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The village of Breb is like Hobbiton in the shires from Lord of the Rings. It's a sleepy little village of around 400 homes and depending on how many men and women are working away or at school in Cluj Napoca there can be up to 1,500 in the village. The bottom of the village is around 400 meters above sea level and the top is around 550/600 meters, the slope keeps going up to 1440 meters on the top of the mountain.
The houses are arranged on a sort of grid system where the mountain slopes slowly into the river bad at the bottom of the hill. Unlike other village in Romania, the development was not along the main road but spread further up the mountain from the river. Originally there where three small villages here and in the mid 1900's the 'urban sprawl' made them one. People still talk of the the 'ones from the river' or up the hill like it was another village. “Why would I know about his problems, he lives on the river.”
Each home consists of the main house, either an original wooden traditional Maramures house or one that has been covered in plaster in the last 50 years. There is normally a barn the same size as the house opposite with a main swing door in the middle for a hay and carriages and two rooms on either side where the cows, pig and horses live. And the sheep in the winter. Grandma lives in a house the size of a rug somewhere in the courtyard that is fronted with a huge Maramures gate. These gates come from the time when only Lords could afford to have them to protect their houses and barns inside there walled gardens. It became a sigh of wealth and many of them where made when the men came home from the last recession in the early 90's. Each gate has the date it was made on it and the person who made it, normally their owner of the house behind it.
The village of Breb is easy to walk around and explore. There are two churches, the Roman Catholic church which is the 16th century church made of solid oak next to the river and the Orthodox church that dominates the skyline for miles around. On Sunday you can hang around outside and watch the whole village turn up for church in tradition cloths and you feel like your in a Amish movie, only the camera crew forgot to turn up.
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