Coach Pilgrimage : Religion,pilgrimage,and tourism in contemporary Romania

Bucharest, Romania. Wednesday, 4 April 2012—the beginning

Anthropologists, pilgrims, and tourists have many things in common. All like to travel, to pay close attention to their environment, to consume cultural products, and to observe social rituals. The idea of undertaking a “coach pilgrimage,” a common practice in the last two decades in Romania, was a spontaneous one for me. I had the impression that this type of trip would be the ideal terrain to study the existing relationships between tourism and pilgrimage and, at a more general level, to understand the contemporary fait religieux in Romania. Indeed, the context is unique: the dialogue with the organizers and the members of the expedition is facilitated by the confined space of the minibus and the need of the people to talk in order to make the time go by more quickly. The estimated travel time is about 3–4 hours, including stops on the road. Furthermore, direct observation is more “efficient” in the limited space of a small Orthodox monastery where you can move around freely, without restrictions, than for the big pilgrimages that I have been visiting over the past few years in Romania, where up to 600,000–800,000 people gather together in towns such as Iasi or Bucharest.

As an anthropologist and pilgrim, I wanted to find an explanation for the extraordinary success of this type of trip. By success I mean the increase in the variety and number of destinations, as well as their popularity in the media and their visibility on the Internet. The number of people engaging each year in this type of activity appears to be rising if I were to judge solely on the variety of the offers. It is almost impossible, however, to evaluate the number of visitors because of the total lack of official statistics from the Church or the tourism authorities. I even find it difficult to categorize those leading the pilgrimages. They call themselves “pilgrimage organizers,” but in fact they are more than that: they choose the religious and tourist sites to be visited, they give spiritual advice, they provide minor medical treatment, and so on. I will discover shortly all of the above.

The beginning was easy: I looked for posters which announced these kinds of pilgrimages. Usually, there are many of them dotted around the big churches of Bucharest. The poster announcing Pilgrimage—Horia Hermitage, a small monastery in the south-eastern plain of Romania, between the capital, Bucharest, and the Black Sea, was printed on a scrappy A4 paper. Its design was primitive and in black and white. The sheet was crudely pasted with duct tape to a lamp post and read as follows: At dawn on April 7th we will be going together on a pilgrimage to the Horia Hermitage. After the Holy Liturgy, we will receive spiritual advice from Father Isaia, the abbot of the sanctuary. There are also the shoes of Saint Spiridon, the icon of The Mother of God and of the Redeemer from Vatopedi and Ivrion, which produces great miracles. Those who come in faith and pray will have their bodies and souls healed. Full of spiritual joy and hoping for the best, we will return to Bucharest in the evening.

I call the mobile phone number provided at the bottom of the page. “Miss Octavia,” the trip’s organizer, picks up. She begins by telling me she has been organizing this type of pilgrimage for 4 years. I am advised to pay part of the fee in advance (the total cost is 28 Euros) to the woman who sells candles and other church objects in a Bucharest church. I should have no fear or reluctance, Miss Octavia tells me, because the organization is well-oiled and the woman working there is trustworthy. I go to the shallow-lit and almost deserted church (at 2 p.m.) on the outskirts of the city and pay the required sum and ask for a receipt so that I can have some written evidence that I have paid, anything … The lady selling candles, Miss Octavia’s helper, tells me, a little confused and surprised by my request, that she cannot give me anything: “I am here voluntarily, I just help out, I cannot issue receipts.” In the tiny room where they organize their activities I see other flyers advertising other pilgrimages to various other destinations, such as Jerusalem or the monasteries in Northern Moldavia. After 2 days, Miss Octavia calls me to say that she has received the money. She thanks me and then tells me the necessary number of people to warrant the journey has been reached. With a commanding voice that I am already used to, she warns me not to be late: “We gather in front of the church at 6 a.m. and then we leave at 7 a.m.”

