I have returned from the adventure of Romania. Tim is working on getting the photos ready as that is his area of responsibility. Once he gets them done, I will forward the link to their on-line home (that way we don’t kill your inbox with too much stuff). What follows is my narrative summary of the journey. As you would expect if you know me, it isn’t short. Take your time with it or ignore it, but if you read be sure to inject my trademark sarcastic wit (that’s what I am calling it, so go with it) where appropriate.
BTW, if these narratives bore you silly just let me know and I will remove you from the list…:-)
Our first sense of Romania occurred before we even left the ground at JFK airport. We had boarded our plane on time and then proceeded to go nowhere as there was a maintenance problem. The problem was not expected to take more than an hour or so to fix so we were to remain on the plane. It was getting warm, well hot frankly, but we waited…and waited. Finally, after about 90 minutes it was announced that we would have to change equipment, which meant trekking back to the other terminal building (a fair walk) and board a plane just arriving from London (oddly, a week later we would board a flight to Salt Lake City from this same gate). Of course there is nothing really odd in having the occasional mechanical problem requiring a change of planes and I think better to know it while still on the ground! But what was amazing to me was the response of the passengers, of which at least 90% or more had to be Romanians returning from shopping expeditions to New York (the dollar lost $0.20 to the Romanian lei just while we were gone after all). There was not a single murmur of protest, no angry outbursts, no tirades such as I would expect from a plane full of American passengers. Instead, there was an orderly procession to the next gate at which folks lined up and waited patiently to reboard. I even saw smiles on faces now delayed by 2 hours and counting. Strange, and yet as I would soon discover, so totally Romanian.
The flight itself was just a typical nine+ hour flight. Once in the air nothing really changes. But at landing, well, I knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Henry Coanda airport in Bucharest (formerly Otopeni) is in a state of reconstruction with even the control tower hidden behind a maze of scaffolding. We would discover that most of Romania is in a state of reconstruction soon enough. However, I did find it easier to enter through Romanian immigration and customs then through the US version. They seemed pretty unconcerned with anything we might be bringing into the country.
The drive into the city itself was, well, bizarre since it is the first glimpse of a nation in radical and total transition. The main highway leading to the capital city of several million people is a two-lane surface road. No freeways and until recently who would have needed them? So few people had cars! And some still don’t as evidenced by the horse or donkey drawn carts sharing the road with the BMWs, Mercedes, Hummers, Land Rovers, and the Romanian made (with Renault) Dacias (named for Dacia, the name of the Roman colony in what is now Romania, and make NO mistake, the name Romania stands for ROMAN not for Roma, or Gypsies, who are widely and loudly hated).
We drove past fields strewn with unimaginable amounts of garbage and this I could see on landing in fact from the air. The Romanians have a waste disposal problem it seems in which fields or empty lots in the middle of Bucharest become dumps, quite literally. But right next to these fields are hyper-marts like Ikea and British supermarket chain Carrefour. Gigantic places just like in an American suburb. It is, well, bizarre in a word. A conjunction of lifestyles and economies that seem so totally opposed to one another that they shouldn’t really be on the same street at the same time. I mean, a donkey cart wheeling its way past Ikea?
The hotel was charming. A small place that is relatively new and which caters primarily to Israeli businessmen. We didn’t know that when we booked it, nor did it matter, but it was a bit of a surprise since Romanian Jews are rather rare after World War II in which Romania was a German ally for most of the war. The vast majority of the remaining Jewish people were evacuated by Israel, as were many ethnic Germans, since the Communist government would "sell" passports to Germany and Israel as a source of hard currency. Later we came to understand that a huge profit generation method in Romania is the reclamation of confiscated land and property. If families have original titles or other supporting documents, the government will give back property or compensate for its loss. With land values having increased in value some 300 to 400% in the last 10 or so years, reclaiming lost land makes quick financial sense! Land and housing values are sky-high in Bucharest, with houses on the southern edge of town, half-way to Bulgaria, selling for 400 to 500 thousand dollars. Romanians are coming to the US to buy land and housing as investments because of the increasing weakness of the US dollar. It was a sort of sad commentary on the current US economic outlook.
