When I set out, I never thought I would have to write the book too.
I say ‘have to’, because along the way this task was quite literally entrusted to me, as an imperative. I was told I had to write it and by the time I got home, I also understood why. Along the journey I had received so much, and the story at the end of it would be my gift to anyone interested.
Throughout 2013 this responsibility weighed heavily on my shoulders, just like the rucksack I carried all the way from Săpânţa. So I have had the pleasure and the pain of travelling the Way of the Crosses twice in the last year, all six hundred and fifty kilometres of it – once walking and once writing.
Both journeys have been fascinating for me. There were a couple of times on the walk when I wanted to kick that rucksack in front of me, and there were many times
in the writing when the size of the story overwhelmed me, in all of its details and
complexity, in all of the interconnections, like an enormous tapestry, on this great magic mountain called Romania, held together by an infinite number of threads, natural fibres all, and I followed just one, the Road, Drumul, the Way.
And this Way, what I have called the Way of the Crosses, well, as you’ll see when
you read it, somehow "totul s-a aşezat de la sine, zic eu"*.
*It all fitted together in its own way, I’d say.
About the author:
PETER HURLEY was born in Dublin, Ireland on 5 February 1968, the eighth of ten children. He graduated from the Faculty of Commerce in University College Dublin with a Masters degree in Business Studies. He worked in England, Australia, and then Ireland as a marketing consultant before moving to Romania, in April 1994.
For his first 15 years in Romania he worked in market research and advertising.
In 2009 he left the advertising business and set off on a search to find the authentic values of Romania. Before long he found himself in a village.
He was Honorary Vice Consul of Ireland in Romania from 2000 until 2006. He is the producer of the intercultural festival of peasant traditions Drumul Lung spre Cimitirul Vesel / The Long Road to the Merry Cemetery in the village of Săpânţa in the county of Maramureş. He is president and founding member of the Intercultural Association of Traditions. In December 2011 he was awarded the Romanian National Order of Merit for Culture with the rank of Commander for his efforts to promote Romania’s rural traditions. He is a founding member of the Ireland Romania Network. During 2012 he was director of promotion within the Support Unit of the National Rural Development Network, a project of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, responsible for encouraging rural tourism, traditional products and cooperative association amongst agricultural producers.
He lives in Balta Albă, Bucharest, and can be contacted on www.traditia.ro.
I say ‘have to’, because along the way this task was quite literally entrusted to me, as an imperative. I was told I had to write it and by the time I got home, I also understood why. Along the journey I had received so much, and the story at the end of it would be my gift to anyone interested.
Throughout 2013 this responsibility weighed heavily on my shoulders, just like the rucksack I carried all the way from Săpânţa. So I have had the pleasure and the pain of travelling the Way of the Crosses twice in the last year, all six hundred and fifty kilometres of it – once walking and once writing.
Both journeys have been fascinating for me. There were a couple of times on the walk when I wanted to kick that rucksack in front of me, and there were many times
in the writing when the size of the story overwhelmed me, in all of its details and
complexity, in all of the interconnections, like an enormous tapestry, on this great magic mountain called Romania, held together by an infinite number of threads, natural fibres all, and I followed just one, the Road, Drumul, the Way.
And this Way, what I have called the Way of the Crosses, well, as you’ll see when
you read it, somehow "totul s-a aşezat de la sine, zic eu"*.
*It all fitted together in its own way, I’d say.
About the author:
PETER HURLEY was born in Dublin, Ireland on 5 February 1968, the eighth of ten children. He graduated from the Faculty of Commerce in University College Dublin with a Masters degree in Business Studies. He worked in England, Australia, and then Ireland as a marketing consultant before moving to Romania, in April 1994.
For his first 15 years in Romania he worked in market research and advertising.
In 2009 he left the advertising business and set off on a search to find the authentic values of Romania. Before long he found himself in a village.
He was Honorary Vice Consul of Ireland in Romania from 2000 until 2006. He is the producer of the intercultural festival of peasant traditions Drumul Lung spre Cimitirul Vesel / The Long Road to the Merry Cemetery in the village of Săpânţa in the county of Maramureş. He is president and founding member of the Intercultural Association of Traditions. In December 2011 he was awarded the Romanian National Order of Merit for Culture with the rank of Commander for his efforts to promote Romania’s rural traditions. He is a founding member of the Ireland Romania Network. During 2012 he was director of promotion within the Support Unit of the National Rural Development Network, a project of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, responsible for encouraging rural tourism, traditional products and cooperative association amongst agricultural producers.
He lives in Balta Albă, Bucharest, and can be contacted on www.traditia.ro.