Saturday, 7 April 2012, 6:30 a.m.—the trip

Still sleepy, I arrive at the Church where an old bus accommodating 20 people is waiting. I meet Miss Octavia, the organizer. She is around 50 years old, very energetic, commanding authority. She tells me she is an economist at a nearby high school and organizes pilgrimages in her spare time. She has been running them for approximately 3 years. Everything began when she had to replace a friend who was organizing pilgrimages herself and who had fallen ill. She enjoyed doing it and thought that she was doing something good and that she could somehow help people on their quest. However, during the trip and while waiting at the monastery, I managed to ask her several questions about her activity and her role. How does she select her pilgrimage destinations? Miss Octavia explains gravely, “Compared to other pilgrimage organizers, I place less emphasis on tourism and more on the renown of the spiritual adviser or the abbot’s spiritual powers.” She is totally independent of the Church and its hierarchy when choosing her pilgrimage destinations. A very predictable choice, I tell myself while I am carefully listening to her (the verbal flow of Miss Octavia is a pretty high one) in an Orthodox Church in which women have always had a minor place and not much decision power. As a small digression, while on other field research on the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism, I once entered one of the pilgrimage agencies of the Romanian Patriarchy, hence an “official” agency. The priest and agency manager confessed that the destinations’ choice in their particular case is coming straight from the pilgrims, “according to the demands of the users of our services and the dedication shown to certain saints or pilgrimage sites!”

She cultivates friendly relationships with the monasteries’ administrators, as well as with motel owners, and this allows her to secure reliable, inexpensive accommodation for her groups. Miss Octavia also makes use of her historical, theological, and geographical knowledge as a form of cultural capital as a way to gain authority over the group. Later, during the trip, I saw Miss Octavia giving explanations about the history of a famous monastery outside Bucharest and at the same time indicating the way to the driver on a shabby map. I realized then that she actually is the homme à tout faire of this group: organizer, tourist guide, confidant, marketing agent, and so on. With two or three women of our group, Miss Octavia behaves more informally and affectionately. The role that her gender is playing in this important position is well stressed. It aids her to emphasize the “Great Mother” image, generous and possessive, loved and feared at the same time. They exchange information on their family lives, work, and children. Later, when I talked to one of the women, I found out that they had taken part in many pilgrimages organized by Miss Octavia, whom they described as “good-hearted and attentive to the spiritual needs of each one of us.”

There are about 20 participants, mostly women around 60 years old. First, we are briefed about the seat assignments. Miss Octavia tells us, “Nobody is to sit next to the driver, nor on the back seats, those seats are for the attending priest.” (I later found out that he was not actually a priest, but only a theology student.) Throughout the journey I paid close attention to this “theology student,” as he introduced himself. In his 30s, tall, displaying an impressive black beard, he kept silent almost all the time, contemplating the landscape passing by. When the pilgrims would ask him for spiritual advice or about saints, relics, and religious practice, he would answer briefly. During our stay at the Horia hermitage, our final destination, he simply disappeared into one of the adjacent buildings, to reappear at the end, after all the passengers had got into the coach again. Through his behavior, he was acting as an element of “spiritual legitimization” of the trip, strengthening Miss Octavia’s authority (let’s not forget that in the Orthodox Church, the role of women is rather minor and they do not have access to the priesthood). Although I have not been able to confirm this assumption, I would not be surprised to learn that, besides the free ticket, the man also received a little compensation for the role he played. The make-up of the facilitators of our expedition is completed by the bus driver, who pulls a large icon of the Virgin Mary out of a suitcase and places it with improvised clamps on the bus’ windshield.

The bus starts up. Miss Octavia reads out a prayer with blessings for the trip and announces what we will be visiting today, what the weather will be like, the state of the traffic, and so on. What could be called the “stage of spiritual preparation” of our journey begins. Miss Octavia encourages us to “open our hearts and minds” and speak openly about our motivations for making this pilgrimage. Father Isaia, the staretz (abbot) of Horia Monastery, is presented as an individual with extraordinary qualities, clairvoyant, “soul doctor,” and hospitable host at the same time. She also gives indications on where the monastery is located: “Away from civilization, away from the traffic of the city, away from everything!” After that, with theatrical gestures, she pulls out of a travel bag small plastic icons and pieces of paper with “personalized prayers” printed on them; she gives me one addressed to the Virgin Mary. We are all gently touched on the forehead with scented oil, and the inside of the bus is filled with a strong and spicy scent of miron (chrism). Finally, she measures us up, to see whether we are appropriately dressed, without any fashionable extravagances that might undermine our pious pilgrim image. How do the people of our group respond to Miss Octavia’s guiding? They never openly challenge her decisions, nor the set route, which creates a sense of community during the trip. If there are criticisms, particularly regarding some technical aspects of the trip (departure time, travel conditions, duration of the journey, etc.), they are discussed in the small groups that form later in the courtyard of the monastery.

