Semester Break Journal III: Bucharest, Chisinau, and back to Bucharest
14 February, 2007
After partaking in Butterfly’s famous breakfast, we set out to see as much of Bucharest as possible before catching our train to Chisinau in the evening. First we went back to Gara de Nord to get our tickets, which was much easier than I expected. Then, we hopped on the subway to go check out some of the sights. This turned into a bigger adventure than we originally planned because, once again, there were only a few extremely unhelpful signs and we kept getting off at the wrong stop or the wrong place at the right stop.
Out of all the cities we’d been to, Bucharest was by far the youngest, entering recorded history only in the 15th century. It became the state capital of Romania in 1862 and is quite an interesting place, with eclectic architecture and a mix of old and new that makes Warsaw look well-balanced. In the Inter-War years, Bucharest was known as the “Paris of the East,” because of its beautiful architecture and highly cultured elites. Although many buildings and districts in the historic centre were damaged or destroyed by war, earthquakes and Nicolae Ceauşescu'a program of systematization, much survived. In recent years, the city has been experiencing an economic and cultural boom and, thanks to Romania’s recent ascension to the EU, this will probably continue into the future.
Once we got the subway somewhat figured out, we ended up in the heart of Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist fantasy land around Piata Unirii. It’s so awful that I thought this might be the one thing that whiny little so-and-so Robert Kaplan got right in his appallingly dreadful book Balkan Ghosts. What Nicolae Ceauşescu did to this city is just one more criminal activity to add to the long list that eventually led to his execution in December of 1989.
One simply can’t mention Bucharest without going into detail about Nicolae Ceauşescu. The leader of the People’s Republic of Romania from 1965 until shortly before his execution in 1989, Ceauşescu takes the term megalomaniacal to its extremely frightening conclusion. Initially, he was a popular figure in Romania because he pursued a foreign policy independent of the Soviet Union-in the 1960s, he ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact (though Romania formally remained a member); he refused to take part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, and actively and openly condemned that action. Although the Soviet Union largely tolerated Ceauşescu's recalcitrance, his seeming independence from Moscow earned Romania maverick status within the Eastern bloc and eventually the US granted Romania ‘Most Favored Nation’ status. In addition, recognized the State of Israel and had diplomatic relations with it and sent a Romanian delegation to the 1984 Olympics (one of only four Communist nations to do so). Incidentally, the biggest American statement of the 1984 Olympics was Mary Lou Retton’s win over Romania’s Katya Szabo in the all-around gymnastics competition, a result that is disputed by most knowledgeable gymnastics fans because the politics of the time greatly influenced the scoring and Retton had the artistry of a brick. As usual, I digress.
Slowly, but surely Ceauşescu’s popularity went down the drain. His 1966 ban on birth control and abortion to up the fertility/birth rate of ethnic Romanians was only the beginning of the madness. He also made it much harder to obtain a divorce. By the late 1960s, the population began to swell, accompanied by rising poverty and increased homelessness, particularly street children, in the urban areas like Bucharest. In turn, a new problem was created by uncontrollable child abandonment, which swelled the orphanage population and facilitated a rampant AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s - created by the regime's refusal to acknowledge the existence of the disease, and its unwillingness to allow for any HIV test to be carried out. Beginning in 1972, Ceauşescu instituted a program of systematisation. Promoted as a way to build a "multilaterally developed socialist society", the program of demolition, resettlement, and construction began in the countryside, but culminated with an attempt to completely reshape the country's capital. Over one fifth of central Bucharest, including churches and historic buildings, was demolished in the 1980s, in order to rebuild the city in his own style. The People's House ("Casa Poporului") in Bucharest, now the Parliament House, is the world's second largest building, after the Pentagon. Ceauşescu also planned to bulldoze many villages in order to move the peasants into blocks of flats in the cities, as part of his "urbanisation" and "industrialisation" programs. Thankfully, this plan was thwarted.
Throughout this time, Romania became more and more isolated internationally and increasingly impoverished. In the 1980s, Ceauşescu ordered the export of much of the country's agricultural and industrial production in order to repay its massive debts. The resulting domestic shortages made the everyday life of Romanian citizens a fight for survival as food rationing was introduced and heating, gas, and electricity black-outs were becoming the rule. There was a steady decrease in the living standard (and especially the availability of food and general goods in stores) between 1980 and 1989. Although people accepted these hardships at first, it became clear that Ceauşescu was gradually losing his grip on reality. He was often shown on state TV entering stores filled with food supplies and praising the "high living standard" achieved under his rule. In late 1989, daily TV broadcasts showed lists of CAPs with alleged record harvests, in blatant contradiction with the shortages experienced by the average Romanian at the time. Any attempt from people to get their dictator to wake up was discouraged and, though many people sent him letters and petitions, he probably never read them and the senders were harassed by the State Security.
Things came to a head in December of 1989. A protest in the western city of Timisoara on the 16th, originally in support of an ethnic Hungarian priest, exploded when students joined the crowd and the meeting took on an anti-government character. Government troops fired into the crowd, killing dozens. The protests then spread throughout the city and the army attempted to crush them. This failed and resulted in several days of chaos and casualties, causing parts of Timisoara to look more like a war zone than a stately university town. These events were not broadcast in the national media, but word of them spread via Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and by word of mouth. On 21 December, Ceauşescu appeared on the balcony of the Central Headquarters of the Communist Party in Bucharest to address the nation. In the middle of his address, sudden movement coming from the outskirts of the mass assembly and the sound of what various sources have reported as fireworks, bombs, or guns broke the orderly manifestation into chaos. Scared at first, the crowds tried to disperse. Bullhorns were used to spread the news that the Securitate was firing on them and that a "revolution" was unfolding, and finally the people were persuaded to join in. The rally turned into a protest demonstration and in the end a revolution emerged. Securitate agents fired into the crowd, and more blood was shed. Finally realizing that the situation was out of control Ceauşescu and his (almost equally hated) wife hid inside the Central Committee building, and then attempted to flee by helicopter in the early morning of the 22nd. They were quickly captured, put on trial, and executed on national television. So ended the last old-style Communist dictator and Romania joined its ex-Soviet Bloc neighbors on the path to democracy.
Back in Piata Unirii, Luke’s eyes were beginning to glaze over as I excitedly ooh-ed and ahh-ed over Ceauşescu’s legacy-an urban wasteland uglier and on a larger scale than Warsaw. We walked past the dry fountain (did it ever run?) and down the street to take a look at the monstrosity known as the Presidential Palace. At first glance, it was hard to believe that I was looking at the largest building in the world after the Pentagon, but it was a shocker once we turned the corner and realized that it was just as big on the sides (and presumably the back). The building is up on a hill and we couldn’t figure out how to go right up to it, since the gates were guarded by intimidating-looking soldiers and, while I can have a conversation about gymnastics in Romanian, I do not know how to ask about tourists’ entrances.
After getting our fill of Socialist-realist architecture, we attempted to figure out the metro and eventually made it up to Piata Universitii and then to Piata Republicii. We saw a few interesting buildings there, then walked up to see Bucharest’s baby Arc de Triumph and then further north to the incredible Village Museum. We saw all sorts of examples of traditional houses and buildings from villages from all over Romania, which were all amazing. Unfortunately, it was really cold and rainy, so we didn’t stay as long as we would have had we come in the summer.
