles of orange drink.

Men and women sat separately. A trio of priests blessed the bread, and each man put his hand on the shoulder of one in front of him.

We didn't understand everything we saw and heard, but being included in events like these makes for a special travel experience.

About 2,500 people live in Botiza, some in old wooden houses, but many in new homes they built with money earned by working as laborers in Western Europe.

Most everyone turns out for church on Sundays. Services last two hours, and people come and go.

The older villagers tend to arrive first, the men wearing nubby sheep's wool vests and felt hats; the women dressed in black knee-length skirts, dark scarves and vests of wool or leather.

Fashionably late are the younger women in short pleated floral-print skirts, heels, fitted jackets and flowered scarves.

In the Romanian Orthodox church, men sit in a separate section in front of the women, and the biggest rooms in the old churches were reserved for them.

Now church-going women outnumber men, and the new churches are designed so that the women's area can be expanded and contracted by moving a railing.

Still, as we saw in Botiza, those who come late often have to stand outside and listen to the services on loudspeakers.