We take the Bucharest–Constanta highway; the traffic is light. One passenger, encouraged by Miss Octavia, feeds a disk into the DVD player. It is a Greek film from the 1970s about the life of Saint Mary the Egyptian. The film, downloaded from the Internet and of low technical quality, is not working. Somebody in the back of the bus loudly requests “a disk with religious music, prayers for atmosphere, because we are on a pilgrimage!” The woman in front of me talks with her daughter on her mobile phone, constantly repeating that she is “on a trip, not far, to the monasteries, here, just outside Bucharest.”

A portrait of a pilgrim: Mrs Anca, my seatmate. She had been working at a textile factory at the outskirts of Bucharest for over 40 years, but the factory closed down for lack of orders. After that, she did various odd jobs until she reached retirement age. She is a cheerful, energetic woman; she smiles and has a joke for every passenger of the coach. She has known Miss Octavia for a long time, they go to the same church, and this is not her first pilgrimage of this type. I ask her what she thinks of the fact that mostly people aged 60 years or older go on such pilgrimages. Mrs Anca answers immediately, glad to make the time go by more quickly by having a little chat:

You want to know why more elderly people go on pilgrimages than young people? Here’s a riddle: what grows shorter as it lengthens? You don’t know? It’s life. We feel that the end is drawing near and we go on pilgrimages to prepare ourselves for the great moment.

Everyone around nods approvingly. Another question for Mrs Anca: how does she cope with the stress and fatigue related to such a trip? Mrs Anca answers that she is accustomed to the fatigue; she has been working night shifts for many years because it seemed to her that time went by more quickly during the night:

Sir, I liked to work at night. Night has its own wisdom. I was a supervisor over 37 workers, you should have seen us at 3:00 a.m., running and changing the bobbins with our eyes closed. If I have resisted the fatigue of so many nights of hard work, I can also resist the fatigue caused by a bus ride, don’t you think so?

There follows the classic story I have heard so many times in pilgrimages: the factory where she worked does not exist anymore, it was closed down, and then it was split up and sold as scrap metal. Mrs Anca regrets the fall of the regime. She speaks of Nicolae Ceausescu as of a loving father: “He has given me an apartment, cheap holidays at the seaside and in the mountains …” I tease her a little by saying, “But pilgrimages, he did not give you too many!” She stops talking and just smiles ruefully. Listening to Mrs Anca, I realize that the memory and nostalgia concerning the Communist regime that collapsed in 1989 are omnipresent in this type of pilgrimage. It comes in different forms and shapes. First, it is a question of generational memory. The majority of the pilgrims lived part of their active life during Communism, so they share similar memories and identify along the journey the highly symbolic places of national memory (such as battlefields, mausoleums), whose importance was emphasized under Ceausescu’s nationalistic regime. Everyone I talk to says that there were similar forms of religious tourism before 1989. They were called “cultural-educational excursions to monasteries” and were tolerated by the Communist authorities. Trips were also made to factories, plants, or other major industrial infrastructure. Such touristic and industrial landmarks, popular under the regime (dams, striking mountain roads), can still be found in the itineraries put together by the pilgrimage organizers. This type of answer is not unique to Romania. In the vast majority of Eastern European countries, the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism has a specific historical background linked to the former Communist regimes. In Bulgaria, Romania’s southern neighbor, many churches and monasteries were reclassified as monuments, museums, and “national tourist sites.” Even if the religious life inside the monastery had ended, the tourists still preserved the characteristics of seriousness, humility, and devotion to the “historic” place (Baeva, 2014: 82). In this particular context, one might wonder whether the guides are not authentic “memorial agents” too, who connect with an ambiguous past which continues to raise great memorial recovery issues, even more critical with regard to the religious life, the cultural and religious heritage, and so on.

