© Jürgen Sauer

"Known as the 'Merry Cemetery of Sapanta,' its tombstones famously celebrate life rather than grieve death. Sprouting at the heads of planted rectangles, which themselves lift from fields of polished flagstones, the headstones are sheltered by little peaked roofs and are painted and inscribed with folksy pictures and poems depicting the triumphs, tragedies, comedies, indiscretions, and even banalities that made up the lives of those now gone—and of course that symbolize the lives of us all."

— page 119, Into the Carpathians, Part 1
© Alan E. Sparks