Back at the hostel, we had lunch with Gabi and Jeff, two of the people we met at the hostel, then grabbed our bags and headed back to the train station. We got there really early, so we killed some time in a café and did lots of people-watching. The authorities might have cleaned up Gara de Nord, but there are still plenty of interesting characters walking around the station. Fortunately, they aren’t trying to hit you up for money-they’re just going to be in the same compartment as you. Fortunately, the train to Chisinau was not particularly crowded and we had a whole compartment to ourselves.
Oh lord, the train to Chisinau. For those of you who don’t know, I hate flying. I’m scared of it. After all, how can I be sure that the Alitalia people know where they’re going, that the Lot pilots haven’t been sneaking shots of zebrowka before telling us to fasten our seatbelts for takeoff, or that the mechanics for United or Southwest are happy with their current situation? Besides, I usually tend to get stuck in airports because of freak Thanksgiving snows, strikes, or other unforeseen delays wishing that Ursula LeGuin’s stories in Changing Planes were true and I could go to some other plane of existence for a nice relaxing vacation until whatever difficulties have been sorted out. Sadly, I am forced to sit like a mournful Vanderbilt football fan after another heartbreaking loss watching the departures screen and cursing the world. But trains. In my opinion, trains rank slightly above headphones (but slightly below Advil™ Liquigels) in terms of greatest things ever invented. Considering how well I can tune out the world with a pair of headphones-or, by contrast, my roommate can not torment me with nonsensical Korean soap operas-and how Advil got me through four years of basketball (they were particularly useful to have after a Grover Tirade™), you get the picture. There is really nothing better than riding a train, especially in Europe. You get to watch the countryside fly by and are able to move around whenever you feel like it, so your knees don’t hate you. Sleeper cars are particularly fun because there’s just something so incredibly romantic and 19th/early 20th century about taking a sleeper train. I could just imagine Agatha Christie popping in and introducing herself as our compartment-mate or Dame Rebecca West coming in and eventually showing me her manuscript of Black Lamb and Gray Falcon. Very historically sexy (I must remember to take this part out before posting, my grandparents are reading this thing).
So here I was: traveling to Moldova on a sleeper train. Cloud 9 had nothing on me, I was on Cloud 15. Luke patiently endured my excitement, eventually distracting me with The Name of the Rose by Umbarto Eco (an excellent train book, by the way). We went to bed pretty early and slept well, but had to endure the fascinating experience that is crossing the border of an EU country to a non-EU country. By train. In the middle of the night. We didn’t have any trouble, far from it. Tourists don’t usually go to Moldova, so we were regarded by the border guards with amused bewilderment as they collected our customs forms (they hadn’t bothered making new ones so that the date didn’t read ‘19___’).
* * *
It is a dark and snow stormy night at the Moldovan-Romanian border. Wolves howl and searchlights cut through the inky blackness as the train stops for passport control. In the train are two intrepid adventurers, off to see the wonders of Chisinau, bearing a British and American passport respectively. Two border guards enter the compartment.
Guard 1: Buna ziua. Va rog passport. [Romanian for Good evening, may I please see your passports?]
The intrepid adventurers hand over their documents. The two guards, much to their surprise, find themselves face-to-face with the seals of the United States of America and Great Britain. Dark eyebrows are raised and fuzzy hats are removed to reveal equally confused-looking heads of hair.
Guard 1: Sounding a bit like Dracula, except after inhaling helium. Vat ees thees?
Intrepid American Adventurer: Stating the obvious because she tends to do so when nervous. Our passports.
Guard 2: Stops staring at Intrepid British Adventurer’s passport. Vy ees you here?
Intrepid British Adventurer: We’re intrepid adventurers from America and England come to see your fair country. Guards 1 and 2 stare blankly at him and IAA kicks him. What? I mean, we’re tourists!
He’s said it. Thunder rolls. Wolves howl. Horses neigh wildly. Lightening crashes. The train itself trembles, though this could possibly just be from ongoing process of changing the gauge of the tracks.
Guard 1: VAT? Vat deeed yu say?
IBA: Brightly. He’s attributed the howling wolves as a reaction to thunder and lightening when it’s supposed to be snowing. We’re tourists!
Guard 2: Toureeeests? Toureeeests? No such ting in Moldova!
IAA: Um, I’ve heard people come here in the summers…
Guard 2: Shaking with terror. Nu! Nu! Nu! [Romanian for Are you kidding me?] Vee must go get boss.
He and Guard 1 beat a hasty retreat, taking IAA’s and IBA’s passports with them.
IBA: Pleasant fellows. Looks out the window after a particularly loud crash. Oh look, I think they’re changing the railway gauges!
IAA: I wish they’d bring our passports back. Starts getting really nervous.
After what seems like hours, Guard 2 returns with his superior, Guard 3.
Guard 3: Looks over IBA and IAA, yep, there’s no doubt about it. So, yu ees *toureeests*?
IBA: Tears self away from window. That’s right.
IAA: Is there a problem? Really wants passport back.
Thunder crashes. Wolves howl. Horses neigh wildly. Lightning flashes. The train shudders and the searchlights outside go nuts. Guard 3 looms like a wraith. A very angry, red-faced wraith who wants to eat you and your children.
Guard 3: Ees there problem? EES THERE PROBLEM? Yus ees toureeests. This word no exist in Moldovan. Loses accent, a common occurrence when angry. His subordinates tremble. Now I have to go make a report with the government that we have tourists, but I can’t explain what you are because there is no word for tourists in Moldovan. So, to explain to my superiors who exactly has crossed this godforsaken border at this ungodly hour, I must first register the word tourists with the Moldovan Academy that oversees our lovely language. Shouting. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FORMS ARE REQUIRED TO REGISTER A NEW WORD WITH THE MOLDOVAN ACADEMY?! The wolves outside whimper in terror.
* * *
Fortunately, this is not what happened at the border. We answered some quick questions, filled out our forms, handed over our passports, and watched the train change gauges. After a long while, we were stamped in by a very nice (and English-speaking) Moldovan soldier and we were on our way!
15 Feburary, 2007
Today was one of those see-saw days when something delightful happened and was immediately followed by a disaster of some magnitude in a headache-inducing cycle that left me in tears more than once. We got to Chisinau bright and early and did a little victory dance in the (surprisingly modern and clean) station before trying to get our bearings. This is where the trouble started. Our copy of Lonely Planet Eastern Europe did not include Moldova and so we didn’t have a map. I thought this wouldn’t be a problem because I had the addresses of two hotels in the city, as well as directions from the train station. Besides, I figured we’d be able to get a map or some sort of information at the train station. This, in a word, did not happen. Moldova has two national languages, Romanian and Russian, so that means everyone is bilingual and that knowledge of English is going to be sparse (knowing two languages is hard enough!). The lady at the information desk had no idea what I was asking for in my combination of French/Polish/two words of Romanian and so we decided to set out and find the center for ourselves. This was all well and good, but we weren’t 100% sure of the way and so had to go back to the station and find a cab. A very nice guard got us into a cab with another fellow who spoke English and we went off to the address of one of the hotels I had written down. We got to the correct street easily and the cabbie told us that the place we were looking for was 40 meters back. Our fellow passenger insisted on paying our fare, so we were two very happy campers when we got out of the cab. Then we realized we were in the middle of a bustling market and there was no hotel sign to be seen. We wandered around asking people who would point in one direction or another, but add something I couldn’t understand afterwards. It wasn’t until a nice Russian girl stopped us and asked us what we were looking for did I find out what people were trying to tell me: the hotel didn’t exist anymore. It shut down a couple of years ago and the market had taken over the property. No problem, I said, I have another address. The girl pointed us in the right direction and we set off. Chisinau is very well-laid out (and by that I mean it’s a Soviet-style city on a grid, so it’s hard to get lost), and we were on our way. Since we didn’t have a map, I got worried after a while if we were going the right way and so we stopped at a travel agency to get better directions and see if they could help. Miracle of miracles, the English-speaking receptionist provided us with a map and directions and we were soon on our way again. Of course, when we got to the hotel, we discovered that it was full and were then pointed to another place that also didn’t seem to exist.
