Susan Arts

A paper from the East about the Eastern-bloc

By Susan Arts

The 2011 buitex to Romania started out as an adventure of which I didn’t know what to expect. After reading hardly anything about this country in order to experience this country in my own way, we boarded the airplane to the in my view ex-communistic Romania. What I least expected to see after landing was to find a huge shopping-center, here McDonalds, KFC and almost every other imaginable fast-food concern had its own representative and we were about to have lunch there.

Not exactly knowing what Romania is , I found it hard to look for a typically Romanian souvenir to bring back home. After making a quick round asking the Romanians what they thought is to be the essence of the Romanian culture, it seemed that they didn’t even know themselves. It was certain that I wouldn’t find anything very much Romanian in an enormous western shopping-mall, and those few touristic stands we encountered mostly profited from the popular Dracula merchandize. I personally don’t think that the people of Romania can create an entire identity out of the famous Count Dracula alone. This makes me wonder what Romania really is and if there is a Romanian identity altogether.

Throughout its history Romania has become a mix of many different ethnicities and cultures each with an own identity as well. For instance there are the Romanians, the Romani people also known as the gypsies who are originally from India and are skilled laborers, the Saxons who are originally German. These Saxons founded a lot of villages and cities in Transylvania which are still easy to recognize because of the typically German architecture in which they built their houses. Apart from these communities there is also a Hungarian part of the population. All in all a great variety of different backgrounds and identities. But, besides being Romanian, what do they have in common? They all lived under the rule of Ceausescu, on the countryside as well as in the cities.

During the communistic period there were a lot of collective farms to be found on the countryside, this meant that large-scale agriculture occurred there. After the regime of Ceausescu had fallen this agricultural land was privatized again. Because of this the land fell into the hands of farmers, townsfolk to which it didn’t belong and there were even patches of land of which no one knew whose it was. These patches are often still not used because no one knows who owns the land. Agriculture became a small scale business again and after joining the European union farmers find it hard to keep up in the competition with other countries. Oftentimes there is simply not enough money to buy agricultural tools. This brings a lot of frustration to the farmers as these tools are associated with economic progression.

In the big cities the influence of the communism is highly noticeable as well, the eastern-bloc fashioned flats are hard to ignore. Also in the case of Bucharest the demolition of the city center in order to build the palace to the wishes of Ceaucescu complete with boulevard, fountain and a river moved, now flowing beneath the surface of the city, clearly left its mark.

Even though the communistic form of government ceased to exist in Romania a lot of communistic politicians still kept their power only in the form of a democracy. This caused that almost no improvement was made and contributed to the collapsing economy.

With the rise of the capitalism, came the enormous shopping-malls, the size of which you wouldn’t encounter them in the Netherlands. The image of the city also changed with all the extremely present advertisement, almost every building block has its own giant billboard on its roof. One put there by Coca-Cola the other by Pepsi. Now, in the period in which every imaginable western product is obtainable, a lot of the people of Romania feel dissatisfied. They used to have money, but nothing to buy in the stores. Until this situation spun around, everything for sale but no money to spend it on because of the economic recession. A lot of the Romanian people don’t have money to spend in the giant shopping-malls, this also causes that they don’t feel welcome there.

What I am not trying to imply is that communism is better, only that some people of Romania were happier during their period of communism, there simply wasn’t any luxury. Only the situation now is that the people are shown a life of luxury in which a majority of the population will not be able to live.

So, what is Romania actually? In the way I see it the country harbours many identities originally from different parts of Europe and even Asia of which the most recognizable shared aspect is their communistic history. Apparently the government is acquainted with this and also seeks to benefit from this knowledge (See article).

A strong identity, I think, will make it easier to establish Romania as a touristic country. To me Romania is indeed the ex-communistic country I wrote about at the start of this article. But on the contrary to what I expected it to be, it is also a country with a lot of contrast, a land where big western billboards are put up on the houses in which the people live who can’t afford those products themselves.

I wonder, will the Romanian government make their own sort of  buitex?