When In Rome-ania...

On the train from Vienna to Salzburg on the Mozart pilgrimage segment of our trip. The man across from us in our train compartment is speaking Georgian (the former Soviet Republic, not the southern state) on his cell phone and reading a Russian magazine, creating a ‘Dr. Zhivago’ atmosphere.

Romania-Mania

After a few days in Budapest, we decided to see if the incorrect reputation of Hungary as Eastern Europe extended to its neighbor, Romania. We rented our car and started off on an 1800 km road trip around more of the country than any Romanian has ever seen.

Rome (ania) wasn't built in a day (by the EU...)

1. Despite its new place in the EU, Romania is indeed still a developing nation. This is demonstrated by the piles of rubble, abandoned houses, garbage and stray dogs found in every village and city across the country. The contrast between the prosperity and infrastructure on the Hungarian side of the border and the destitution on the Romanian side of the border is immediately striking when you drive into Romania.
2. People in the Romanian countryside really do live the way they have for thousands of years. Sometimes this fact is elusive because they often wear modern clothing, but they still ride horse-drawn carriages, do subsistence farming, cut their fields by hand with sickles, and shepherds carry staffs as they tend their animals from the rolling hills, down to the only paved roads (80% of Romania’s roads remain unpaved, and even streets connecting directly to the main highway are often not paved). The contrast between modernity (nuclear power plants, exhaust-belching trucks, new roads without potholes) and tradition is particularly interesting, and I am curious but apprehensive about what the new influx of culture and money from the EU will do to this culture that is already on the edge.
3. Villages in Romania are real ‘villages,’ similar to what we would call villages in India – supply centers for the people who live in even more rural areas with a few houses and possibly a small store, and where the center of life is the church. Most rural houses have crosses painted on them and there are little alters to saints along the road in most of Transylvania and Wallachia. We also saw these altars in Greece and India, and they are obviously a Christian interpretation of a more ancient pagan religion.
4. Romania is also similar to India in that most places where people have settled are covered in garbage and pollution, and the really beautiful places are the ones with fewer people rather than more. Unlike India, tap water is ok to use in Romania, however, most rural villagers we saw were using wells because they didn’t have running water.

Full House meets the Uni-brow – Fashion in Romania

5. The uni-brow is not only acceptable, but is, in many cases, stylish. Many politicians flaunt their extreme unibrows in 3-4 story tall policital posters hung down the sides of buildings.
6. Generally fashion is in the early 1990’s, and in addition to the amazing unibrow, the mullet is also a popular classic. Watching ‘The Nanny’ and a selection of American teen movies from the early 1990’s on Romanian television explains this fashion phenomenon.
7. Many old people wear traditional clothing, but many young people working in the fields wear jeans and t-shirts, but still do back-breaking manual labor, hacking hay with sickles and piling it into haystacks. Occasionally young people wear traditional clothing too. Gypsies wear clothing befitting Carmen’s opera costumes.

Melting Pot of Doom

8. Romania has a hodge-podge of ethnic groups, including Romanians (a mix of Romans and the native ‘Dacian’ tribes), Saxons (Germans), Hungarians (Magyars), and Gypsies (Roma). In some cities, particularly the Saxon ones, you can see the difference between ethnic Romanians and Ethnic Germans. In Sibiu (probably the most civilized city in Romania), there is a German-speaking mayor. What you generally don’t see in Romania (also a sign of its development status), is immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. I fear what will happen if people from these places begin to immigrate to Romania, since Romania is already walking a fine line keeping their current ethnic strife in check.
9. Romania has a long history of bloody abuse of its people (by government and each other). This history is so recent that even in the 1990’s the government incited the villagers from outside of the ethnic Hungarian city of Targu Mures to attack a poet who wrote in Hungarian rather than Romanian. The government provided pitch forks and the villagers managed to cut off the man’s ears. This happened less than 20 years ago.

