Hram

Hram is a celebration in Moldova that is unique for each village or city in Moldova. I would characterize it as the “village birthday”. It is actually the saint’s day, or the feast day associated with the village. My village’s hram is on St. Nicholas’ feast day. I have been to a couple hram’s this past month, my own, and another in a raion (kind of like a county seat, the administrative division right below national level) called Singerei up north with some of my friends. Hram was a very different experience in both locations, but the general gist of hram is a big village festival with music, games, and everyone having big parties with a ton of traditional food.

Hram in Singerei was a massive 3 day celebration with a big, professional stage set up in the middle of the town. In addition, there was a lot of old fairground/carnival rides in the middle of town for younger kids to enjoy. It is always nice to visit another person’s village and gives you a whole different perspective on Moldova. Plus, no matter where I go even after a year in my village, I still get stares and giggles from children. Here, with a pack of Americans, including my African-American friend who is bigger than I am, we are an outright freak show. Thus, it is a good opportunity to practice our Romanian, meet new people, and get free drinks. I only stayed for a day, but it was a nice little festival and it seemed to coincide with the images I conjure up when I think of small county fairs in America.

My hram however, was a whole different experience. I live in a small, traditional village which also means we don’t have the money for a big stage and other such extravagant niceties. Instead, our hram festivities included, children playing a soccer game and having a crazy wrestling match, climbing a skinny, carved down tree about as high as a telephone pole, and a game of balance with a tree sticking out of the side of the hill. This maybe hard to picture so I included images below. By far the coolest part of the day though was the wrestling matches. 2 hours of wresting to see who is the strongest in the village, all for the ultimate prize of a ram. It was definitely one of the cooler things I have ever seen, and yet another great, quirky thing about Moldova. We have an endless amount of entertainment in America, but a lot of it, you know what you are going to get. You can go to all the movies, sporting events, concerts, and plays in the world, but they are all somewhat similar. I doubt in America, I will have the chance to watch grown men battle for a ram. Free entertainment at it’s finest.

Here is the first part of my village’s hram. I will put up more pictures from the other hram as well as the ram wrestling competition later.

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