The hotel, which currently has 24 rooms, is expanding but that section is not yet complete. It is located on a quiet side street about 50 meters from the former main glamour shopping street. The Academia Romana, a prestigious school, is located directly across the street, which is convenient because the students form the lifeblood of the small stores and Italian restaurant down the road, both of which we took advantage of liberally.
I confess that after checking in and upon looking out the window of the hotel room I said to Tim, "What the hell are we doing here?"
OK, the view was a bit grim and grimy. The last communist dictator had taken advantage of an earthquake that killed over 1,000 people to start a process of destruction and rebuilding in concrete some Stalinist nightmare following a trip to Pyongyang, North Korea (the most outstanding example, apparently, of concrete behemoths). I don’t quite understand the attraction concrete holds for Stalinists but it is pretty common in Eastern Europe, problem being it is cheap concrete with no gravel, just sand, so it falls apart quite quickly. Even a brief stay in Bucharest will confer a coating of concrete dust on your shoes. I wore Crocs, so I just showered them off each night!
But then we went for a walk and I discovered something essential that would guide me through the Romanian experience. Across the main drag was an Orthodox church whose forecourt was literally covered in red and orange tulips. It was stunning! And then there was a wonderful fragrance, which turned out to be the lilac bushes blooming on the campus of the Academia Romana. Over the coming days I would quickly discover that even the most tumbling down residence seen on the roadside or from the train carriage had a least a handful of red tulips blooming and quite frequently a lilac bush in full bloom. Perhaps it wasn’t much, but it was some color and spring joy in otherwise grim lives, not necessarily made easier or better by a switch to a market economy (due to inflation pressures, loss of price controls, but no increase in state pensions). I came to understand that in Romania I had to make a choice about what to see: I could focus on the garbage, the concrete, the dust OR I could focus on the tulips, the lilacs, and on the kindness and generosity of the wonderfully warm and patient people who were very welcoming and helpful in every situation. After all, how many New York City cab drivers would return an offered tip saying "it is too much, I must make change for you!"
After the less than ideal first impressions, I focused on the later.
Also on that first walk was a sight that symbolized Romania for me. On a corner of Calea Victorei and a side street stands a new 5-star Golden Tulip business hotel and conference center. Immediately next to it, practically sharing a wall is an abandoned government ministry building of the predictable crumbling concrete now inhabited only by pigeons flying to and fro out of the busted windows and a very unhappy and apparently stranded on the top floor stray cat. That conjunction of the old and the new, the communist and the capitalist, is Romania in a street corner. The symbolism is more potent, and compact, in the form of the former archives building of the secret police which was destroyed by rioters and from the shell of which rises a new glass and steel memorial.
Romania is a nation and a people waking up after a nightmare inflicted on them by the whims and cruelties of a megalomaniacal freak, and they are awakening with a vengeance and will be a force to be reckoned with. If you have never been to Europe before, I don’t think you would like Romania at all for it isn’t what you would likely expect to find. Despite the rhetoric and despite what might once have been true, Bucharest isn’t Paris. But if you want to explore a society and a people in transition, Romania is a perfect place to do it.
The next day we devoted to a walking tour of Bucharest. We had read stories of gangs of roaming stray dogs and roaming street children (both the consequences of former policies and mass destruction of residential neighborhoods) as well as stories of taxi and restaurant scams designed to separate tourists from their cash. Over the course of days we saw perhaps 10 dogs total and no more than 3 street children. We were not bothered by either of these groups. We were also never even remotely victimized by cabs or restaurants. And clearly we were tourists and our Romanian was non-existent at best. A tour book, or the opinions formed even two years ago, are likely outdated now as the pace of change is that fast.
Walking down the Calei Victorei took us to the Athenee Palace hotel, which in the bad old days was where foreigners more or less had to stay since it was completely wired by the secret police. When built in the 1920s it was a showplace and in a fashion typical of today’s Romania, it has been purchased and refurbished by the Hilton chain to be once again one of the most expensive and exclusive hotels in town. We used it book a trip to Transylvania but clearly didn’t stay there! It sits on the northeast corner of a square dedicated to the 1989 revolution (history is very young and very alive in Romania) with several monuments and statues for it is from the balcony of the former headquarters of the Communist party on this square that the last dictator tried to give his last speech only to be shouted down. He fled by helicopter from the roof but he and his wife were captured on December 21, 1989 and shot against a wall on a military base on Christmas Day. The video of the shooting and close-ups of the bodies were broadcast repeatedly on Romanian television. My guess is that they were not a popular couple.