In the discussions among pilgrims, the topic of Communism is conspicuously present because, again, it was part of their lives. Without any doubt, the pilgrims’ age, the distinctive generational memory, and the guide’s age seem relevant to me. Critical aspects pertaining to the practice of religion under Communism are ignored. To this nostalgic attitude one may add what may be called the “hard memory” of Communism: the inclusion among pilgrimage destinations of memorial places related to the Romanian gulag, particularly the prison of Aiud, in Transylvania, where a significant part of the elite of the pre–World War II (WWII) Romania was exterminated. Aiud has remained in the memory of Romanian Communism as the country’s most important and harshest place of detention, where political prisoners were imprisoned until the 1980s (Muraru, 2008: 73). Thus, on the same travel route, we can find next to each other dams, prisons, and famous monasteries! From the outside, this juxtaposition might seem quite odd, being part of the individual way of the Romanians to make a travail de mémoire. Beyond the anti-Communist discourse, which seems to have become official in civic, political, and academic society or the obviously nostalgic one of the ex-working class, there is a third discourse, which combines, paradoxically, antagonistic, both pro- and anti-Communist attitudes, but holds great nostalgic potential. The issue is too complex to be dealt with in just a couple of lines, however. Even the organizing and the schedule of such pilgrimages reveals at a “micro” level how complex Eastern Europe’s memorial situation is today and the fact that different types of travail de mémoire cannot be compared. Everybody is getting rid of the past in their own way!

First stop: the miraculous and wonderworking icon of Rasvani

Miss Octavia carefully distributes hot coffee from a huge thermos. She is obviously having trouble with the sway of the vehicle, caused by the numerous potholes scattered on the country road we are presently driving on. The bus comes to an abrupt stop in the center of a lowland village, in front of an unassuming church under reconstruction. Several cars display Bucharest license plates, including two taxis. Triumphantly, Miss Octavia tells us she has a “surprise”: we will visit Rasvani Church, where an icon of Christ has wept in the course of the previous year. Ever since then pilgrims have kept visiting the place. Rasvani Church is symptomatic of a new type of pilgrimage, one based on miracle and emotion. We go inside like tourists eager to discover something new, but also as pilgrims impressed by the power of the iconic image and the sacred place. Miss Octavia whispers with undisguised satisfaction that “still very few people have found out about this wonder.” Through such repeated statements, Miss Octavia gains legitimacy from the rarity value of the pilgrimage. Everyone is looking for the wonderworking icon. Once we have found it, we hastily kiss it, making the sign of the cross ostentatiously.

While Miss Octavia and the group of pilgrims are inside the church buying candles and reproductions of the miraculous icon, I take the opportunity to chat with one of the administrators of this sacred place. I ask him whether the increased presence of “tourists” (I emphasize the word “tourists”) does not disturb the spiritual life of the place, beyond the obvious financial benefits. The man smiles faintly, but he does not seem at all disturbed by the question. He answers,

The spread and the flourishing of this place is another sign of the power of this icon and her blessing.

I do not differentiate between tourists and pilgrims, as you do. For us, they are all human beings that have felt a divine call and we have to welcome them as such. In many cases, I have seen how “tourists,” as you call them, have had more intense and more emotional spiritual experiences than you could have imagined at a first sight.

Did this response reflect a well designed strategy to reduce the conflicts between the visitors and the pilgrims, inevitably related to the hybridity of the attractions (religious, artistic, historical significance), as described by Nolan and Nolan (1992: 77)? Or was it a sincere belief in the capacity of regeneration and standardization operated by the sacred place per se? After completing the field research, I incline to believe that by my unique position, my obvious individuality in Miss Octavia’s group (I was the one taking pictures, taking notes, interviews, having a prying look) did not pass unnoticed by the overseers of the place. My singularity added to the creation of this answer, so conciliatory, so “Byzantine” in its form and content.

Before departing, I notice how the money brought by countless pilgrims attracted to the wonderworking icon has been used to reconstruct the church of Rasvani: fresh mural paintings are on display and there were new adjoining buildings. From the classic study by Georges Duby (1978) to the more recent works on the sociology of contemporary monasticism (e.g. by Isabelle Jonveaux, 2012), the connection between the receipts of pilgrimage and architectural and local development has been uncovered. I see yet another confirmation here, in the remote village of Rasvani in the far east of Europe. In that impoverished region, the construction of a brand new religious building contrasts sharply with the surrounding buildings and appears surprising at first sight. Then, we go back to the bus that will take us to the Horia Hermitage, in the “middle of nowhere,” in the great Baragan Plain in the east of Romania.

Improvised road signs that read “Horia Hermitage” start appearing. This is so far away from everything that even the global positioning system (GPS) does not seem to work properly. Before taking a bumpy, dusty country road, we stop in front of a grocery store. My travel mates stack up on candles, but also on sugar, oil, bread and other food items that will be discreetly donated to the monastery kitchen. The store seems well endowed with goods relevant to the religious destination. It is obvious for any observer that its unlikely flourishing is due to the Horia Hermitage’s popularity. The grocery is also the last shop of this type before we reach our destination. Incidentally, it was much better supplied, with more numerous and more varied goods than any other shop of the same type in this type of area.