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle – Gypsies (the real ones)

10. There are many different groups of Gypsies, but most all of the ones we saw looked Indian in physical features and dress.
11. We had the fortune of coming upon a real nomadic gypsy caravan on a back country road (there are only 5,000-10,000 nomadic gypsies left), and it looked exactly how it looks in literature, opera, etc.. There was a covered wagon, with animals and horses and a few other wagons full of scrap metal and junk. Most of the people were hidden away in the back of the covered wagon.
12. There are colorful abandoned gypsy wagons all over the countryside (in fields, by barns, by the side of the road). I am very curious about what happened to the proprietors of the abandoned wagons and how they ended up where they were.
13. Most gypsies are poor, and ethnic Romanians discriminate against them (we saw the police hassling a few).
14. There are some rich gypsies (not sure where they got their money) and they construct enormous, ornate, bizarre mansions in the countryside, often covered in gold or silver.

Verbetz Engleza, va rog?

15. Possibly due to the reputation gained from fact number 9, there are almost no tourists in Romania and there is almost no tourist infrastructure. There are very few tourist shops, even in the most ‘touristy’ places (such as ‘Dracula’s castle’ – really Vlad Tepes’ castle) and the medieval town where Vlad was born. There were so few tourists in Romania that when we rolled into the citadel in Sighisoara (Vlad’s medieval birthplace), which is a fully intact saxon medieval city complete with cobblestone streets, clocktower, churches, town square, and tall stone city walls to keep the Ottomans out, we were able to get a room (on an empty floor) in the main hotel, on the main square, without a reservation. There couldn’t have been more than 20 tourists in the entire town, and most of them were Romanian tourists. We stayed just a few meters from the town square where many-a-grotesque event has occurred in the last thousand years, including lots of bloody executions, witch trials, etc. If this town were anywhere in Western Europe, it would have been a tourist circus. It was amazing to have it to ourselves (I had ‘blood orange’ gelato at the house where Vlad was born for less than $1), and I expect this to be one of the first places to lose its identity in the coming years.
16. Young people are now learning English, although much of the country is rural, and in rural areas almost no one speaks English. Which leads us to – what is Romanian?
17. Romanian is a romance language and is possibly the most similar language to Latin that is spoken in the modern world (competing for the title with Romanisch, an odd Latin dialect spoken in a small part of Switzerland). It is not, however, a mix of Italian and Russian, as one who has studied those languages might hope, and although learning a few phrases was easier with backgrounds in those languages (‘da’ is ‘yes,’ and ‘ce placere’ is ‘you’re welcome’), it was necessary to memorize Romanian phrases to get around. Mixing Romanian words and Italian words was generally effective.
18. Along the lines of language, Romanians are very proud of their Roman heritage, even though Romania was part of the Roman Empire for a shorter period of time than Britain was.

History - Fact or Fiction? Does Bela Lugosi Really Care?

19. Romania also fought the Ottoman Empire for several hundred years, and the particularly bloody history and dramatic architecture of most medieval cities reflects this fact.Interestingly, Romania was actually part of the Ottoman Empire at some point in history, but unlike Spain and Sicily, reflects almost no Ottoman architecture.
20. Only a small part of Transylvania looks like the pictures that we see that evoke images of Dracula’s castle- most of Transylvania is flat farmland and rolling hills. The Transylvanian Alps are where all the ‘Dracula’ imagery comes from, and is the home of Vlad Tepes’ castle.
21. On the subject of Dracula, Romanians are clearly trying to distance themselves from the ‘Dracula’ myth, and aside from a few extra-kitsch Dracula t-shirts tucked away in a few tourist shops, there really wasn’t a huge emphasis on him. Bram Stoker’s book wasn’t even translated into Romanian until the 1990’s. The ‘real’ Dracula, Vlad Tepes ‘The Impaler,’ was a ruler in the state of Wallachia (not Transylvania, although the topography of Wallachia was much more like the images of Transylvania that we are used to), and aside from having a particularly bloody hatred of Turks rooted in his childhood in a Turkish prison, he wasn’t particularly supernatural. He did, however, supposedly eat his meals while watching his impaled Turkish prisoners writhe on stakes (thus ‘The Impaler’ nickname). The name ‘Dracula’ comes from his father, ‘Dracul’ which means ‘dragon’. Vlad is also well-loved by Romanians and the people of the region that he ruled, since is lust for torture was aimed at the Turks, whom they hated, rather than them. He actually gave land to the Romanian surfs in his kingdom as a reward for their help escaping a Turkish attack, and descendants of those surfs continue to work the land, sickles in hand, to this day.
22. Since Romania’s history is full of equally brutal stories in every village and city from one side of the country to another, from every generation as far back as people can remember, I think Romanians don’t understand why foreigners make such a big deal about the particular character of Vlad Dracula. People who are constantly struggling for survival don’t tend to get too excited about stories of brutality – they’ve seen enough of it in their own lives to understand that it isn’t actually something ‘cool.’ It’s not cool when it’s real.

