In Search of An Inner Silence

I always wanted to know the world, cultures, customs and religions, searching and asking, trying to get to know, trying to experience people, feel the colors, the smells, the wind in the face. Searching for an inner silence. I sat on airplanes, searched on bus roofs and in mountain valleys. Ever farther, higher, deeper, always to experience more, to know more. Fifty inhabitants of this small village nearby has been showing me for the past few years again and again that the bigger questions I want to ask, the closer to my home I can go ask them. Life here is equally concentrated as on the other side of the world or in your living room. And so I don’t ask where that place is, it is where I am. The important is nearby, the important is where I know it. The village of Sumice lies on the southwestern slopes of the Romanian Carpathian mountains, sixty kilometers north of the Danube river. It is one of the most isolated communities in Europe, separated from surrounding Romania by its culture, religion and language, and also geographically – the asphalt road to the village was built only a few years back. Sumice was established by Czech immigrants at the beginning of the 19th century, the village enjoyed its biggest growth in mid 1900s when more than 500 people lived here. In 2016 there were only 63 left, in the spring of 2019 only 55. The rhythm of life is still defined here by the will of weather and the work in the fields.