The monastery: pilgrims, tourists, monks

The Horia Hermitage lies on the outskirts of the village bearing the same name. On one side of the road, there is the almost abandoned village cemetery. On the other side, there is the monastery, still under construction. The only completed building is the church, covered with wood, with three minuscule steeples. In the large courtyard lie scattered a tractor, a huge broken plough, building materials, tables, and chairs. Everything seems improvised, in disarray; the place is new, still unstable. Seated on wooden benches there are about 60 people, waiting to meet Father Isaia, the monastic community’s founder and its abbot. A man of around 60 years old, he seems much older because of the beard he is growing and his ample robes. He is sought out by pilgrims because he is said to possess the gift of clairvoyance. He is famous for the “spiritual solutions” he gives to those coming to the monastery. At the end of the trip, in gratitude each pilgrim will donate an amount of money, usually between 5 and 20 Euros.

When we get off the bus, our group divides spontaneously into two. At this point, the guide has little control over the group. The frail pilgrim-communication state settled on the road, open toward dialogue and friendship, dissipates quickly. Miss Octavia is trying to provide us with some conduct advice and dress codes which are to be followed inside the monastery, but nobody truly listens to her anymore. Everybody is packing frantically, checking their hand-luggage and the food parcels which will be donated to the monastery (offerings or prinoasele in Romanian). On the one hand, there are those who sit down in a line, quietly waiting to be admitted by the monk Isaia. On the other, there are those who start exploring the wild surroundings with their rugged beauty: the neighboring village, the limitless plain close by, the abandoned cemetery. These are those who during the trip said that they chose to come here “to forget a bit about the pollution and the stress of Bucharest, to go out and enjoy the spring.” It seems that, metaphorically speaking, two separate groups habit different parts of the place and come into contact with its space in different ways. They will remain separated for the whole duration of the stay at Horia Monastery, each group preserving its autonomy. They will meet only sporadically during the meal that was served to the pilgrims in the refectory and at the monastery’s religious souvenirs shop, well supplied in candles, incense, icons of different subjects and sizes, as well as prayer books. Their statements remind me of the claim by the French anthropologist and historian of religion Alphonse Dupront that tourism and pilgrimage have an “intimate correspondence” when, once people have reached their destination, therapy by fatigue starts to work, stimulated by the receptivity of the excited and weary body, as the person is content to have finally reached the long-desired destination (Dupront, 1967: 103). Physical fatigue thus combines with a powerful emotion. This point also applies to other dimensions of contemporary travel, related to the emotion of returning to and rediscovering nature (Sharpley and Jepson, 2011).

The tireless Miss Octavia takes advantage of the waiting line to distribute flyers advertising new pilgrimage destinations. The waiting time of the pilgrims in front of Father Isaia’s hermitage represented a time-resource for her, which came in handy for presenting the offer and having loyalty talks with the attendees. She is already making people think of the next trip, giving full detailed information about destination, traveling time, attractions to be visited, accommodation, meals, and so on. Soon another pilgrimage organizer joins her, a man who arrived by bus. People start comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each offer, just as they would in a tourist office. Miss Octavia emphasizes the quality and safety of her pilgrimages and that she picks the hotels carefully: “Especially in Jerusalem, you know how tiring the trip there is.” Miss Octavia was trying to organize, once a year, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but, as she confessed, in her case it was much more unpredictable. The high cost for a Romanian (around 550–600 Euros), the geopolitical situation in the area, and the competition of the Patriarchy official agency were very important for the customers’ decision. Mr Sorin, as the other organizer introduces himself, emphasizes the lower price of his offers, but also “the great experience” he has in this field. It is clear that they have known each other for a long time; they share the same “market” and target the same potential customers. However, their interaction is respectful, each one using the other’s network as a source for finding potential clients.

