Tonight, we are sleeping in an hotel in a city in Transylvania in Romania called Temesvár in Hungarian and Timișoara in Romanian. We are on our way to the church wedding of Péter (@peter-z) and Timi (@stimea) in another Transylvanian city called Székelyudvarhely in Hungarian and Odorheiu Secuiesc in Romanian. Péter is the eldest son of my wife Kati.
We will be there tomorrow, Thursday, and the wedding is going to be celebrated on Saturday.
We already celebrated Péter and Timi's civil wedding two months ago in Calgary, where they live.
Transylvania has been part of Romania for almost a century, after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, but was part of Hungary before that. So, there are many ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania. Today in Temesvár, the population is mostly ethnic Romanians, but in Székelyudvarhely, where Timi was born, there are 95% of ethnic Hungarians.
We left Vancouver Monday at 11AM for Toronto then to Budapest in Hungary where I had left my French car two months ago. From Budapest, we drove to Temesvár and we arrived at the hotel around 6PM, almost 24 hours after leaving Vancouver.
The families of Péter and Timi are already in Székelyudvarhely. Some have traveled from Canada, Scotland and Hungary.
The wedding will be a joyful event.
Monday at 4AM, before we left our apartment in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, I was awaken by a phone call and I learned some sad news: my mother Marie had died in her sleep during the night, in her retirement home in Versailles.
She was 97 years old and still very active. She had a long and interesting life as a "professional" mother, grandmother and great grandmother. We were prepared to the possibility of her death, but it is still a sad event to lose your mother, whatever the age.
The funeral will probably be next Tuesday near the Abbey, and I will be able to be there after driving for two days after the wedding.