With the cars whizzing by and the glamorous hotel on the corner it is hard, but I think critical, to remember that not quite 20 years ago young people were hosed down with freezing water and shot dead in this same square for daring to protest.
We continued south headed for the remains of old classic Bucharest, a few scant blocks that avoided the fate of the vast majority of the old city: being bulldozed along with many more entire square kilometers to make way for the new city envisioned by the dictator composed of concrete housing blocks (in which people had no room for dogs, hence the strays since they were given 1-2 days notice to vacate before the bulldozers arrived). There are remnants dating all the way back to the 13th and 14th century alongside and surrounded by 20th century concrete. A monastery here, the home of the Romanian Orthodox Church there, the citadel of Vlad Dracul across from an old inn with a courtyard which was closed for remodeling as one would expect. Vlad was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula but Vlad was not Transylvanian instead being Wallachian, not a vampire but not a nice guy, and Mr. Stoker never even went to Romania.
The "highlight" of this walking tour is the Parliament Building, still referred to locally as the "Palace of the People." It is the second largest building in the world, second only to the Pentagon, and was the centerpiece of the dictator’s nightmarish remaking of the city center. It took us 15-20 minutes to walk down just one side of the building. The place is truly monumental and is also 10% incomplete. It had the week prior hosted the NATO summit and was still closed to public tours as the uniformed guy with the automatic weapon made clear to us when we asked.
Less immediately impressive but more important I thought was University Square on which sits the University as you might guess. The place is huge and is a giant traffic circle on the northern edge of which is a small iron cross. That cross memorializes the over 1,000 young people shot or crushed under tank treads on December 22, 1989. The scene was witnessed by journalists holed up in the Hotel Intercontinental (now a Holiday Inn) on the northeastern corner of the square. Although the dictator had fled, some of the army and the secret police remained loyal while some of the tanks arriving turned themselves over to the students and aimed their gun turrets against other tanks. This square was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the revolution and while no signs aside from the cross remain of what happened there it was for us a sobering place. Several blocks to the south of the square is the Cemetery of the Martyrs of the Revolution where many of the students killed are buried. It is a large clean place filled with white marble crosses with the photos of the dead in the centers of the crosses. It isn’t a sight easy to forget especially since the parents still come here to clean the grave sites and to lay fresh flowers.
The following morning we headed out with Lucia, our guide for the day, along with the driver Claudio, to take us to Sinaia and Brasov. Lucia had formerly been a secretary at the Belgian embassy. Later she told us about being stationed at the Romanian embassy in Paris with her husband who was a diplomat. Lucia might be a tourist guide today but in her day she clearly had a fairly privileged life that included foreign travel and residency. She did say that perhaps the 10 eggs a month under the old rationing was a bit harsh but she also felt that shooting the former dictator was wrong as well. Perhaps he could have just gone to jail for a bit? And she was clear that the Roma were dirt and the Hungarian Catholics not much better. Political correctness isn’t an import that Romania is taking on just yet.
Lucia felt that perhaps mix of 50% communist with 50% capitalist would be the best solution. This sentiment I doubt is isolated to one person, although perhaps more common in the older generations. And I think it is important for Americans raised on a steady diet of communism equals evil always and forever to hear the other side of it from those who actually lived it. Perhaps Lucia was more spot on that we would like to at first admit in that perhaps no single system has the monopoly on truth and goodness. Regardless, we didn’t see any point in arguing with her about her views on anything. We were the guests in her world and didn’t think it appropriate to try to force our ideas on to her.
Lucia was very self conscious about her appearance since she had just undergone a chemical peel in preparation for spring and she had not yet emerged as beautiful as she felt she needed to be. She is a competitive speed-walker and runner even now in her late 60’s to early 70’s.
Claudio didn’t have much to say and nothing to say that we could understand, nor him us. He was one of the only Romanians of his generation who didn’t speak English better than I do. He did however understand the rules of the Romanian road, which seem to be that speed is great, unless you spy a traffic cop, and lanes are suggestions to be observed only when what is threatening to hit you head on is bigger than you. And yet, I never once saw an accident or the aftermath of one. But I wouldn’t be signing up to drive there anytime soon.
