Carmen Linssen

Surprises all around Romania

By Carmen Linssen

Romania, that’s the destination of my first real journey being a university student. I had no idea what to expect from a country like Romania, I had never been there before and didn’t know that much about Romania. From the moment I knew the destination of the Buitex-excursion, in which I was going to participate after (to be honest with you,) some hesitation, I looked on the internet to get to know more about this yet for me ‘unknown’ country. I found some information though, and became exited about visiting Romania!

Finally the time came we would depart from Eindhoven Airport to Bucharest. I would like to say ‘everything went well’, but it didn’t. We were delayed (everyone on the plane knows why, but I won’t elaborate about that). The guy sitting next to me and I started talking, and I was surprised to find he was both Dutch as Romanian and therefore went to Romania pretty often. When I showed him the excursion program, he responded enthusiastically and he told me that we had a good program and he told me about the places we were to visit. The plane took off, and we were heading towards Romania. And again, I had gathered more knowledge about Romania.

Once we arrived by plane, we went to Braşov by bus. The first things I noticed where the brightly colored buildings (or at least the stones were originally in a light color) and the attempt to have some greenery and flowers in the public environment, even in the heat.
We went to a nearby shopping mall for lunch. It was very modern and had a lot shops with famous brands. This shopping centre was the first thing I saw that was in big contrast to the airport, which was small and out of date.
Then we left for Braşov, but the route that the bus was taking didn’t seem the optimal route to me because it was a two lane road with fruit stalls standing next to it. If we would go from one city to the other in the Netherlands, or actually in most of the countries which I’ve been visiting in Europe, I would go by highway. But this road didn’t look like a highway to me. And I suppose it wasn’t, because later I discovered Romania only has three highways. The rest of the long-distance transport takes place over so called E-roads. These are part of the International European Road Network. The government has plans to improve the highway network. But what took so long to make plans to construct these roads, and to realize them?
In times of communism, all property was owned by the state. Wasn’t it necessary to have good roads, or was the highway not the main way of transport for everything produced in that time? I suppose the communistic countries, such as Romania and other, were just way behind in technical developments. Influences from the more developed, not communistic countries (most countries in the west of Europe) were not permitted by the communistic regime.
Even more than twenty years after the regime of Ceauşescu there are barely highways. In the aftermath of communism still relatively few people own cars. If you compare it to the Netherlands, Romania has three times less cars in use. Probably because cars are expensive, and public transport is good and relatively cheap.

At first sight Braşov seemed a modern city to me, which had been able to keep it’s authentic character. However, I can’t really say it’s authentic with the knowledge I have. Braşov has had a lot of foreign influences during its existence. Like the Germans, which have used the  city as an important transmission zone to get goods from the Ottoman Empire to more Southern regions. They also influenced the architectural style. In times of communism, the industrialization was part of the identity the town was about to get and it was also attracting lots of workers from other regions. However, ‘traditional’ buildings like churches, were preserved, even if people couldn’t use them for some time for the purpose they were meant for.

From Braşov, we went slightly to the north, to visit the Prapastiile Zarnestiului Canyon and Sighisoara. The contrast between the city of Braşov, how clean and green it may have looked, was big to the Prapastiile Zarnestiului Canyon. To me it seemed to be rough nature untouched by human hands, and the only thing people seemed to have done was making the path and some protections against the rock walls. It was a big contrast compared to the city, but even this part of Romania wasn’t completely uninfluenced. Eventually, part of the group climbed to the top. When we arrived, I had the feeling I was in no-man’s-land, no politics or culture or anything would have an influence on this part of Romania, everything seemed to go with the flow the nature chose it to have. An then I got a ‘milka’ feeling. Cows with bells around their neck were walking through the green valley… It’s a bit ambiguous that these traditional dressed cows were reminding me of a luxury product produced by capitalism.

A few days later, we went to Turda. Not to visit Turda it selves, but to visit the salt mine ‘Salina Turda’. This mine was really impressive, it had been in use for about 900 years, and nowadays there’s an amusement park inside of the mine which was once used to produce salt.  However, for an afternoon of fun in a pleasant and unique environment (the temperature in the mine is about 25 Celsius decrees less than outside of the mine, for example in Turda) you’re at the right address. Modern projects like these seem to attract more tourists than the village itself.

We spend the last days of our trip in Bucharest. This didn’t seem like a regular capital to me. It was clean, the traffic was busy but not a mess, there were some modern buildings but none of them were really high, and of course there were a lot of traces from communism. The big buildings like the Palace of the Parliament and apartment blocks, build in order of Ceauşescu remind the inhabitants of Bucharest everyday of the times of communism. The parents of our guide were even forced to move because of these huge buildings, built for pro-communism people. Lots of people suffered while building the Palace of the Parliament because of bad working conditions. I can’t even imagine how it must have been. Nevertheless, the palace is still there, and it is in use.

After visiting all these places and having seen all these contradictions in every possible way, I discovered something that seemed to be the same in every place we’ve been to; the Romanians have lots of traditional food! This is the one thing not affected by other cultures, modern developments or anything else. It won’t be difficult to find a McDonalds or another place where you can buy ‘worldly food’, but you can still choose to have a good Romanian Mititei, Mămăligă with castraveţi muraţi, and for desert a sweet Papanaşi!