It was about that time that I felt a lovely Gina Panic Attack™ coming on. Here we were in Moldova and we didn’t have a place to sleep! I nearly burst into tears. Fortunately, Luke is much more calm and came up with the bright idea of looking at the hotels recommended on the map. They all looked dreadfully pricey, but we didn’t have much of a choice, so we picked the one with the fewest stars and headed there. That was possibly the best random piece of luck we had! We arrived at this small, cozy hotel on a little side-street and were enthusiastically greeted by the receptionist. She gave us a very nice room at a discount and we were back in business. The room was fabulous: huge and bright with a really nice bathroom and even a little sitting area with a TV. We were paying less than what Dad and I do when we stay at the La Quinta in Champaign on the way back from Wisconsin and we had a palace! Best of all, the whole adventure only took an hour, so we had time to rest up before going to see the sights.
After a very nice shower and nap, we headed out to see what else Chisinau had to offer besides a bustling market and nonexistent hotels. We had a nice lunch at a place called, I’m not kidding, Green Hills. I was thrilled to find a random reminder of Nashville all the way in Chisinau, Moldova. It was even better than being able to use my French and what little non-gymnastics Romanian I taught myself a couple of summers ago to figure out the menu (we later discovered that there was an English translation in the back, but that didn’t stop me from feeling rather proud of myself).
Chişinău, formerly known as Kishinev, is the capital and largest city of Moldova. The city was founded in 1436 as a monastery town and was conquered by the Ottomans in the 16th century. In the early 19th century, it was occupied by Tsarist Russia who made it the capital of the province of Bessarabia. The city became one of the most important in the areas and its prosperity caused the population to explode throughout the 19th century. Jews in particular settled in huge numbers in Chisinau because of the favorable economic conditions as well as the relative peace there in comparison to the situation in the Russia and the Polish lands occupied by Russia. By 1900, Jews accounted for 43% of the population, one of the highest in Europe. The turn of the century was marked by two bloody events-the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, an anti-Semitic riot that lasted three days and left about 50 people dead and hundreds wounded, and the crushing of a 1905 protest of Nicholas II. Following the October Revolution, Bessarabia declared independence from Russia and joined the Kingdom of Romania as an autonomous state. The city was almost completely destroyed during WWII, thanks to the Soviet and Nazi occupations and a devastating earthquake that measured a 7.3 on the Richter scale. When Chisinau finally fell to the Red Army in August of 1944, 70% of it had been destroyed and its Jewish population decimated, with about 10,000 killed. After the war, a rebuilding campaign began and the city was built in the lovely Stalinist socialist-realist style of blocks of flats and heavy-looking government buildings seen today. On the bright side, Chisinau has one of the highest percentages of green spaces among European cities, making it a pleasant place to stroll when the weather’s nice. Restoration of a few historic buildings has also brightened the landscape a little bit.
Moldova’s ethnic situation is also quite interesting today. As I said earlier, the country’s official languages are Romanian and Russian, reflecting its historical situation as a crossroads (and often battleground) between these two nations, as well as the contested status of ‘Moldovan’ ethnicity. With identity being so closely tied to language in this part of the world, the lack of a Moldovan language (though there apparently are attempts to create one) allows Russians and Romanians to lay linguistic claims on this region. As of 2004, about 22% of the population belongs to ethnic minorities: ranging from Russians to Romanians to Bulgarians and Ukrainians to Gagauzians (a Turkic-speaking, Christian group) and Jews (according to the JDC, there are about 24,000 Jews in Moldova today, in comparison to 10-12,000 Polish Jews). Once again, I digress and Wikipedia is ever so interesting and addictive. I just went to look up Chisinau’s history and, well, look at this mess!
We return to the scene: me and Luke walking around possibly the most remote point I have ever been to. Bucharest was a rumor and Poland mere fantasy. I thought I knew about remote when I wandered about Mazuria, or stood on the Baltic coast in the middle of winter, or drank in the sunset at Rosh Hanikra and pointedly ignored Lebanon at my back. That is a different sort of remote, a feeling you get when you’re far afield and just how far away from home you are hits you like a ton of bricks. Wandering Chisinau was like wandering in some weird plane where things clash. I knew that Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, but you only see that in the contrasts: the shiny black BMWs and Jaguars cutting off rusty junk buckets on the wide streets, shops filled with goods but people thronging to the bargain shopping mall or the market, shiny new hotels competing with ones so old the receptionist still asks you to register with the local Soviet and you wonder if there are bugs in the telephone. Moldova tries, much like I felt that Poland did when I first visited. See, we aren’t as bad as you think. Won’t you come and take a chance with us. We have potential, you’ll see! In Poland, this became a reality with EU integration and I no longer feel that little voice as I ramble through the country. Poland is secure in its future; here things seem a bit more tenuous. But then you grab a good bottle of local wine, attend a concert, praise the artists’ works at their market, eat a good meal, and you forget that there is a breakaway region a short bus ride away and that while peace is pretty solid, tensions are high enough to have Lonely Planet warn travelers to avoid the area. Lonely Planet says keep out of Northern Albania, but does not include that in a large boxed warning like they do for Transnisteria in Moldova.
So, as I was saying, we had a very pleasant time wandering about Chisinau and seeing the sights. We bought tickets to an organ concert, leading to another edition of me having fun with languages I can’t speak. I successfully ordered the tickets (doi bilety [ok, I fudged the plural] va rog) and handed over the money. The confusion started when Luke pulled out some money to pay me back, but the lady at the ticket kasa thought that he was trying to pay her, so she told us something in Romanian (something like, I’m getting your change as we speak). Not realizing the confusion, I stared at her blankly. This causes her to fluidly switch into Russian, causing the blank stare to deepen. All the Russian I know is from the opera class I accidentally signed up for last spring and we definitely weren’t talking about Sadko or Ruslan and Liudmilla here. Finally she realizes that we have no idea what she’s saying and slowly says in Russian Nie romunski [you don’t speak Romanian, do you?]? We nod. She thinks and then asks, a nie ruski [and you don’t happen to speak Russian either, am I correct?]? We nod again. The light bulb snaps on brilliantly. Ah, she says, ani romunski, ani ruski [Neither Romanian nor Russian?]? Again, we nod. The light bulb is shining like the sun. Jasne [Oh, I get it!]! she declares, handing us our tickets and change and laughing.
Still chuckling to ourselves, we killed the hour before the concert at a coffee shop, where I managed to make myself look completely and utterly stupid by putting salt in my tea. Why on earth they had salt right by the tea spoons is beyond me, maybe Moldovans are smarter than us’n stupid Americans. The lady behind the counter had a good laugh at me, and tried to drain the worst of the salt out of the water. Salty-sugary tea was not my cup of tea (oh why did I just use that?} and so I just drank some of Luke’s beer. He’s a nice guy like that. Then, we went to the concert, which was excellent. The first half was the advertised organ concert and then the second half featured the city children’s orchestra, who were absolutely precious and amazing! We had a great time sitting in the elegant blue-white-and-turquoise concert hall pretending to be elegant and listening to some great music. Gershwin in Chisinau, what a night!
