The five happy Romanians from Tulcea, Oamenii Deltei NGO have shared with us some super interesting traditions. And yes, we have survived this mythical workshop and now we are ready to face all kind of mythical creatures!

Participants got to know better the traditions from Romania and how life in the villages is going on based on pagan celebrations and how people in the country life respect their values like hard working, keeping their word, faith, family and nature, how they use of herbal plants as medicines but also pagan rituals for growing, animal growth and farming and how important are these in the village life, songs and carols and several unique celebrations some of the included in the UNESCO world intangible heritage.

Puppets, village life and pagan rituals

At first participants created puppets from different material. Much was also left on their creativity as it was not enough time to make a complete puppet in the traditional style.

It was given more importance to understanding how traditional clothes are and how people life style is going than to the actual technique of making puppets.

Participants explored the most interesting traditional celebrations of Romania – mostly pagan ones, coming from very ancient times and related to nature cycles like solstices or opening/ closing of the agricultural season or birth / marriage / death.

Participants were divided into teams and each team received descriptions of the celebration/ tradition. They had to put in scene a role play based on the description. Then the role plays were presented in the group and we discussed on what similar traditions we also have in our countries like in Romania.

The session was interesting also because participants liked the mystical and magical part related to pagan celebrations/ traditions. The time had to be extended as the session was too short so we entered in the lunch break.

The project Passport to Culture is coordinated by Sunrise Project France in collaboration with Youth Dream Algeria, Armenian Progressive Youth, The Change is in You Bulgaria, AISI Youth Alliance Georgia, Cilento Youth Union Italy, People of Delta Romania and We Youth Tunisia. The project is funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.