Sinaia, named after Sinai in case you were wondering, is a mountain town in the Carpathians. The landscape outside of Bucharest to the north changes quickly in elevation, rising up to the mountains which are much cooler and wooded. Romania remains heavily forested, with about 70% of the land in forests. Sinaia was the summer palace home of the briefly lived Romanian royal family. Queen Marie was a close relative of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. A great-niece I believe or something equally close.
The royal family was actually a German import after the eviction of the Turks. The Ottoman Turks controlled Romania for centuries and that group is another that Lucia expressed hatred for. She was astounded the Romania would now engage in commercial trade with Turkey! Historical hatreds are very much alive in Romania and some basic understanding of Romanian history is helpful before you get there.
The palace is on the northern edge of Wallachia and makes for an interesting tour. In our case it was borderline bizarre since our Delta flight crew was on the tour with us. One of the flight attendants even knew us as 3A and 3B. But since she spent about 11 hours with us between ground and air time, perhaps it wasn’t totally surprising that she remembered us even three days later and despite the fact that we don’t bother flight attendants at all. Perhaps THAT is why she remembered us so well. We were the easy quiet guys.
Shortly after leaving the palace grounds on the way to Brasov and Bran, Lucia noted that we had crossed into Transylvania. Why should this matter? It matters because Transylvania was mostly controlled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was heavily populated by Saxon Germans. OK, so what? It matters to Romanians like Lucia because the Germans and the Hungarians were Catholic, not Orthodox, and the experience of the Romanian Orthodox members was one of discrimination and exclusion from the towns and lives of the German and Hungarian Catholics. All this ended long before Lucia was even born or even thought of, but that is irrelevant to the folklore tales that formed her opinions. Romania as we know it today only existed after World War I and for people in that part of the world more so than perhaps any American can really relate to, that time is not so far past as to no longer have relevance.
Brasov is a very Saxon town that could be plunked down in Germany and not look a bit strange. It avoided many of the worst ravages of the Communist era such that its old town center is still cobble-stoned with narrow walkways and narrow colorful row houses. The Hollywood style BRASOV sign is a bit strange but there it clearly is. The newer sections of town are more reminiscent of Bucharest though. Brasov was also important to me as the home town of a dear friend from Stanford days, Floriana Repca.
Bran is the home of Castle Bran, which the tourist touts will claim was Dracula’s castle. Of course it was no such thing and it is doubtful that Vlad Dracul was ever even in the place. But situated on a rocky outcrop commanding a view of the valley below, which made it ideal for its real purpose of extracting taxes from the middle ages east-west trade routes, it has an atmosphere that could match expectations of Dracula’s castle. The exhibits inside the rather bare bones place are focused instead on the very real residents of the castle, Queen Marie and her illegitimate daughter. They lived in the castle from the death of Queen Marie’s husband, King Carol I until 1947 when they were forced into exile by the new communist government.
We ate lunch in Bran as well. Romanian food is heavily meat based, especially pork. I didn’t dislike the food at all but neither did I find any of it to be especially memorable. What was memorable was my first and ideally last encounter with tuica, the ubiquitous and usually homemade Romanian plum brandy. Approximately 76% of all Romanian fruit trees are plum trees and the VAST majority of plums goes to making this stuff. Looking on the bright side, if you ever run out of a disinfectant or paint remover, you could substitute tuica. It was liquid fire and clearly you have guessed correctly that I was not a fan. Tim however loves the stuff so we now have two bottles of it.
We returned to Bucharest via a slightly different route through the Carpathian Mountains, the peaks of which are still heavily snow capped. There are ski resorts just outside of Brasov that take advantage of the landscape. There is a strange, but typically Romanian, mix of housing in the Carpathians. Some of the housing is clearly very poor while others are show palace weekend homes. Another symbol of the stark contrasts between those who are benefiting from the new Romanian economy and those who are not. The houses of wealthy Roma are very distinctive with elaborate turreted tin roofs.
The next day was an early morning walk to the central train station to catch a train to Constanta on the Black Sea coast. The outbound train was comfortable and left on time although the trip is very slow because of track work that reduces the track to one instead of two. We guessed that the track work was an European Union project since the equipment was clearly German. Upgrading Romanian infrastructure is a big part of the work the EU is doing in Romania since admitting the country to membership in 2007.
