Frank-Juriën Dam

Romanians and their government

By Frank-Juriën Dam

I have been to East Europe several times. First I have been a few times to the Czech Republic in the nineties. I was still young, but change was visible these days. The bad roads with Sovjet cars changed into new asphalt roads with European cars.

Last year, I went to Poland with Jonas, Jaap Dirk and some others to see what the landscape does look like over there. I was shocked in some kind of way. On the one hand, farmers dealt their agricultural lands on a traditional way. On the other hand, economic development was everywhere. Every road was one big lane of advertisements. Commercialism was overwhelming here, without any feeling of aesthetics. And still the country was changing into an average European country. The architecture, the cars and the way people dressed could be from everywhere. And big highways were being build, mainly by Chinese investors.

When I subscribed for this trip, I had no idea what I could expect from it. The general theme of the Buitex to Romania was the dealing with the landscape, without much interventions by planners and landscape architects. How could that look like?

Driving trough Romania gave two sides. First the ugliness, of cables on every lamppost and house and a sometimes very bad condition of houses. This in combination with an air-condition machine on every house. Second, Romania showed the beauty of a far country. The big agricultural fields around Bucharest, combined with big cooling towers. The architecture of the old houses in Transylvania and the Carpathians, build for fortunate Germans and Hungarians. And of course the beautiful nature of rocky forests and nice streams.

This country, far away from us, lays deep in the east of Europe, bordering countries like Serbia and Ukraine. Years ago I learned the differences between the first, second and third world. Romania was part of the second. This means, it’s not a very poor country, but definitely they are not a rich country. When we are travelling trough the Romania of today, I see that this definition is not very suited anymore. In Bucharest a lot of people are living like the middle classes of western Europe. Nice house, nice car, on holiday in summertime and wintertime, studying children and some time left for recreation. But next to that, a lot of people work in the industries and live in the cheap communistic style appartments. And on the bottom of society you can find the traditional farmers, who still work with a horse, and the gypsies, I saw some of them still live in slums or vans.

Does this mean only members of the metropolitan society are developing themselves in the Romania of today? Maybe. Fact is that the society has changed quickly the last 20 years. After the fall of the communism and the fall of dictator Ceaucescu, this metropolitan society changed towards the standards we life in in Western Europe. Are these people then also the people who benefits from the membership of the European Union? Maybe. They are the ones that start commercial activities in Romania. For example to attract tourists to come to the nature parks. Traditional farmers then just get some money to go on how they farmed always before. This is not a real structural benefit for them. Next to that, gipsies travel beyond the Romanian borders to western Europe like Spain, France and Italy to work on the fields. And some politicians here are not happy with them, probably.

In the Netherlands we had the discussion about the power of the European Union. How far will they go in replacing the national governments? To much power for the EU gives us citizens less rights it seems.

Next to that, in Romania they seems to be very happy of being one of the young members of the European Union. Happy of being released of the communistic dictator, they now are happy of being member of this institution of policy bringers.

With this, I ask myself, does this fit in the Romanian mentality? After the communistic times, they developed themselves as an anti governmental state. In this sense, ‘Get off my property!’ is maybe more typical for Romania then for the United States. And we experienced it.

For me this anti governmental mentality was the most shocking, but especially the most interesting part of Romania. It was shown the first time during our experience at the old industrial site, where a gang armed with sticks wanted to protect this area against us. Later on during our trip several times I was confronted with this anti governmental mentality. For example several cars who used a parking strip along the road, not to park them between the lines, but diagonal what the back on the street and the front blocking the sidewalk.

On the other hand, I got the feeling that the government itself was playing a game with itself. Or are they just a result of bad knowledge of planning, or maybe of corruption? A beautiful example is a zebra crossing ending in a planting strip along the street. Or the narrow bicycle lines meandering on the broad sidewalks, sometimes interrupted by an element like a bus stop. As a result, cyclists ignore these lines, it just doesn’t function. Why they didn’t just draw a bike on every street corner to show bikes are welcome on these sidewalks?

The park we visited is another nice example. The design comes from the late nineteenth century, probably there were some Hungarians, Germans or Austrians involved with it. I think the first ideas were good ideas for a nice park. Now the park is used with pleasure by the citizens of Bucharest, but the park is just not optimal. Nice lanes steer your view to big coloured garbage cans, and the big open field near the lake is closed from the lake by willows. Every landscape architect can see this was not the meaning. But what is the problem here? It couldn’t be the money, it is to easy to solve. Or is it the lack of landscape architectural knowledge? There are a lot of students who can contact the municipality about it. Or is it maybe the anti governmental mentality of the citizens that do not permit the municipality to change the park?

If it is the last case, why the hell did the Romanian citizens ever agreed to membership of the European Union? Do they just want to do their usual things in freedom? No probably not. They want European control over them.

Next to the anti governmental mentality, corruption is still a problem in Romania, how big, I don’t know, but it is there. Corruption, commercialism and the anti governmental mentality, they are strong in Romania, this ís Romania. If these 3 characteristics form also the reason to be a part of the European Union, then the only reason is a financial reason…