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FagarasRomania Fagaras (Hungarian: Fogaras, German: Fogarasch) is a city in central Romania, county Brasov. It lies on the river Olt and has a population of 35,400 inhabitants as of 2004. Ethnically the city became monocolour, since Germans and Hungarians slowly emigrated, nevertleless there are many evidences of their past. Its name is derived from the Romanian word fag, meaning "beech." A more convincing story for the origin of the city name is derived from Hungarian, FOGARAS as wood(=FA) money(=GARAS), the legends states that money made of wood had been used to pay the peasants who built the fortress around 1310. During the reign of Gábor Bethlen (1613-1629), governor of Transylvania, the town became an economic role model city in southern Transylvania. In that time Gábor Bethlen completely rebuilt the fortress. It worth to mention the role of orphan Kata Bethlen (1700-1759), whose grave is in front of the Reformed church of Fagaras. The church holds several precious relics of her life. Her bridal skirt, with the family coat of arms on it, and her bridal veil now covers the altar table. Both are made of yellow silk. Close to the city center is the Reformed Church built around 1715-1740 by Teleki Jozsef. Not far from the church is the actual Radu Negru High school built around 1909, started as a Hungarian middle school where for a short period of time Babits Mihaly was an active teacher. Fagaras/Fogaras/Fogarasch developed during the Middle Ages around a castle. A local legend says that Negru Voda left the castle to travel south past the Carpathians to found the Principality of Wallachia, although Basarab I is traditionally known as the 14th century founder of that state. By the end of the 12th century the castle was made of wood, but it was reinforced in the 14th century and became a stone fortification. In the 20th century, Fagaras's castle was used as a stronghold by the Communist regime of Romania. During the 1950s it was a prison for opponents and dissidents of the regime. After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the castle has been restored and is currently used as a museum and library. These days the most important atraction in the city are the fortress, Radu Negru High school, Reformed Church, Chatolic Church. Unfortunatly economicaly the city is broken as most of the factories were closed after the 1989 revolution. Large part of the city population emigrated as guest workers to Italy, Spain and Ireland. This page was retrieved and condensed from
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagaras) November
2005
Unfortunately I do not have many of my photos of this place left, although we had four cameras between us and we have taken many, many photos wherever we went, two of my most favoured cameras: a JVC video camera I favoured because of the quality of photos it produced, ease of use and its excellent compression rate, and my Panasonic camera for its miniature size. Both had large, 512 MB SD Cards and many thousands of photos on them were stolen from my bag, later into our trip, by some 'lowlife', with my wallet and money. You'll see this message a few times, because my JVC and Panasonic cameras' cards had many-many pictures stored on them.
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