I would like to say otherwise, but Constanta is a pit that I couldn’t wait to get out of. What isn’t falling apart is being torn down and as you might guess the debris is being dumped in an empty lot across the street. Apparently Ovid, the Roman poet, didn’t like it either when he was exiled here during the Roman empire. However, the Roman ruins and the museum housing them along with the Roman mosaics are fascinating to some extent. However, if you have been to Rome itself you may be less than enthralled. The point of the exercise to me was to see the Black Sea just because it is there and I never had been. It isn’t particularly black and looks like every other large body of water you have ever seen.
If you get a postcard from Romania, this is where it was mailed from.
The attraction of the Black Sea is the coastal resorts to the north and south of Constanta. It was a bit early in the season for those to be in full swing yet but not being a beach type anyway, I wouldn’t have gone had they been. I satisfied my need to see the Black Sea and then we headed back to the train station.
Unlike the journey to Constanta, the return was hellish. A scheduled four hour journey took 7 hours in a hot and crowded train carriage populated by an elderly couple carrying large suitcases and a younger woman with two cell phones, at least one of which she was screaming into for seven straight hours. The old woman wouldn’t allow the conductor or anyone else to close the compartment door because it was hot so the noise level was practically unbearable. I have rarely if ever been so overjoyed at arriving to my destination in my life!
Cell phones are something I consider an evil of modern life under the best of circumstances, but in Romania where the competition makes them very cheap and where companies offer multiple phones and numbers for free, the evil reaches new depths. That day will not live in the positive highlights section of my travel memories.
The next day we hired the same car and driver who picked us up at the airport to take us across the Danube into Bulgaria. We had crossed the Danube to and from Constanta as well, but since Bulgaria was there and only about an hour by car away, and you guessed it, I had never been there, I had to go.
Ignore what any guide book tells you about long lines and waits at the car crossing between Romania and Ruse, Bulgaria. It isn’t true. The crossing is quick and easy since the Romanians and the Bulgarians use the same guard booths to stamp your passport and send you on your way. The border guard did point out to Tim that he figured he was an American tourist since he saw him take a photo of the border crossing. He was smiling about this but was also clear that he really shouldn’t have been taking pictures. Perhaps needless to say, on the return, the shutterbug kept the camera in his pocket!
Bulgaria seems to have suffered more under communism than even Romania and it has seemingly farther to go to catch up. Our driver was dismissive of Bulgaria and Bulgarians, as was Lucia. Neither could seem to understand why in the world I would want to go there. None of us knew Bulgarian although our driver had been made to learn Russian as a schoolboy, so he could at least decipher the Cyrillic script in use. I was amused by the National Geographic in Bulgarian so we bought it to try to dump Bulgarian lev before returning to Romania. Trust me, no one else wants lev! I will be amused by seeing the reaction of Tim’s niece Anna to a Bulgarian language version of a Barbie book. I don’t think they are teaching 7 year olds Bulgarian just yet. And what a thing to be exporting to Bulgaria! Barbie…what the Bulgarians must think of us is beyond me.
We flew out the next day to New York where we spent an exhausted night before making a mad dash of a day trip to San Jose via Salt Lake City and return via SFO for a presentation at my alma mater San Jose State University. By the time we actually returned home, we were simply destroyed.
The trip was a total contrast to most of the journeys we have made and I don’t regret it for an instant. I don’t think the trip would be to everyone’s liking but I enjoyed the chance to experience the contrasts and to be in the midst of a changing society. The journey also challenged me to actively choose how to view the world I was in a way that I don’t know that any other destination has done. I think that timing is critical if you choose to go to Romania for at the pace that change is occurring, the old will rapidly fall to the new and I fear that Bucharest will soon look like an American suburb with big box stores galore. But one can’t blame Romanians for wanting what so much of the rest of the world has and expect them to preserve themselves as a communist theme park for visitors to marvel at.
For the next adventure I am thinking Istanbul. Why? Well, honestly, the Delta flights from Istanbul and Budapest were arriving through Customs and Immigration at the same time our flight from Bucharest was, so it sort of struck me as a place to go. Matthew in possession of a Delta route map is truly a dangerous thing!