Romania

Last summer I decided to take a three day trip to Romania as it is among the least touristy countries in Eastern Europe. I had been told by a Hungarian friend of my cousin's that for one seeking to travel Eastern Europe it was the most adventurous place to go. So after a long train ride from Frankfurt to Budapest I began my journey, traveling to Oradea at the border with Hungary and switching from the more modern Hungarian trains to a blue diesel train with warnings in Cyrillic script that all but made me think I was in the movie Stalin. Despite the warnings of a girl I met in Keleti station in Budapest that I was a fool to attempt the journey, that Oradea is rat infested, that I would be drugged to sleep on the train and robbed by Gypsies; I survived, loved Rumania and its people and believe all prejudices against traveling there to be mostly unfounded anxieties.

06.24.1996
So here I am in the land of Dracula, Serfdom and Ceacescu. While other places I have seen in Eastern Europe, such as Hungary, gave me hope of the future and rapid modernization, Romania saddens me. Romania makes me feel as if I am in Europe at the turn of the century. The cars here are old, drab gray and with names like Dacia and Lada, far older than anything I saw in Budapest.

The busses with their broken and sliding padded plywood seats and holes in the floor make the Moroccan public transport system look enviable. While roads in Hungary were sometimes cracked or old, they were kept in usable condition. Here in Romania, there are sometimes no paved roads and those that are almost always have holes and washouts. Sidewalks are crumbling. Dirt encrusted gypsy children come up to me saying in English, "money." I saw a family with two half naked boys sleeping in the grass outside the train station in Bran when I arrived. Food is cheap in Rumania, but that does not mean that it is either tasty or edible by American standards. Rumanian alementara carry a variety of almost medieval-looking pork products and cheeses. One cheese I saw was covered in an odd, soft tree bark. A friend I met on the train from Budapest bought some cheese for 1,000 lei (about 30 cents) and found hairs in it. The meat is mostly fat. A cup of Rumanian coffee tasting mostly of bitter grinds costs about 100 lei. Keep in mind there are 3500 lei to the U.S. dollar to imagine how inexpensive this is. I have survived mostly on chocolate bars and bananas, which they sell at the outdoor markets. The country side of Romania is at once awe inspiring and depressing. Staring out at the vast pine and mist covered Carpathian mountains contemplating their mysterious blackness, one realizes almost nothing is being cultivated here except maybe carrots and potatoes.

The majority of food sold in the market in Bran is imported. Bananas from Ecuador bear a Dole Fruit Company sticker as well as the oranges. The country's only national consumer products seem to be its liquors, phenomenally cheap by western standards. One dollar buys a liter of almond Schnapps or 30 cents buys a bottle of Vodka. The vodka is actually cheaper than the mineral water or coca cola and some drink it as if it were.

It is impossible to not seem insanely wealthy in this country as a tourist. You probably have a TV in your home, heat, an FM radio, maybe a washing machine, your family's own shower. The average Romanian worker earns less than $40 a month and spends half on food, that being pork fat and vegetables of a quality most western shoppers would choose not to buy. Despite the poverty, the people are extremely friendly, genuine, and exuberantly open to western visitors. Romania, especially Transylvania, is seldom visited. This is its greatest charm. You may be the first foreigner to ever ask directions from that kerchieffed old woman selling bananas and dwarfed fly bothered oranges. The people are ever willing to help and strike up conversation in any way possible despite all language barriers. Religion is strong in Romania, gold crosses hang from the necks of young and old.

Bureaucracy reaches its peaks in Romanian train stations and muzeul, and this will be the most trying part of the trip.The ticket vendor does not speak English and the one that might be willing to listen to Spanish or Italian spoken slowly is on break. But don't worry, the large round female bureaucrat, dressed in gray uniform with stars on the lapel will most certainly scream at you in Romanian, open and close the seemingly function less ticket window doors a dozen times and bewilder you with stamps and maybe even a form to sign whose function you haven't the foggiest. But despite their tirades and at worst, your missed train; it's why you came here, to see a world time forgot. The wild west was gone long before any of us were kids, here's the wild east. The new frontier. Rent a room from a friend of the cleaning lady at the town's only hotel for 8 bucks and be told there's no hot water on Mondays. Sleep on a couch or a floor, maybe you can rent a mattress in a hallway. Though all this may sound dreadful, when you meet the unspoiled friendliness of the countryside peasants, share a beer or vodka with some locals at the pub, stroll through the ruins of an ancient fortress high atop a craggy cliff, its worth all the inconveniences. While the poverty here is the worst I've ever seen, worse than Morocco or Mexico, it makes you appreciate the luxuries we enjoy back in the west, such as hot water on Mondays, the assurance you won't fall through a sewer grate when you step on it, and seats on busses.

No Romanian I met could ever dream of owning a CD player, even the man sitting next to me on the bus was shocked by the $18 price of my guide book when he asked how much it was in lei. Despite the poverty Rumanians are very friendly and optimistic. Poverty is just a small dilemma compared to the hundreds of years they spent under feudal lords (some of whom drank or bathed in their blood); Turkish, Hungarian, and Nazi invasion; and 40 years of the strictest authoritarian regime of any Soviet satellite state. Looking into the eyes of these people gives you faith in an unselfish and unspoiled world and thankful for all that you have in the world.

© Trincoll Journal, 1996.