Pilgrim sociality, tourist sociality

The Horia Hermitage is a spiritual and, at the same time, touristic place. Various types of sociality are obvious among visitors. For the pilgrims, the long wait at Father Isaia’s door has theological, even therapeutic, virtues. People who wait 8 or 10 hours feel the need to share their life stories, the “tribulations” that brought them there. One can feel the need for a miracle, a confirmation of their pilgrim gesture. Others talk about their previous pilgrimages, exchange useful addresses, or warn of bad pilgrimage organizers, who must be avoided. Their attitude changes visibly after their brief discussion with Father Isaia. They are now silent, concerned. The vast majority get their mobile phones out of their pockets, withdraw in a more secluded place, and call their relatives to discuss what had just happened.

For those who are primarily tourists, things are a little different. First, their dress choices are less austere than of those waiting in line, and their activities are more liberal (men, for instance, do not hesitate to retreat to a certain distance to smoke a cigarette). Their initial state of amazement, the feeling that they are in such an isolated place just 150 km from Bucharest, quickly fades. The monastery and its lifestyle become an attraction per se. Four of my fellow travelers, all men, try to blend in and imitate the monastic lifestyle. They choose to work in the monastery kitchen, clean and wash ritual items, or work in the monastery garden. They do everything with visible satisfaction. This is reminiscent of a certain type of bio-eco rural tourism, “with natural, social and community values, and which allow both, hosts and guests, to enjoy positive and worthwhile interaction and shared experience” (Stroza, 2001: 274).

A particular significance is given by Miss Octavia to the lunch we take in the monastery’s refectory. The fact that we were to have lunch for free was clearly written, in a distinctive manner, on the posters and flyers advertising this pilgrimage. Anyway, the monastic hospitality rules imposed it as well. This lunch, given to all the members of the group (including the bus driver), reunited once more all its members and enhanced the spiritual dimension of our journey. The refectory is a low, poorly lit room. I have had the chance to participate in dozens of such meals over years of fieldwork, but what is striking in this case is the pedantic arrangement of the tables and the cutlery. The guests, regardless of the purpose of their visit, are supposed to feel the solemnity of the place as deeply as possible. The plates are made of burnt clay, and there is something primitive about them; the spoons are wooden and the food is simple, but very tasty. Surprising for a place like this are the paper napkins with the monastery logo and the name “Horia Hermitage” on them. I was unable at that moment to find out who had the idea of “personalizing” the meal in this way. At the end of the meal, most of those present asked permission to take a paper napkin—“as a souvenir, to show those at home how beautiful it is here” (woman, around 65 years old). Later, during the homeward journey, I learned from one of my fellow travelers, a regular visitor of the monastery, that the idea of the logo came from a young couple working in advertising, who often visit the monastery. They had been traveling all over Europe, to Greece, and other famous spiritual places and had seen how things were done elsewhere. They designed the napkins and persuaded Father Isaia to adopt them for the pilgrims.

The way back

We leave the monastery at around 8 p.m., after Father Isaia had managed to see the last members of our group. I watch them as they get on the bus quietly and orderly and I ask myself once more whether I am dealing with pilgrims or with tourists. The tourist has more opportunity to divide up the space and the time according to personal preference. While he or she cannot stop when he or she wants, he or she can at least influence the group leader in order to secure intermediate stops. This has not been the case on this trip; people have followed Miss Octavia devoutly. But they have not been complete pilgrims either, at least in conventional terms, because pilgrimages tend to require clear physical steps, precise terms, and high spiritual purposes. Here, they went searching for a “guru,” a unique magical–religious combination. However, they were united by this complex of hope and curiosity, effort, fear, and tension that can be specific both to tourism and to pilgrimage. Miss Octavia framed the visit to Father Isaia in a very discreet way. She did not scold those who chose not to take part in the waiting line preferring to visit the monastery and its surroundings, and she did not openly insist that they become pilgrims by completing this act of ritual submission. Later on, though, during lunch or on the way back, I could witness how she was scolding softly, like a spiritual mother, those who had avoided meeting Father Isaia.

My fellow travelers are tired and excited at the same time, which is common in many pilgrimages. A lady talks to her daughter on the phone for a long time. She tells her about the spiritual advice she has received from Father Isaia. I hear her whispering, “To Italy, yes, you both have to emigrate to Italy.” The bus driver is upset about the poor state of the road across the plain. However, he says, because of Father Isaia’s influence and of the increasing number of pilgrims, authorities have decided to upgrade the road. Miss Octavia, too, is tired, but still has enough energy to ask whether we are pleased with the organization and whether we plan on coming back. The bus stops somewhere soon after we enter the city, near the first underground station. We quickly say “goodbye” and “God bless you” and vanish all into the night.