After the concert, we couldn’t be bothered with finding a restaurant, so we decided to have a picnic back in our room. That was very, very fun.
16 February, 2007
Today we walked around Chisinau and saw a couple of museums. First we went to see Pushkin’s house-he was exiled here for three years after the Decemberist Uprising because a lot of his friends from school were involved in the Uprising and the authorities decided that, although Pushkin wasn’t involved directly, he was guilty by association and so was sent to cool his heels in Chisinau. We got there a bit early, but the two sweet little old Russian ladies running the museum opened it up for us when they saw us standing outside the gate looking like stupid, but adorably forlorn, tourists. The museum is quite small and consists of the little house in which Pushkin lived, decorated with a lot of his things, and then a exhibition on his writings in another building. Everything was in Romanian and Russian, but the little old ladies were enthusiastic about making us understand what they were trying to tell us. Although Polish isn’t terribly close to Russian, we were able to figure some things out and talked to our amused guides in Polish and everyone was happy. Then, we went to the history museum. Well, when I say ‘went’, I mean we walked around a lot because I got the address mixed up with another museum, realized our mistake and backtracked only to discover that the place was closed and so walked back to the museum to which we were mistakenly headed in the first place. That museum was the national Ethnographic and Natural History Museum and we had a grand time learning all about Moldova’s wildlife, both past and present, and some of the natural culture. Once again, everything was in Russian and Romanian only, but a stuffed badger is a stuffed badger in any language. In the last room was a temporary exhibit on the Holocaust, which I found very impressive and gave the museum a big thumbs up for having it. Yay for raising awareness!
When we had admired all the stuffed animals and peasant clothing we could handle, we thanked the nice ladies and headed back. The exterior of the museum is really pretty-very Moorish-and there are bits of the interior that are still extravagantly painted, which leads one to wonder what the building was originally used for. We wandered around some more and I couldn’t help but sort of wonder if the people who warned me about how terrible and dangerous Moldova is before I came actually have ever been here. Oh, I’m sure that there’s plenty of trouble if you’re looking for it, especially in Transnisteria, but we were quite comfortable in Chisinau. The roads and sidewalks could use a lot of work though, as I nearly killed myself several time by tripping over broken cobbles, stumbling over uneven pavement, and nearly drowning in a couple of large puddles that were actually lakes. We grabbed lunch at a pizza place with funky décor and absolutely dreadful food. After living in Poland, I am quite used to having ketchup and mayonnaise being served with the pizza. The ketchup is not like Heinz, it’s actually made of tomatoes and serves as a very nice sauce and apparently some people like mayo on their pizza. I don’t understand the latter bit, but I have developed a taste for Polish ketchup on my pizza. So, when I saw that the pizza came with ketchup and mayo, I didn’t think anything of it. Of course, when our pizzas were brought out, I couldn’t help but ask where’s the ketchup? I didn’t think anything of it: restaurants usually don’t bring condiments out to foreigners, and took a bite of my pizza. That was when I discovered the location of both the ketchup and (most predominantly) the mayonnaise. They had been baked into the pizza. Luke and I managed to get some of it down, but it was so awful that we slunk out of there really fast, leaving behind two half-finished pizzas. Ew, ew, ew. Definitely the worst food experience ever.
We killed a little more time, then headed back to the hotel and got a taxi to the train station. We sat around for a while, and then enjoyed another night in a fabulous Moldovan train (I’m not kidding). The ride was very smooth and quiet, but we got to have four hours of fun at the border crossing. First, we stopped two towns away from the border and a doctor got on the train to see if anyone was ill. Those five who were got kicked off the train (I saw a group who I assume came from the train walking over the tracks back to the station house as we pulled out). Then, we had to change the gauge of the rails, which involves a lot of banging and swearing and jostling. The Moldovan border guards once again took their sweet time with our passports and left us sitting nervously for a long time while they presumably went to fill out some forms over a leisurely dinner. Once we got all of that taken care of, we chugged to the Romanian side and sat for another two hours while the Romanian border guards took their sweet time with our passports as they had to take every Moldovan and their luggage off the train, search them, stamp them in, and put them back on the train. Since our passports are pretty easy to deal with-Luke’s doesn’t even require a stamp since he’s an EU citizen-we were left for last. I was so tired by this point that I couldn’t see straight, but I couldn’t go to sleep because I didn’t have my passport and we didn’t know if one of the guards was going to come in and ask us questions again. When we finally got our things back, I zonked out almost instantly.
17 February, 2007
We got a bit of a surprise this morning because we woke up when the train was pulling into Bucharest! We thought that someone was going to come around and get our sheets, like they did on the way to Chisinau, but that wasn’t the case so we scrambled a bit. Fortunately Gara de Nord is the last stop, so we didn’t have to rush too much. It was really early when we got into Bucharest, so we caught the bus to Butterfly Villa and checked in, but couldn’t go back to sleep because all the beds were full. We talked with Iulia for a bit and played with the cat, then helped make (and eat) breakfast.
When we could eat no more, we headed back out into the cold to see some of the sights that we missed two days before in Old Bucharest. We stopped for a map at the Athenee Palace Hotel, which in the interwar years was Bucharest’s most fashionably seedy hotel. It is said that King Carol, Romania’s notorious playboy king in the ‘20s and ‘30s, used to personally solicit the prostitutes hanging around the elegant dining rooms there. All the journalists stayed there, looking for leads and getting spied on by all sorts of plainclothes policemen and informants. The Nazis then used it as their headquarters during WWII, so it got bombed pretty heavily. Today it is a sleek, respectable looking grand hotel run by Marriott. Going inside and dealing with the very friendly staff and seeing how completely non-sketchy the place is makes me again wonder which Athenee Palace Hotel Robert Kaplan was whining about in Balkan Ghosts. Methinks he was just another stuck-up East Coast reporter who resented his editors shunting him off to the Balkans. Obviously the man did not have a nose for news, or taste for that matter. I’ll stop complaining about Kaplan and his wretched book now, I promise.
Our first stop was Piata Revolutionarii (Revolution Plaza), where the crowd gathered to hear Ceausescu speak and launched a revolution. A huge monument dominates the square, commemorating the struggle and listing the names of those who died when the Securitate agents fired into the crowd when they began to protest Ceausescu’s regime. Across the way is the former Communist Party headquarters, where the great dictator gave his last speech and from which he and his wife escaped early the next morning. The most amazing monument was the building shell that once used to be the headquarters of Securitate and was destroyed during the war. The shell stood as a memorial to the violence and recently the Bucharest Architectural Society designed and built an amazing glass structure inside the shell. It’s really something else.
We had a coffee break to get out of the Chicago-style wind and walked around more of old Bucharest. There isn’t much left, but here and there are glimpses of buildings that gave the city its nickname of Paris of the East. Most people had the good sense to stay inside, so we didn’t run into many people as we walked around and saw some of the churches and the Princely Court. We found a cute little street of artists, where I bought a little painting, and then went in search of a Romanian translation of The Silmarillion. This took a bit of patience because we 1.) had to find a bookstore, and 2.) had to ask where the heck they kept their Tolkien books. We did eventually manage to do both and I now have another book for my ridiculous collection.
After a very late lunch, we were both so tired and cold that we decided to head back to the hostel. We had been walking for almost six hours (10am to 4pm) by then and it was starting to hit us. It’s a shame because we did miss some sites, but I don’t think we would have enjoyed them that much if we had gone. It just means we have to come back!
