Small Doses of Irony

Brasov has a sign like the Hollywood sign. Today, I took the tram up to see the sights (rather than hike up 1.5hrs of oddly marked Romanian trails - I was tired after being up until ~2:30am). The city panorama wasn't that exciting, but it did illustrate that Brasov is larger than I thought it was. On the back side of the hill, though, was beautiful scenary - just mountains and a small lake with the sun streaming through and lighting up the hillside. I also hiked about some trails that, again, reminded me very much of Oregon. (Yes, I found my obligatory path shot...)

The irony comes into play when I ran into a couple I recognized from the hostel while waiting from the tram. We chatted in the tram on the way down and decided to have lunch. At lunch, I discovered that both partners were Polish sociologists (i.e. Master's students studying political sociology). We had some very interesting conversations, regarding their personal experience and sociological perspective w.r.t. the fall of communism in Poland and the changes thereafter. For me, being interested in sociology of religion, I was most interested to learn that, during the communist era in Poland, religiosity was far greater than after the fall of communism because the Catholic church was at odds with the communist regime (and, apparently, 99% of Polish people are Catholic basically from birth); after the fall of communism, however, people (particularly young people) apparently feel less need or motiviation to maintain comparable levels of religiosity.

Food for thought, that little tidbit...

It was also interesting to learn that sociology is apparently a very common discipline in Poland... ;-)