A partial conclusion

The literature dedicated to the relation between tourism and pilgrimage is immense. Unfortunately, there is far too little of it covering Orthodox contexts and nothing at all covering Romania; a more global epistemological approach to this phenomenon, covering Romania and other Orthodox countries of the Balkans, would be interesting. One exception is that the work of Jeanne Kormina (2010) in relation to Russian pilgrimage space provides a particularly salient study regarding our case that highlights the connection between pilgrim mobility, tourism, religion and the search for “authenticity” in Orthodox pilgrimage.

Here are some provisional conclusions relating to the question of guiding and the organization of pilgrimage. As in the majority of the sacred sites, operation management becomes essential when the number of pilgrims and/or tourists grows. For the moment, Father Isaia, thanks to his charismatic authority, brings some coherence to the group of monks and the monastic ensemble. It would be worth observing how things will evolve in this respect. At the site, the continuous quest for “authenticity,” by both the pilgrims and the tourists, is visible (Timothy and Olsen, 2006: 5–7). Because it is yet to be a mass pilgrimage site, it is noticeable how both pilgrim and tourists are satisfied by the authenticity they search for and find there. The refectory and its management are an indication that operators are aware of the fact that the authentic “sells” and attracts the tourists just as much as the pilgrim. In this case, authenticity means the purity, simplicity, and historical value of the desired place. The spiritual quality of a place (namolennost in Russian, har in Romanian) seems to be one of the essential ingredients of a popular place of pilgrimage.

The visitors’ motivations are complex and multi-dimensional. To limit myself solely to the group I traveled with, these could be summarized as follows: (1) the desire to meet a charismatic character, a spiritual guru, at the very edge of the tolerance of the official Church; (2) low-cost tourism, with a spiritual allure, for people with modest means and without personal cars, who desire to escape a tiring and polluted city; and (3) the opportunity to make new friends or to find professional connections useful even after the pilgrimage is over, in daily life. The pleasure to meet people of the same generation, in particular for retirees, and to talk together about similar life experiences mostly related to the communist era.

Despite the voluminous literature devoted to the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism, there is a disagreement in what constitutes the difference between pilgrimage and tourism from the religious perspective, the perspective of the pilgrims themselves, and the perspective of the tourism industry and researchers (Timothy and Olsen, 2006). I shall not make another inventory of the resemblances and differences between them for the Romanian case, among other things because the state of scientific research on this subject in Romania is almost non-existent. However, I have attempted to examine the issue of pilgrim versus tourist at two levels: the first one linked to the perspective of the organizers of such “coach pilgrimages” and to the administrators of the sacred places; the second involving the perspectives of the visitors themselves. Much to my surprise, both categories tend to avoid using the words “tourism” and “excursion,” preferring terms like “pilgrimage” or “journey.” The participants were invariably designated as “pilgrims,” despite the fact that, in the case of our trip to Horia Monastery, at least some of the travelers openly declared an absence of a spiritual purpose of the trip and spoke about relaxation and a change of daily routine. In line with the work of Collins-Kreiner and Nurit (2000), I think that they refused to define themselves as “tourists” because of the influence of their travel mates (pp. 55–67). I ask myself how the perception of the participants of their own identity would have changed if exactly the same type of destination had been offered by an official tourist agency?

Owing to its limited scale, a place like the Horia Hermitage is ideal for observing these differences in the field, even if we only talk of the distinct choices of the two categories, the way they use their bodies in prayer or during the meals, and so on. Is this a “palingenetic” space of spiritual tourism? The answer is YES, undoubtedly at this stage of its evolution. The geography of the site is clear and precise; the choreography of the pilgrim gesture (and touristic too) is simple. The guide’s position and the guiding action of the administrative and religious monastery personnel are well defined and can be easily spotted. Here, in this location, its regeneration and transforming capacity, as well as the accommodation with tourism related pressure in any pilgrimage place in the world, is extremely obvious.

The relationship between the State and the organizers of these “coach pilgrimages” is difficult to gauge. Everything takes place within an economic gray zone and the organizers avoid discussing the financial aspects of their activities. However, the organizers use the price of the journey as a strong argument toward attracting customers and openly discuss the price difference of other competitor organizers. Yet, they never speak of the global dimension of their business or its juridical and commercial status. The Romanian Orthodox Church accepts them tacitly as long as they do not question any fundamental dogmas. They are seen as falling rather under the category of popular religion, with which the Orthodox Church has always dealt harmoniously over the centuries. The authoritarian tendencies within the Church do not hinder a plurality of religious practices at the local and individual levels.

