Who Cares About Transylvania?

I'm glad to see how many of you come to this website and read it, I truly am.  I am the first to admit the love and passion I have for Transylvania and Romania has not dimmed.  Granted I was putting more things first than this website, but I do apologize.

Which brings me to the topic of the day: Who cares about Transylvania?

It seems, my dear readers, that you do too.  You come and you read, you enjoy, you discuss and you debate.  I can see you care for the land and its people.  Over the last few weeks, I've learned that when people are passionate about a subject they take the time they have to learn about it.

For example, my family is from Transylvania, and there they were farmers.  Almost every person worked the land, and a few of them would take on other positions.  The value there was hard work, and a more minimalist lifestyle.  They shared the value of caring for the land, and caring for others and themselves.

People cared for one another, and they knew if the other in the area needed help.  That being said it was not "love each other" as there was always tensions between the cultures.  What they all had in common was that they had stories and culture to share with their children and grandchildren.  For the majority of the people of Transylvania, material things were not prized, and what they did have was treasured and cared for.

How does this relate to Transylvania and how others care for it?

People are passionate about things, such as their family or their things, that they are emotionally connected to.  In this case, the connection here is not this website but rather the place which I write about.  People can be attached to something, so first I must thank you all for staying around the last few weeks.  This is too important of a subject for me to leave.

I took a sabbatical for may reasons, and one of them was to think about how to make this website better.  Also, during this time it was to learn about how far I have travelled away from how the people who mattered to me.  It gave me the permission to look at what was important, such as this blog.

What did this sabbatical mean to me?

One, I learned the value of clearing out a lot of things I "needed" in my life, which, comes from the values of the people who lived in Transylvania.  As much as we'd love to say that we don't carry the ghosts of the past, we do.  In my case, it was clearing out the things I didn't need and learning what should be kept.  It's time to rethink how one feels about what sort of life they want.  I cleared my life of stuff, except when it came to one thing.

Every book on Transylvania and Romania and Hungary were kept.  The crafts and the arts were kept too.  Everything else went if it wasn't needed.  It seems that deep down I care about the history and my family more than a minimalist lifestyle.  Either way, it means that there is one more person who cares about Transylvania.  

I have the passion for writing, and I feel there is less of a need for things in my life, and in a way, it's linking my life back to the family in the land I love. When I wrote In Search of The Lost Ones   I learned more about the people, and it increased my love for the land.

Who cares about Transylvania? I know I do.