18 February, 2007
Flew back to Krakow and began looking with trepidation toward second semester.
After partaking in Butterfly’s famous breakfast, we set out to see as much of Bucharest as possible before catching our train to Chisinau in the evening. First we went back to Gara de Nord to get our tickets, which was much easier than I expected. Then, we hopped on the subway to go check out some of the sights. This turned into a bigger adventure than we originally planned because, once again, there were only a few extremely unhelpful signs and we kept getting off at the wrong stop or the wrong place at the right stop.
Out of all the cities we’d been to, Bucharest was by far the youngest, entering recorded history only in the 15th century. It became the state capital of Romania in 1862 and is quite an interesting place, with eclectic architecture and a mix of old and new that makes Warsaw look well-balanced. In the Inter-War years, Bucharest was known as the “Paris of the East,” because of its beautiful architecture and highly cultured elites. Although many buildings and districts in the historic centre were damaged or destroyed by war, earthquakes and Nicolae Ceauşescu'a program of systematization, much survived. In recent years, the city has been experiencing an economic and cultural boom and, thanks to Romania’s recent ascension to the EU, this will probably continue into the future.
Once we got the subway somewhat figured out, we ended up in the heart of Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist fantasy land around Piata Unirii. It’s so awful that I thought this might be the one thing that whiny little so-and-so Robert Kaplan got right in his appallingly dreadful book Balkan Ghosts. What Nicolae Ceauşescu did to this city is just one more criminal activity to add to the long list that eventually led to his execution in December of 1989.
One simply can’t mention Bucharest without going into detail about Nicolae Ceauşescu. The leader of the People’s Republic of Romania from 1965 until shortly before his execution in 1989, Ceauşescu takes the term megalomaniacal to its extremely frightening conclusion. Initially, he was a popular figure in Romania because he pursued a foreign policy independent of the Soviet Union-in the 1960s, he ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact (though Romania formally remained a member); he refused to take part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, and actively and openly condemned that action. Although the Soviet Union largely tolerated Ceauşescu's recalcitrance, his seeming independence from Moscow earned Romania maverick status within the Eastern bloc and eventually the US granted Romania ‘Most Favored Nation’ status. In addition, recognized the State of Israel and had diplomatic relations with it and sent a Romanian delegation to the 1984 Olympics (one of only four Communist nations to do so). Incidentally, the biggest American statement of the 1984 Olympics was Mary Lou Retton’s win over Romania’s Katya Szabo in the all-around gymnastics competition, a result that is disputed by most knowledgeable gymnastics fans because the politics of the time greatly influenced the scoring and Retton had the artistry of a brick. As usual, I digress.
Slowly, but surely Ceauşescu’s popularity went down the drain. His 1966 ban on birth control and abortion to up the fertility/birth rate of ethnic Romanians was only the beginning of the madness. He also made it much harder to obtain a divorce. By the late 1960s, the population began to swell, accompanied by rising poverty and increased homelessness, particularly street children, in the urban areas like Bucharest. In turn, a new problem was created by uncontrollable child abandonment, which swelled the orphanage population and facilitated a rampant AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s - created by the regime's refusal to acknowledge the existence of the disease, and its unwillingness to allow for any HIV test to be carried out. Beginning in 1972, Ceauşescu instituted a program of systematisation. Promoted as a way to build a "multilaterally developed socialist society", the program of demolition, resettlement, and construction began in the countryside, but culminated with an attempt to completely reshape the country's capital. Over one fifth of central Bucharest, including churches and historic buildings, was demolished in the 1980s, in order to rebuild the city in his own style. The People's House ("Casa Poporului") in Bucharest, now the Parliament House, is the world's second largest building, after the Pentagon. Ceauşescu also planned to bulldoze many villages in order to move the peasants into blocks of flats in the cities, as part of his "urbanisation" and "industrialisation" programs. Thankfully, this plan was thwarted.
Throughout this time, Romania became more and more isolated internationally and increasingly impoverished. In the 1980s, Ceauşescu ordered the export of much of the country's agricultural and industrial production in order to repay its massive debts. The resulting domestic shortages made the everyday life of Romanian citizens a fight for survival as food rationing was introduced and heating, gas, and electricity black-outs were becoming the rule. There was a steady decrease in the living standard (and especially the availability of food and general goods in stores) between 1980 and 1989. Although people accepted these hardships at first, it became clear that Ceauşescu was gradually losing his grip on reality. He was often shown on state TV entering stores filled with food supplies and praising the "high living standard" achieved under his rule. In late 1989, daily TV broadcasts showed lists of CAPs with alleged record harvests, in blatant contradiction with the shortages experienced by the average Romanian at the time. Any attempt from people to get their dictator to wake up was discouraged and, though many people sent him letters and petitions, he probably never read them and the senders were harassed by the State Security.
Things came to a head in December of 1989. A protest in the western city of Timisoara on the 16th, originally in support of an ethnic Hungarian priest, exploded when students joined the crowd and the meeting took on an anti-government character. Government troops fired into the crowd, killing dozens. The protests then spread throughout the city and the army attempted to crush them. This failed and resulted in several days of chaos and casualties, causing parts of Timisoara to look more like a war zone than a stately university town. These events were not broadcast in the national media, but word of them spread via Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and by word of mouth. On 21 December, Ceauşescu appeared on the balcony of the Central Headquarters of the Communist Party in Bucharest to address the nation. In the middle of his address, sudden movement coming from the outskirts of the mass assembly and the sound of what various sources have reported as fireworks, bombs, or guns broke the orderly manifestation into chaos. Scared at first, the crowds tried to disperse. Bullhorns were used to spread the news that the Securitate was firing on them and that a "revolution" was unfolding, and finally the people were persuaded to join in. The rally turned into a protest demonstration and in the end a revolution emerged. Securitate agents fired into the crowd, and more blood was shed. Finally realizing that the situation was out of control Ceauşescu and his (almost equally hated) wife hid inside the Central Committee building, and then attempted to flee by helicopter in the early morning of the 22nd. They were quickly captured, put on trial, and executed on national television. So ended the last old-style Communist dictator and Romania joined its ex-Soviet Bloc neighbors on the path to democracy.
Back in Piata Unirii, Luke’s eyes were beginning to glaze over as I excitedly ooh-ed and ahh-ed over Ceauşescu’s legacy-an urban wasteland uglier and on a larger scale than Warsaw. We walked past the dry fountain (did it ever run?) and down the street to take a look at the monstrosity known as the Presidential Palace. At first glance, it was hard to believe that I was looking at the largest building in the world after the Pentagon, but it was a shocker once we turned the corner and realized that it was just as big on the sides (and presumably the back). The building is up on a hill and we couldn’t figure out how to go right up to it, since the gates were guarded by intimidating-looking soldiers and, while I can have a conversation about gymnastics in Romanian, I do not know how to ask about tourists’ entrances.
After getting our fill of Socialist-realist architecture, we attempted to figure out the metro and eventually made it up to Piata Universitii and then to Piata Republicii. We saw a few interesting buildings there, then walked up to see Bucharest’s baby Arc de Triumph and then further north to the incredible Village Museum. We saw all sorts of examples of traditional houses and buildings from villages from all over Romania, which were all amazing. Unfortunately, it was really cold and rainy, so we didn’t stay as long as we would have had we come in the summer.