J.R. Bertrand (2004) points out the difficulties experienced by the Catholic Church when trying to administer charity “in the context of the great pilgrimages, such as Compostela,” where, with limited resources available, it has to treat both the pilgrim and the spiritual traveler fairly. This problem has not been an issue so far in the Romanian Orthodox context. However, tensions were reported between big tour operators organizing pilgrimages to Israel and the official Pilgrimage Office of the Romanian Patriarchy since the latter emphasizes Church-backed “spiritual guiding,” which is non-existent in the case of pilgrimages organized by tourist agencies. The issue arose when big tourist agencies began to promote pilgrimages to the Holy Land organized by individual Romanian Orthodox priests. In the Holy Land itself, the tensions tend to diminish because the groups of pilgrims are guided by both local guides and Romanian priests. Sometimes, in the places of maximum touristic interest, they may merge, which makes it difficult to identify exactly the action of “guiding.”

The trips run by Miss Octavia help us to understand a change in a social paradigm, involving unstable and changing relations between society, Church, and religion in Romania and other countries from the former Communist bloc (Capelle-Pogaceanu, 2008). On one hand, the Orthodox Church has become increasingly visible in public space, not least through its own media outlets (radio, TV, and news agency). On the other hand, the era of “religious revival,” when people rediscovered religion with enthusiasm and emotion after the fall of Communism, has come to an end. The present religiosity gives the impression of a sui generis mixture of magic, New Age, and other motley elements mimicking Orthodox religious practices and rituals—an Eastern European response to the phenomenon of privatization and appropriation of religion that has also been observed in the more advanced Western societies.

In common with Romanian society as a whole, the religious landscape in Romania is diverse and the differences between town and country are striking. The rural areas, increasingly poor and depopulated, tend to be more conservative. In the cities, the Orthodox live in a more individualistic environment and it is also in the bigger towns that Orthodoxy generates new developments, such as youth clubs, where young people practice and disseminate an ideal, identity-forming, sometimes virulently anti-modern Orthodoxy, closely linked to national values. In the cities also originate the majority of the pilgrims interested in coach pilgrimages: they are usually retired and looking for spiritual meaning in their life, after the collapse of Communism has thrown them into confusion. They have chosen an autonomous religious practice, outside the Church: instead of attending Sunday Mass at their local church, they prefer to go on pilgrimage, individually or in groups, to visit famous monasteries and participate in the Divine Liturgy there. No quantitative study that measures this phenomenon has been published yet.

This situation converges at least in part with the situation in some Western societies. From the outside, Romanian Orthodoxy may seem less secularized, owing to the fact that there is no priest recruitment crisis (in Eastern Christianity, priesthood is first a profession and only then a vocation) and that the religion is preserved through the Church’s long memory: that is, the capacity to reproduce as exactly as possible the ritual gestures of predecessors, which is something that has also been noted in other predominantly Orthodox countries (Rousselet, 2013: 11).

The current trends in spiritual tourism and pilgrimages are not only a reflection of the privatization of religion or circumstantial factors (such as cheap, fast, and accessible transportation). They also are the product of a longer and specific history (e.g. the trips to the monasteries during Communism). In Romania, there are dozens of “Miss Octavias” who organize this type of pilgrimage. These guides are responding to spiritual and touristic needs, contributing ultimately to the quality of life of people who do not benefit from retirement pensions and salaries at Western levels, but can afford such “low-cost pilgrimages.” Because they take place in an economic gray zone, the prices are reasonable, while the organization is quick and efficient and less subject to the rigor of a suffocating bureaucracy dominating in Romania. Occurring outside of bureaucracy represents an advantageous alternative for all the persons involved: participants, guides, monasteries, carriers (drivers, transportation companies). Thus, the phenomenon is a sign of the “deregulation of religion” at work in Eastern as well as Western European space. Case studies such as this invite examination of new forms of spirituality and sociality, the extreme individualization of the religion (it seems that here the Orthodox Church verifies Western paradigms (Hervieu-Léger, 1994: 114)), alongside a kind of monastic rebirth. Regarding the study of these phenomena, at least in my country, Romania, we are only at an incipient stage.