Mother Ruta’s Spindle
A new contest on RRI as of May 1st 2015
România Internațional, 01.05.2015, 12:00
Dear friends, you are invited once again to an RRI contest. This time, the contest is organized alongside our colleagues from Radio Romania Village Antenna, the public station aimed at Romanian villages. This may explain the unusual title of our contest, ‘Home with Mother Ruta’s Spindle’. It was inspired by the popular movie ‘Amelie’, which made famous the garden gnome, which traveled the world over, sending home selfies taken in exotic places around the globe.
A similar project, simple and ingenious, originated in Fagaras Country, in central Romania, in a village called Mandra, ‘Mother Ruta’s Spindle’. A genuine household tool, a spindle, used by a local woman, Mother Ruta, when she was alive, started traveling all around the world a few years ago, passed from person to person, from regular people to celebrities, who take pictures with the spindle wherever they may travel. Mother Ruta was a simple soul, who wanted her trusted spindle, which she’d used her entire life, to ‘see’ the world. We thought we would invite you to a contest that would bring you to the place where the spindle started its journey, the village of Mandra in the Fagaras region, continuing to another wonderful area in the vicinity, Marginimea Sibiului.
10 years ago, an old woman in the village of Mandra, in Brasov County, passed away after a lifetime spent spinning at her loom. Besides the beautiful fabrics she made for her children to pass down, she left them her spindle. This had a very particular meaning: the old woman could never afford to see the world outside Fagaras Country, and passed down to her children her unfulfilled wish to travel, in the form of her spindle.
Her granddaughter, actress Alina Zara, took it upon herself to fulfill her wish, and to have the spindle get passed from person to person, people of every age and calling, wherever they may go around the world. So far, the spindle has traveled one million kilometers. It has visited former Soviet gulags, it went to Australia, to Mount Athos, to Alba Iulia (the site where the union of Romanians was proclaimed in 1918); it even traveled in the case of the Stradivarius violin played by the famous Romanian violinist Alexandru Tomescu when he went to Beijing, it has even been to the poles of the Earth and at the Equator. It took with it everywhere a message of peace and solidarity around the most precious human values.
One condition for those who take it traveling is for them to make presentations about Romania and its village life, held at embassies or major cultural events. As a symbol of ancestral crafts and traditions, Mother Ruta’s spindle is a storyteller, more persuasive than any speech on the beauty of Romania.
You are invited to follow our broadcasts on RRI, the www.rri.ro website and our profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, provide the correct answer for a few questions, and you can be a winner. The contest’s closing date is 15 July, mailing date.
The Grand Prizes will be two trips for two, 8 days and 7 nights with double room accommodation, full board, between 1-8 September, in the Fagaras (Sambata de Sus) area, Brasov County, and Marginimea Sibiului, in Sibiu County. One trip for two, double room, will be for RRI’s listeners, the second for the Village Antenna’s listeners. As usual, the winners provide their own transportation to and from Romania, and their own visas, if applicable.
The contest is sponsored by SC SCORILO TURISM SRL, and is organized in collaboration with local partners in Brasov and Sibiu counties.
Here are the questions:
1. Where did Mother Ruta’s spindle start its journey around the world?
2. How many kilometers has the spindle traveled?
3. What are the areas that will be visited by the winners of the Grand Prizes?
4. Name five places visited by the Romanian spindle?
For information you can use the project’s blog http://suveicachicd10.blogspot.ro/, and the project’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Suveica-Mamei-Ru%C5%A3a-%C3%AEn-jurul-lumii/360304274111765 even if it is only in Romanian.
Please let us know what made you take part in the contest and why you follow RRI broadcasts on shortwave or on-line.
Our address is: Radio Romania International, Str. General Berthelot nr. 60-64, sector 1, Bucharest, PO Box 111, cod 010165, fax 0040.21.319.05.62, e-mail engl@rri.ro. Your answers are expected by 15 July, mailing date. The winners of the Grand Prizes will be announced right after the contest closes, allowing them time to prepare for their trip to Romania. Good luck!