Back at the hostel, we had lunch with Gabi and Jeff, two of the people we met at the hostel, then grabbed our bags and headed back to the train station. We got there really early, so we killed some time in a café and did lots of people-watching. The authorities might have cleaned up Gara de Nord, but there are still plenty of interesting characters walking around the station. Fortunately, they aren’t trying to hit you up for money-they’re just going to be in the same compartment as you. Fortunately, the train to Chisinau was not particularly crowded and we had a whole compartment to ourselves.
Oh lord, the train to Chisinau. For those of you who don’t know, I hate flying. I’m scared of it. After all, how can I be sure that the Alitalia people know where they’re going, that the Lot pilots haven’t been sneaking shots of zebrowka before telling us to fasten our seatbelts for takeoff, or that the mechanics for United or Southwest are happy with their current situation? Besides, I usually tend to get stuck in airports because of freak Thanksgiving snows, strikes, or other unforeseen delays wishing that Ursula LeGuin’s stories in Changing Planes were true and I could go to some other plane of existence for a nice relaxing vacation until whatever difficulties have been sorted out. Sadly, I am forced to sit like a mournful Vanderbilt football fan after another heartbreaking loss watching the departures screen and cursing the world. But trains. In my opinion, trains rank slightly above headphones (but slightly below Advil™ Liquigels) in terms of greatest things ever invented. Considering how well I can tune out the world with a pair of headphones-or, by contrast, my roommate can not torment me with nonsensical Korean soap operas-and how Advil got me through four years of basketball (they were particularly useful to have after a Grover Tirade™), you get the picture. There is really nothing better than riding a train, especially in Europe. You get to watch the countryside fly by and are able to move around whenever you feel like it, so your knees don’t hate you. Sleeper cars are particularly fun because there’s just something so incredibly romantic and 19th/early 20th century about taking a sleeper train. I could just imagine Agatha Christie popping in and introducing herself as our compartment-mate or Dame Rebecca West coming in and eventually showing me her manuscript of Black Lamb and Gray Falcon. Very historically sexy (I must remember to take this part out before posting, my grandparents are reading this thing).
So here I was: traveling to Moldova on a sleeper train. Cloud 9 had nothing on me, I was on Cloud 15. Luke patiently endured my excitement, eventually distracting me with The Name of the Rose by Umbarto Eco (an excellent train book, by the way). We went to bed pretty early and slept well, but had to endure the fascinating experience that is crossing the border of an EU country to a non-EU country. By train. In the middle of the night. We didn’t have any trouble, far from it. Tourists don’t usually go to Moldova, so we were regarded by the border guards with amused bewilderment as they collected our customs forms (they hadn’t bothered making new ones so that the date didn’t read ‘19___’).
* * *
It is a dark and snow stormy night at the Moldovan-Romanian border. Wolves howl and searchlights cut through the inky blackness as the train stops for passport control. In the train are two intrepid adventurers, off to see the wonders of Chisinau, bearing a British and American passport respectively. Two border guards enter the compartment.
Guard 1: Buna ziua. Va rog passport. [Romanian for Good evening, may I please see your passports?]
The intrepid adventurers hand over their documents. The two guards, much to their surprise, find themselves face-to-face with the seals of the United States of America and Great Britain. Dark eyebrows are raised and fuzzy hats are removed to reveal equally confused-looking heads of hair.
Guard 1: Sounding a bit like Dracula, except after inhaling helium. Vat ees thees?
Intrepid American Adventurer: Stating the obvious because she tends to do so when nervous. Our passports.
Guard 2: Stops staring at Intrepid British Adventurer’s passport. Vy ees you here?
Intrepid British Adventurer: We’re intrepid adventurers from America and England come to see your fair country. Guards 1 and 2 stare blankly at him and IAA kicks him. What? I mean, we’re tourists!
He’s said it. Thunder rolls. Wolves howl. Horses neigh wildly. Lightening crashes. The train itself trembles, though this could possibly just be from ongoing process of changing the gauge of the tracks.
Guard 1: VAT? Vat deeed yu say?
IBA: Brightly. He’s attributed the howling wolves as a reaction to thunder and lightening when it’s supposed to be snowing. We’re tourists!
Guard 2: Toureeeests? Toureeeests? No such ting in Moldova!
IAA: Um, I’ve heard people come here in the summers…
Guard 2: Shaking with terror. Nu! Nu! Nu! [Romanian for Are you kidding me?] Vee must go get boss.
He and Guard 1 beat a hasty retreat, taking IAA’s and IBA’s passports with them.
IBA: Pleasant fellows. Looks out the window after a particularly loud crash. Oh look, I think they’re changing the railway gauges!
IAA: I wish they’d bring our passports back. Starts getting really nervous.
After what seems like hours, Guard 2 returns with his superior, Guard 3.
Guard 3: Looks over IBA and IAA, yep, there’s no doubt about it. So, yu ees *toureeests*?
IBA: Tears self away from window. That’s right.
IAA: Is there a problem? Really wants passport back.
Thunder crashes. Wolves howl. Horses neigh wildly. Lightning flashes. The train shudders and the searchlights outside go nuts. Guard 3 looms like a wraith. A very angry, red-faced wraith who wants to eat you and your children.
Guard 3: Ees there problem? EES THERE PROBLEM? Yus ees toureeests. This word no exist in Moldovan. Loses accent, a common occurrence when angry. His subordinates tremble. Now I have to go make a report with the government that we have tourists, but I can’t explain what you are because there is no word for tourists in Moldovan. So, to explain to my superiors who exactly has crossed this godforsaken border at this ungodly hour, I must first register the word tourists with the Moldovan Academy that oversees our lovely language. Shouting. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FORMS ARE REQUIRED TO REGISTER A NEW WORD WITH THE MOLDOVAN ACADEMY?! The wolves outside whimper in terror.
* * *
Fortunately, this is not what happened at the border. We answered some quick questions, filled out our forms, handed over our passports, and watched the train change gauges. After a long while, we were stamped in by a very nice (and English-speaking) Moldovan soldier and we were on our way!
15 Feburary, 2007
Today was one of those see-saw days when something delightful happened and was immediately followed by a disaster of some magnitude in a headache-inducing cycle that left me in tears more than once. We got to Chisinau bright and early and did a little victory dance in the (surprisingly modern and clean) station before trying to get our bearings. This is where the trouble started. Our copy of Lonely Planet Eastern Europe did not include Moldova and so we didn’t have a map. I thought this wouldn’t be a problem because I had the addresses of two hotels in the city, as well as directions from the train station. Besides, I figured we’d be able to get a map or some sort of information at the train station. This, in a word, did not happen. Moldova has two national languages, Romanian and Russian, so that means everyone is bilingual and that knowledge of English is going to be sparse (knowing two languages is hard enough!). The lady at the information desk had no idea what I was asking for in my combination of French/Polish/two words of Romanian and so we decided to set out and find the center for ourselves. This was all well and good, but we weren’t 100% sure of the way and so had to go back to the station and find a cab. A very nice guard got us into a cab with another fellow who spoke English and we went off to the address of one of the hotels I had written down. We got to the correct street easily and the cabbie told us that the place we were looking for was 40 meters back. Our fellow passenger insisted on paying our fare, so we were two very happy campers when we got out of the cab. Then we realized we were in the middle of a bustling market and there was no hotel sign to be seen. We wandered around asking people who would point in one direction or another, but add something I couldn’t understand afterwards. It wasn’t until a nice Russian girl stopped us and asked us what we were looking for did I find out what people were trying to tell me: the hotel didn’t exist anymore. It shut down a couple of years ago and the market had taken over the property. No problem, I said, I have another address. The girl pointed us in the right direction and we set off. Chisinau is very well-laid out (and by that I mean it’s a Soviet-style city on a grid, so it’s hard to get lost), and we were on our way. Since we didn’t have a map, I got worried after a while if we were going the right way and so we stopped at a travel agency to get better directions and see if they could help. Miracle of miracles, the English-speaking receptionist provided us with a map and directions and we were soon on our way again. Of course, when we got to the hotel, we discovered that it was full and were then pointed to another place that also didn’t seem to exist.