Which leads me to my last, most important point about Romania. This point begins with a story.

Dedicated to a different Vlad, the English-speaking waiter at the Siesta Pensiune, about 5 km south of the snow-blocked mountain pass at Belea Lac and about 75 looooong km north of the last petrol station of the Transylvanian Alps.

Two Americans, who have been in Romania for 3 days and think they are finally getting the swing of things, leave for a leisurely 80 km (about 50 miles) drive along the [transforgan] road with a third of a tank of gas. This is a road what was highlighted in multiple entries in ‘Stupid Planet’ (more curses later about how much we hate ‘Lonely Planet,’ and in particular, the asshole who wrote and published a travel book about places he had clearly not been), and they said it was ‘communism’s greatest achievement. Blah blah blah, this beautiful drive with sweeping views, blah blah.’

This road may have been a great achievement in the 1970s when it opened, but it has clearly not been updated since, and was so full of potholes that in some places ‘paved’ would be a loose term. Our brilliant, yet misguided plan was to take this road through the mountain pass over to the city of Sibiu, a total drive of only 95 km. After an hour and a half and 75 km down this windy, potholed, empty uphill road, we were down to our last drops of gas, and had to pull over to a pensiune (country inn with a restaurant) that was so remote that even the 100 m drive to the front wasn’t paved. One of the waiters spoke English, and we asked if they had petrol, but all they had was diesel. As an added bonus, we were informed that the pass was closed due to snow (it had been 75 degrees and sunny on the previous days), and the only way to Sibiu (and anywhere else) was to go back down the entire road we had come up on. The only petrol would be about 70 km down the road.

He suggested we put the car in neutral and try to coast the 70 km and hope that a car with petrol would drive past and offer us some. Thinking that this might be the worst idea of the day (and it had a lot of competition at this point) we sat down in despair, trying to figure out what to do. The waiter came by about 5 minutes later, with another waiter whose car was parked outside, and they offered to use a tube to take a gallon of petrol from his car for our car. The guy put the tube in his mouth (yuck!) and blew into it to get the petrol to flow. Yev gave them 50 lei (about $23 and at least a day’s salary for most Romanians), but the guy would only take 20 lei (about what the petrol must have cost him to begin with). I would like to end with this story about Romania, because this will be the story that I remember whenever I think about Romania and its people. Two foreigners, in the middle of nowhere, get themselves into a stupid, stupid mess. These Romanians in the rural mountains go out of their way to help us, and won’t even take enough money to compensate them for their troubles.

Was it their sense of hospitality? Was it the idea of helping another person in need? Whatever their motivation (which clearly wasn’t money), they helped total strangers out of a difficult situation for no benefit to themselves. If that attitude were to extend to other people within their country, they might be able to transcend their history of brutal treatment of others, and take their place as a prosperous nation with hope for the future, rather than the place that young people want to leave for any other country in the EU.

Romania has a lot at stake right now, and I hope that its people can find a way to balance maintaining their culture with developing enough to give most people a better life where they don’t need to worry about day to day survival. But then again, perhaps it is that daily struggle that has defined their culture for so long, that by losing it, they may lose themselves.

I wish them the best – la revedere Romania.