IRB NATIONS CUP 2014
AT THE GATES OF THE SUN

COSMIC ROMANIA 51

-text and photos Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
design Florin Alexandru Stancu-

In February 2014
I passed near a Romanian folkloric wooden semi-gate in Bucharest,
which served as an indicator to the Village Museum,
a great interbellic achievement made by a team led by Dimitrie Gusti
(a project personally sustained by King Carol II).

Since this museum is placed vis-à-vis with
the national rugby stadium, the Casin Church and the Triumph Arch,
soon after the spring equinox
I caught the sun near them, and I composed a photo-poem.

Sun and magnolia stellata
In the end of March.

Any rugby gate is also
Right a triumph arch.

In April I returned to the introductory semi-gate
to see it accompanied by the Spring Sun.

In May I tried to catch
even the sunrise over the city…

And I also tried to take pictures with
the introductory building of the Village Museum (at noon)
and another magnificent achievement from the interbellic times
(which is placed on the same boulevard),
the Romanian Peasant Museum (at dusk),

I did these things just because I had heard that the players
of the Romanian national rugby team,
in cooperation with specialists in folklore,
had chosen a new design for their t-shirts,
including stylized horns of ram,
a solar motif suggesting energy in infinity.

Then I remembered that in March 2013
I had seen a sunset over the Village Museum
(the Sun seemed to slowly play with the highest building,
a wooden church from the 18th century, brought from the Maramures zone)
from the Herastrau Park (the opposite direction)…

…just because in June 2014 the national rugby stadium
had to hold
the 9th edition of the International Rugby Board Nations Cup,
a competition in which the finals were programmed in 22 June,
a time that coincided with the Romanian Holiday of the Sanzienes
(Holy Fairies, 21-24 June).

It is said that
the Sanzienes were women-priests in the antique times of the Dacians,
then they became flower-girls
and positive deities of the forests and of the atmosphere,
who delighted the Sun, playing with him.

Practically, the Sanzienes festival is a holiday of the summer solstice,
joyfully celebrating vegetation and harvest
when the day begins to be warmer and shorter,
an astronomical reality caught in the following old Romanian invocation:

“Go Sun, come Moon,
Make the Sanzienes better!”

So nothing more beautiful for me
than to catch another sunrise (29 May 2014)
and to prepare myself for the solstice events,
beginning with the Nations Cup,
in which the Romanian players had to launch their new t-shirts!

ROMANIA-URUGUAY 34-16 (13-13)

It was a match, in 13 June,
between the vice-champion of Continental Europe
and the vice-champion of Latin America.

At dusk,
a magnificent cumulonimbus cloud greeted the efforts of the two teams.

ROMANIA-RUSSIA 20-18 (6-10)

The second adversary for Romania was, in 18 June,
the best Eur-Asian national team,
Russia (its best players coming from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia).

I saw one of the most spectacular overthrows of situation in my life:
a few minutes before the end Russia had 18-6,
but Romania made a sensational comeback.

Parallely the celestial main event was a break in clouds,
enough for an irresistible solar shower.

ROMANIA-EMERGING IRELAND 10-31 (3-17)

In the final of the competition
Romania (without many important players) was very honored to met
the second team of Ireland (with 7 players already tested in the first team),
that represented the Home Union.

In fact,
it is to say that Ireland was the recent winner of the 6 Nations tournament,
so officially the best team in the northern hemisphere.

Unfortunately,
the result reflected only the class and pragmatism of the guests
and too little the long Romanian periods of domination.

Fortunately,
I had the occasion the see the Sun
setting through a rugby gate.

It was something like
the brightest drop-goal I ever saw!

On the next day I passed again near the Village Museum
and I saw a banner,
La Portile Soarelui (At the Gates of the Sun),
dedicated to the Sanzienes festivities, which took place inside.

Pressed by personal problems,
I was forced to postpone my visit to this museum,
so I ended this story through another photo-poem:

In 2014
One of my targets was the same:
To go to the Gates of the Sun!
(This time not through Sanzienes, but through the rugby game!)

IRB NATIONS CUP 2014 AT THE GATES OF THE SUN

IRB NATIONS CUP 2014
AT THE GATES OF THE SUN