Day 158 - The President's Coming To Town

Romania played an interesting role in the international arena during the time I lived there. It was part of the Warsaw Pact, placing it firmly in the red camp of nations, but President Ceauceșcu wasn't above playing his friends off against one another. In contrast to the Soviet Motherland which emphasized comradeship, commonality, the sameness of everyone, Ceauceșcu encouraged regional diversity among Romanians. There weren't just Romanians, there were Oltenians, Transilvanians, Muntenians, Walachians, Dobrogeans, Bucovinans, Moldovans, Maramureșean, Banațean, the regional groupings of Romanians with their distinctive traditional folk music, folk costumes, and village building styles, all of which could be seen in the Village Museum in Bucharest. Where in Moldova 15 years later, we saw all people in villages and walking along the highways all dressed the same, in Romania, the people outside the cities dressed in traditional clothing of the type that had been worn since Vlad Ţepeș resisted both the Turks and the Hungarians who traded opportunities to rule the geographic area that is now Romania. In Moldova those who had the means to ride on the highways were in cars, trucks, or on tractors while in Romania many still made their way between villages in wagons piled high with straw and pulled by horses or cattle.

Ceauceșcu was pleased to see his people differentiated from all his neighbors.

Politically, Ceauceșcu also sought opportunities to thumb his nose at his neighbors. He liked to be seen as making his own way in the world, not kowtowing to the Soviet Union or other larger nations. One example was his hosting, secretly, talks involving President Anwar Sadat of Egypt that led to Sadat's visit to Israel in late 1977. Those talks occurred in Bucharest early in my time in Romania, on a weekend when I traveled Thursday evening by train from Iasi to Bucharest.

Before I left Iași, my Fulbright researcher friend, Paul, asked how I had managed to get a ticket for that evening. He had gone that morning to buy a ticket, but he was told no one from the university was being allowed to travel that weekend. I must have purchased my ticket several days before, so I went to the train station Thursday evening and had no trouble getting a seat.

When I arrived in Bucharest that Friday morning, many of my friends expressed surprise that I had been able to get on the train. At the university in Bucharest, students weren't allowed to leave their dormitory buildings. No one knew why this was so, but there were, as was always the case in Romania, rumors. That weekend, my life went by quite normally. Most of my friends in Bucharest were connected to the embassy or the American School, and there were no restrictions placed on their movements. There may have been a few more Romanian policemen around the embassy, and they may have been a little more aggressive in demanding to see identification of people passing it on the street. But nothing really interfered.

When I returned to Iași, I learned that others had not been so lucky. In addition to my friend Paul not being able to buy a ticket on Thursday, the students in Iasi were also confined to their dormitories for the weekend. And we heard that one of the American Fulbright lecturers in Cluj-Napoca who wasn't able to get a plane or train ticket decided to drive to Bucharest for the weekend, but she was turned back on the highway. Still we had no knowledge of why.

Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat, www.aljazeera.com

When President Sadat finally did travel to Israel for that historic visit in November of 1977, the reason for the clamp down on the students in the country, especially the foreign students, was clear. Romania was one of the only countries in the world to have official representatives of both Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in their capital city. Iran was another. There were large numbers of Arab students in Romania in all university cities. And there were Israeli students, including Israeli Arabs. Given the overwhelmingly negative reaction among the Arab world to President Sadat's visit to Israel, it was clear there were valid security concerns about what would happen in Romania if word got out about President Sadat's presence in Romania and the purpose for his visit.

Four years later, President Sadak was assassinated by one of his people. Eight years later again, Ceauceșcu met a similar fate, though without the same level of surprise.

Day 137 - Bucharest

When I arrived in Bucharest, the US Embassy had arranged for me to stay in a modest hotel near the embassy. The hotel had a restaurant next door that often was entirely reseved for tour groups from the Soviet Union. I was never sure when I could have a meal there. When it was possible, breakfast was the easiest meal because it was continental style so I didn't have to order anything; the waiter just brought me food.

One evening, when I was able to have dinner there, alone, a young man at a neighboring table, Vlad*,  offered to help me understand the menu items. I hadn't picked up enough Romanian to figure out everything yet, so I needed help. He sat down to join me. I hadn't figured out the profile of a gigolo yet, so I wasn't suspicious; and while I wasn't looking for company, the offer of help was appealing.

After dinner, he asked if I was interested in seeing the old section of the city. There had been an earthquake in Bucharest the March before, so much of the city had been destroyed, including part of the old city, making it an opportunity to see what was still there as well as some of the damage, something I thought worth seeing. Before we took off, he asked if I had any cigarettes. I hadn't learned yet about the importance of American cigarettes, especially Marlboro 100s. All I had was a carton of Eve cigarettes that I bought in New York before getting on the plane. I had picked up the bad habit of smoking in Iran because of the taarof politeness system there. Eve cigarettes were 100 milligram in length, but had a distinctively feminie design around the filter. Vlad never hesitated. He accepted the pack I offered.

image of the People's Palace, Ceaucescu's white palace,
by hchalkley, via Flickr

We walked to the old city and wandered around what I understood to be an area attractive to tourists with lots of shops selling craft items, artwork, and Romanian folk music. What I didn't realize was that the area I toured that evening would be flattened in the near future by Nicolae Ceaucescu to make room for his mostrosity of a monument to himself, the white palace.

Vlad asked me how much I was going to earn teaching at the university in Iasi. I knew that the amount I would receive from the university, only part of my compensation, equated to less than $400 per month, so I thought it would be safe to tell him. When I did, he nearly fell out of his chair. I learned later that the amount I would receive from the university, which was less than one fourth of what I received overall, was ten times what my Romanian colleagues would receive each month. That made it clearer why my Romanian violin teacher in Tehran was so shocked at how little his salary in Iran was. What had sounded to him like a small fortune in Romania, when in put into an Iranian context, wasn't enough for him to rent an apartment without sharing it with roommates. And he wasn't the kind of guy who shared anything willingly. His offer to provide private violin lessons was necessary for him to make ends meet.

One of the first purchases I made was a Romanian/English dictionary. My Teach-Yourself-Romanian book from Karl was only good enough for me to construct sentences I wanted to speak, not good enough for me to understand the answers. I found a bookstore and walked up to the counter to ask if they had a Romanian/English dictionary, in the best Romanian I could muster. Books weren't out on shelves for people to look through, they were all behind the counter. My Romanian must have been pretty good because the guy behind the counter then asked me a question in Romanian that I couldn't understand. Eventually he figured that out and handed me a dictionary which I purchased.

image of Intercontinental Hotel in
Bucharest by anaadi+, via Flickr

It was at that point when I realized I wasn't going to be able to pick up English language books for my reading pleasure, a big difference between Bucharest and Tehran. The next day, I walked to the Intercontinental Hotel for a meal. The Intercon was much closer to the embassy, but it was much more expensive. While I waited for my order to arrive, I finished reading the paper back novel I had brought with me. (Introverts always have a book, magazine, or newspaper with them so we have something to do while we wait, something that also discourages others from thinking they can join us.) My eyes fell on those pages at the back with an order form listing more paper backs from the same publisher. I recognized this solution, I took out my pen, checked off all the novels offered on the form regardless that I knew nothing about them or the authors, pulled out my checkbook and wrote out a check for the total and dropped that order off at the embassy. Those novels arrived in my mailbox at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest a few weeks later - all except The Painted Bird which was delivered to the door of my apartment in the industrial zone of Iasi anonymously,  and just one of many mysteries during my time in Romania.

*a name, not necessarily the right one