It was about that time that I felt a lovely Gina Panic Attack™ coming on. Here we were in Moldova and we didn’t have a place to sleep! I nearly burst into tears. Fortunately, Luke is much more calm and came up with the bright idea of looking at the hotels recommended on the map. They all looked dreadfully pricey, but we didn’t have much of a choice, so we picked the one with the fewest stars and headed there. That was possibly the best random piece of luck we had! We arrived at this small, cozy hotel on a little side-street and were enthusiastically greeted by the receptionist. She gave us a very nice room at a discount and we were back in business. The room was fabulous: huge and bright with a really nice bathroom and even a little sitting area with a TV. We were paying less than what Dad and I do when we stay at the La Quinta in Champaign on the way back from Wisconsin and we had a palace! Best of all, the whole adventure only took an hour, so we had time to rest up before going to see the sights.
After a very nice shower and nap, we headed out to see what else Chisinau had to offer besides a bustling market and nonexistent hotels. We had a nice lunch at a place called, I’m not kidding, Green Hills. I was thrilled to find a random reminder of Nashville all the way in Chisinau, Moldova. It was even better than being able to use my French and what little non-gymnastics Romanian I taught myself a couple of summers ago to figure out the menu (we later discovered that there was an English translation in the back, but that didn’t stop me from feeling rather proud of myself).
Chişinău, formerly known as Kishinev, is the capital and largest city of Moldova. The city was founded in 1436 as a monastery town and was conquered by the Ottomans in the 16th century. In the early 19th century, it was occupied by Tsarist Russia who made it the capital of the province of Bessarabia. The city became one of the most important in the areas and its prosperity caused the population to explode throughout the 19th century. Jews in particular settled in huge numbers in Chisinau because of the favorable economic conditions as well as the relative peace there in comparison to the situation in the Russia and the Polish lands occupied by Russia. By 1900, Jews accounted for 43% of the population, one of the highest in Europe. The turn of the century was marked by two bloody events-the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, an anti-Semitic riot that lasted three days and left about 50 people dead and hundreds wounded, and the crushing of a 1905 protest of Nicholas II. Following the October Revolution, Bessarabia declared independence from Russia and joined the Kingdom of Romania as an autonomous state. The city was almost completely destroyed during WWII, thanks to the Soviet and Nazi occupations and a devastating earthquake that measured a 7.3 on the Richter scale. When Chisinau finally fell to the Red Army in August of 1944, 70% of it had been destroyed and its Jewish population decimated, with about 10,000 killed. After the war, a rebuilding campaign began and the city was built in the lovely Stalinist socialist-realist style of blocks of flats and heavy-looking government buildings seen today. On the bright side, Chisinau has one of the highest percentages of green spaces among European cities, making it a pleasant place to stroll when the weather’s nice. Restoration of a few historic buildings has also brightened the landscape a little bit.
Moldova’s ethnic situation is also quite interesting today. As I said earlier, the country’s official languages are Romanian and Russian, reflecting its historical situation as a crossroads (and often battleground) between these two nations, as well as the contested status of ‘Moldovan’ ethnicity. With identity being so closely tied to language in this part of the world, the lack of a Moldovan language (though there apparently are attempts to create one) allows Russians and Romanians to lay linguistic claims on this region. As of 2004, about 22% of the population belongs to ethnic minorities: ranging from Russians to Romanians to Bulgarians and Ukrainians to Gagauzians (a Turkic-speaking, Christian group) and Jews (according to the JDC, there are about 24,000 Jews in Moldova today, in comparison to 10-12,000 Polish Jews). Once again, I digress and Wikipedia is ever so interesting and addictive. I just went to look up Chisinau’s history and, well, look at this mess!
We return to the scene: me and Luke walking around possibly the most remote point I have ever been to. Bucharest was a rumor and Poland mere fantasy. I thought I knew about remote when I wandered about Mazuria, or stood on the Baltic coast in the middle of winter, or drank in the sunset at Rosh Hanikra and pointedly ignored Lebanon at my back. That is a different sort of remote, a feeling you get when you’re far afield and just how far away from home you are hits you like a ton of bricks. Wandering Chisinau was like wandering in some weird plane where things clash. I knew that Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, but you only see that in the contrasts: the shiny black BMWs and Jaguars cutting off rusty junk buckets on the wide streets, shops filled with goods but people thronging to the bargain shopping mall or the market, shiny new hotels competing with ones so old the receptionist still asks you to register with the local Soviet and you wonder if there are bugs in the telephone. Moldova tries, much like I felt that Poland did when I first visited. See, we aren’t as bad as you think. Won’t you come and take a chance with us. We have potential, you’ll see! In Poland, this became a reality with EU integration and I no longer feel that little voice as I ramble through the country. Poland is secure in its future; here things seem a bit more tenuous. But then you grab a good bottle of local wine, attend a concert, praise the artists’ works at their market, eat a good meal, and you forget that there is a breakaway region a short bus ride away and that while peace is pretty solid, tensions are high enough to have Lonely Planet warn travelers to avoid the area. Lonely Planet says keep out of Northern Albania, but does not include that in a large boxed warning like they do for Transnisteria in Moldova.
So, as I was saying, we had a very pleasant time wandering about Chisinau and seeing the sights. We bought tickets to an organ concert, leading to another edition of me having fun with languages I can’t speak. I successfully ordered the tickets (doi bilety [ok, I fudged the plural] va rog) and handed over the money. The confusion started when Luke pulled out some money to pay me back, but the lady at the ticket kasa thought that he was trying to pay her, so she told us something in Romanian (something like, I’m getting your change as we speak). Not realizing the confusion, I stared at her blankly. This causes her to fluidly switch into Russian, causing the blank stare to deepen. All the Russian I know is from the opera class I accidentally signed up for last spring and we definitely weren’t talking about Sadko or Ruslan and Liudmilla here. Finally she realizes that we have no idea what she’s saying and slowly says in Russian Nie romunski [you don’t speak Romanian, do you?]? We nod. She thinks and then asks, a nie ruski [and you don’t happen to speak Russian either, am I correct?]? We nod again. The light bulb snaps on brilliantly. Ah, she says, ani romunski, ani ruski [Neither Romanian nor Russian?]? Again, we nod. The light bulb is shining like the sun. Jasne [Oh, I get it!]! she declares, handing us our tickets and change and laughing.
Still chuckling to ourselves, we killed the hour before the concert at a coffee shop, where I managed to make myself look completely and utterly stupid by putting salt in my tea. Why on earth they had salt right by the tea spoons is beyond me, maybe Moldovans are smarter than us’n stupid Americans. The lady behind the counter had a good laugh at me, and tried to drain the worst of the salt out of the water. Salty-sugary tea was not my cup of tea (oh why did I just use that?} and so I just drank some of Luke’s beer. He’s a nice guy like that. Then, we went to the concert, which was excellent. The first half was the advertised organ concert and then the second half featured the city children’s orchestra, who were absolutely precious and amazing! We had a great time sitting in the elegant blue-white-and-turquoise concert hall pretending to be elegant and listening to some great music. Gershwin in Chisinau, what a night!
