The Old Country: A Trip to Romania

By Bradley Weiss

Despite having been fortunate enough to travel a good amount in Western Europe, I nevertheless have often felt like I missed out on the classic experience I grew up seeing portrayed in movies—places that seem so bewilderingly foreign as to induce feelings of “not being in Kansas anymore”, replete with locals in traditional clothing practicing customs relatively unchanged for centuries. For this reason, I have long wanted to visit more of Eastern Europe, particularly those places where the overpowering wave of modernization and westernization have yet to become so firmly entrenched in the post-Cold War fallout.

This past fall just such an opportunity presented itself when one of my good friends began a graduate program in the Romanian city of Cluj, located in the traditional province of Transylvania and the country’s second most populous city.

At first glance, Cluj looked architecturally much like other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, only slightly grittier and less grand. The reason for the semi-dilapidated state for many of the historic buildings was explained by my host friend’s close Romanian friend. Serving as our unofficial tour guide, he explained that despite nearly three decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the ownership of many structures is still in dispute, with descendants of pre-communism owners trying to reassert their rights. The ongoing legal mess has left the buildings in limbo, and consequently deprived of renovation and maintenance.

One of the spots in the city I had read about and was excited to visit was Enigma, a steampunk-themed bar filled with kinetic sculptures. Despite an interior that looked like a Tim Burton fantasy, the overall atmosphere was quite disappointing, particularly the choice of music. Looking at pictures, one might expect something industrial or hardcore in the background. Instead, the sound system was literally pumping out cheesy 80s pop, including “We Are the World.” We did not stay long, choosing rather to scratch our dark aesthetic itch with a nighttime stroll through this Transylvanian city’s historic graveyard. We disappointingly encounter zero stereotypically endemic creatures of the night.

The surrounding countryside would prove to offer much more of that “authentic” Old World experience I was looking for. The next day, I joined a group of international student friends in a rented van and headed out into the more remote regions. As we moved into the rural farming areas, I was excited to see the visible signs of agriculture being practiced in traditional ways, including collections of cornstalks and a distinct style of haystacks, which I recognized from long-ago cultural anthropology classes. It was not just the hay gathered in a way unchanged by modernity, but soon we were also sharing the country roads with carts full of hay pulled by pairs of enormous oxen.

We got an up-close look at one of these oxcarts when we parked the van near our primary destination. An elderly couple, garbed in traditional clothing, was guiding the powerful, lumbering beasts of burden, who were pulling the heavy cart up steep mountainous paths. The farmer shouted instructions in Romania, which is clearly identifiable as a Romance language, but with that peculiar Slavic intonation, the imprint that centuries of linguistic contact have left. After stopping to appreciate this sight, which felt like stepping back in time a century or more, we moved on to the sunken village of Geamăna. All that remains now of the former town is a ruined church steeple which juts from the middle of a strangely, but strikingly, blue-gray-tinged lake. After a huge copper deposit was discovered in the nearby Apuseni Mountains in 1977, the government forced the evacuation of the resident families to create an artificial lake which would serve as a catch-basin for a new copper mine’s contaminated runoff. That salient color is the result of the water’s high levels of cyanide and other toxic chemicals. Despite this, I followed the adventurous crew in crossing the lake on a rickety, ramshackle series of floating barrels supporting a crossing pipeline. On the other side I was astonished to find a small farmstead, with the distinctive haystacks, a small flock of sheep, and a pumpkin patch, all existing right on the edge of what amounts to a massive chemical spill.

Despite the swift-approaching twilight of late fall, we steered the van towards one more adventurous stop. Our intent was to explore a small, abandoned castle. The edifice sits uninhabited and in disrepair due to the noble family falling on hard times. The exploration was thwarted by a vigilant neighbor who firmly dissuaded us from entering.

During my time in Romania, I finally got to experience a Europe that seemed truly foreign and new to me. It was not only in rrms of retained customs, but in speaking with locals I encountered sentiments that were very different, concerning everything from attitudes towards the local Romani population, to tensions between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians, to a yearning for the “good ol’ days” of communism. All in all, I felt like I was only able to scratch the surface in understanding this amazing country and its fascinating, stalwart people. I am already plotting a return, and maybe this time I will get to see the inside of that castle.