After the concert, we couldn’t be bothered with finding a restaurant, so we decided to have a picnic back in our room. That was very, very fun.
16 February, 2007
Today we walked around Chisinau and saw a couple of museums. First we went to see Pushkin’s house-he was exiled here for three years after the Decemberist Uprising because a lot of his friends from school were involved in the Uprising and the authorities decided that, although Pushkin wasn’t involved directly, he was guilty by association and so was sent to cool his heels in Chisinau. We got there a bit early, but the two sweet little old Russian ladies running the museum opened it up for us when they saw us standing outside the gate looking like stupid, but adorably forlorn, tourists. The museum is quite small and consists of the little house in which Pushkin lived, decorated with a lot of his things, and then a exhibition on his writings in another building. Everything was in Romanian and Russian, but the little old ladies were enthusiastic about making us understand what they were trying to tell us. Although Polish isn’t terribly close to Russian, we were able to figure some things out and talked to our amused guides in Polish and everyone was happy. Then, we went to the history museum. Well, when I say ‘went’, I mean we walked around a lot because I got the address mixed up with another museum, realized our mistake and backtracked only to discover that the place was closed and so walked back to the museum to which we were mistakenly headed in the first place. That museum was the national Ethnographic and Natural History Museum and we had a grand time learning all about Moldova’s wildlife, both past and present, and some of the natural culture. Once again, everything was in Russian and Romanian only, but a stuffed badger is a stuffed badger in any language. In the last room was a temporary exhibit on the Holocaust, which I found very impressive and gave the museum a big thumbs up for having it. Yay for raising awareness!
When we had admired all the stuffed animals and peasant clothing we could handle, we thanked the nice ladies and headed back. The exterior of the museum is really pretty-very Moorish-and there are bits of the interior that are still extravagantly painted, which leads one to wonder what the building was originally used for. We wandered around some more and I couldn’t help but sort of wonder if the people who warned me about how terrible and dangerous Moldova is before I came actually have ever been here. Oh, I’m sure that there’s plenty of trouble if you’re looking for it, especially in Transnisteria, but we were quite comfortable in Chisinau. The roads and sidewalks could use a lot of work though, as I nearly killed myself several time by tripping over broken cobbles, stumbling over uneven pavement, and nearly drowning in a couple of large puddles that were actually lakes. We grabbed lunch at a pizza place with funky décor and absolutely dreadful food. After living in Poland, I am quite used to having ketchup and mayonnaise being served with the pizza. The ketchup is not like Heinz, it’s actually made of tomatoes and serves as a very nice sauce and apparently some people like mayo on their pizza. I don’t understand the latter bit, but I have developed a taste for Polish ketchup on my pizza. So, when I saw that the pizza came with ketchup and mayo, I didn’t think anything of it. Of course, when our pizzas were brought out, I couldn’t help but ask where’s the ketchup? I didn’t think anything of it: restaurants usually don’t bring condiments out to foreigners, and took a bite of my pizza. That was when I discovered the location of both the ketchup and (most predominantly) the mayonnaise. They had been baked into the pizza. Luke and I managed to get some of it down, but it was so awful that we slunk out of there really fast, leaving behind two half-finished pizzas. Ew, ew, ew. Definitely the worst food experience ever.
We killed a little more time, then headed back to the hotel and got a taxi to the train station. We sat around for a while, and then enjoyed another night in a fabulous Moldovan train (I’m not kidding). The ride was very smooth and quiet, but we got to have four hours of fun at the border crossing. First, we stopped two towns away from the border and a doctor got on the train to see if anyone was ill. Those five who were got kicked off the train (I saw a group who I assume came from the train walking over the tracks back to the station house as we pulled out). Then, we had to change the gauge of the rails, which involves a lot of banging and swearing and jostling. The Moldovan border guards once again took their sweet time with our passports and left us sitting nervously for a long time while they presumably went to fill out some forms over a leisurely dinner. Once we got all of that taken care of, we chugged to the Romanian side and sat for another two hours while the Romanian border guards took their sweet time with our passports as they had to take every Moldovan and their luggage off the train, search them, stamp them in, and put them back on the train. Since our passports are pretty easy to deal with-Luke’s doesn’t even require a stamp since he’s an EU citizen-we were left for last. I was so tired by this point that I couldn’t see straight, but I couldn’t go to sleep because I didn’t have my passport and we didn’t know if one of the guards was going to come in and ask us questions again. When we finally got our things back, I zonked out almost instantly.
17 February, 2007
We got a bit of a surprise this morning because we woke up when the train was pulling into Bucharest! We thought that someone was going to come around and get our sheets, like they did on the way to Chisinau, but that wasn’t the case so we scrambled a bit. Fortunately Gara de Nord is the last stop, so we didn’t have to rush too much. It was really early when we got into Bucharest, so we caught the bus to Butterfly Villa and checked in, but couldn’t go back to sleep because all the beds were full. We talked with Iulia for a bit and played with the cat, then helped make (and eat) breakfast.
When we could eat no more, we headed back out into the cold to see some of the sights that we missed two days before in Old Bucharest. We stopped for a map at the Athenee Palace Hotel, which in the interwar years was Bucharest’s most fashionably seedy hotel. It is said that King Carol, Romania’s notorious playboy king in the ‘20s and ‘30s, used to personally solicit the prostitutes hanging around the elegant dining rooms there. All the journalists stayed there, looking for leads and getting spied on by all sorts of plainclothes policemen and informants. The Nazis then used it as their headquarters during WWII, so it got bombed pretty heavily. Today it is a sleek, respectable looking grand hotel run by Marriott. Going inside and dealing with the very friendly staff and seeing how completely non-sketchy the place is makes me again wonder which Athenee Palace Hotel Robert Kaplan was whining about in Balkan Ghosts. Methinks he was just another stuck-up East Coast reporter who resented his editors shunting him off to the Balkans. Obviously the man did not have a nose for news, or taste for that matter. I’ll stop complaining about Kaplan and his wretched book now, I promise.
Our first stop was Piata Revolutionarii (Revolution Plaza), where the crowd gathered to hear Ceausescu speak and launched a revolution. A huge monument dominates the square, commemorating the struggle and listing the names of those who died when the Securitate agents fired into the crowd when they began to protest Ceausescu’s regime. Across the way is the former Communist Party headquarters, where the great dictator gave his last speech and from which he and his wife escaped early the next morning. The most amazing monument was the building shell that once used to be the headquarters of Securitate and was destroyed during the war. The shell stood as a memorial to the violence and recently the Bucharest Architectural Society designed and built an amazing glass structure inside the shell. It’s really something else.
We had a coffee break to get out of the Chicago-style wind and walked around more of old Bucharest. There isn’t much left, but here and there are glimpses of buildings that gave the city its nickname of Paris of the East. Most people had the good sense to stay inside, so we didn’t run into many people as we walked around and saw some of the churches and the Princely Court. We found a cute little street of artists, where I bought a little painting, and then went in search of a Romanian translation of The Silmarillion. This took a bit of patience because we 1.) had to find a bookstore, and 2.) had to ask where the heck they kept their Tolkien books. We did eventually manage to do both and I now have another book for my ridiculous collection.
After a very late lunch, we were both so tired and cold that we decided to head back to the hostel. We had been walking for almost six hours (10am to 4pm) by then and it was starting to hit us. It’s a shame because we did miss some sites, but I don’t think we would have enjoyed them that much if we had gone. It just means we have to come back!
18 February, 2007
Flew back to Krakow and began looking with trepidation toward second semester.