Romania’s place in the Austro-Hungarian Empire ended in 1919, as did the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself with the Treaty of Versailles following WWI, but today the visitor becomes immersed in the color and sensibility of fin de siècle Europe as fiddle and accordion play haunting Gypsy tunes in the decorative 19th century dining hall of the Hotel Agape, in central Cluj-Napoca, a prosperous university city of 350,000 with one of the best medical schools in Europe.
In June 2014, my wife and I traveled to Transylvania, northern Romania, with a group of international folk dancers. Driving into the city from the airport, we joked about the “The People’s Republic of Ugly” as we passed block after block of grim and decaying Soviet-style apartment buildings, still occupied.
In the old part of the city, the mostly old city, the landscape is dominated by 19th century buildings much like those in Prague or Paris, if you can visualize Paris in the middle of the 19th century, and not as the gleaming jewel it is today.
The city center. Public squares, large and small, surrounded by cafes, hummed with relaxing students, couples, and families. One of the largest, St. Michael’s Square, close to the Agape, is dominated by the monumental equestrian statue of Matthias Corvinus, born in Cluj and King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458-1490, and by the Gothic style Roman Catholic Church of St. Michael, begun in 1442. At night, folk ensembles in elaborate ethnic costumes, accompanied by folk musicians, entertain crowds with traditional Romanian songs. On weekends, the square is ringed with vendors selling everything from fresh flavorful produce to native crafts, and lots of “relics” featuring the image of Vlad the Impaler – Count Dracula.
A stroll through the city reveals an infrastructure little changed from WWII and left to further decay by forty years of Communism. Electrical wiring is strung outside buildings in crude bundles, and much of it appears to have been jerry-rigged. Many streets and sidewalks are in disrepair. Plaster on many buildings is peeling or has fallen out in chunks. Crude graffiti is ubiquitous. Yet, for a romantic sensibility, an old-world charm pervades the city which lies sheltered in a picturesque narrow valley bordered by farmlands instead of urban sprawl.
Lodging. All but the newest hotels are from an earlier era. Ours, The Agape, off St. Michael’s Square, was excellent – four stars, by Romanian standards. Online reviews of the hotel are mixed. The most accurate one is a rebuttal to a disenchanted woman from Los Angeles, California, naturally. “Remember, you are in Eastern Europe.” I would add, “not St. Tropez.” The Agape is clean and the staff friendly and efficient. The elevator to all five floors was small and worked, albeit slowly. But who’s going anywhere in a hurry? The rooms and the balconies, brightly adorned by potted flowers, surround an unroofed central courtyard which looks down on a glass atrium.
The walls and ceilings of the spacious main dining room are painted in a vivid style reminiscent of the embroidery found on ethnic costumes. As part of our tour perks, gifted musicians played hot Gypsy tunes nightly, a heady brew of Klezmer and the hot jazz of Django Reinhardt and Stefan Grappelli. Also “heady” were the copious amounts of homemade wines served with dinner and lunch, and shots of Tuica, a bright-hot clear liquid like Slivovitz, also homemade. The food was traditional, mostly Hungarian fare. Heavy on red meat, but fish and chicken were available, as well as mamaliga, made from semolina like Italian polenta, but tasting like cheese grits.
Dietary considerations. Vegetarians and the “gluten free” will have a difficult time. “So, what is ‘vegetarian’ and ‘gluten free,’ the waiters asked, but when told they readily accommodated by going to the kitchen and quickly returning with non-breaded zucchini and fish.
Legacy of the Holocaust. The atmosphere in the city and the hotel inspired grim jokes about feeling as though we were in Romania just before the war. “Which war?” someone quipped. It could as easily have been WWI as WWII. We were tempted to look around for clandestine operatives from the Austro-Hungarian Empire -- or the Third Reich.
The latter was not a joking matter. An informed traveler cannot escape the fact that Romania was one of the most virulent anti-Semitic arenas of the Holocaust. In a garden a block off St. Michael’s Square is a memorial dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Cluj and the surrounding countryside. The memorial seems small and inconspicuous for a testament about such horrific events, but most shocking was the date on its base attesting to the fact that was erected there only one month before our visit.
A long-abandoned and decaying Synagogue sits nearby at the edge of the river Caffe. It was used as an assembly point for transported Jews who were not murdered outright by anti-Semitic thugs. A large wall with a locked gate surrounds the Synagogue. Next to the gate, an old couple sat in a dilapidated garden. Realizing the reason for our interest, they opened the gate allowing us to take a somber walk amid the shambles and weeds inside the wall. No Star of David or any sign that Jewish life existed here. And no memorial or sign indicating the infamy of the place.
The countryside of Transylvania is idyllic, a mixture of dense forests and agricultural fields, ringed by the Carpathian Mountains and the Transylvanian Alps, and dotted with farming towns and villages inhabited mostly by ethnic Hungarians and Saxons. (Before the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, much of Transylvania was part of Hungary.) Traveling with an affinity group, in our case one comprised of dancers and musicians eager to learn local music and perform ethnic dances, provides an entrée into the cultural life of people whose lives are still governed by crops and seasons.
The people of Transylvania manifest a palpable pride and independence in their appearance and manners, which inoculated them against the Communist pressures that were brought to bear during the Soviet era. They are intensely proud of their cultural heritage, and each of the three villages we visited had a hall devoted to the local music, singing, dance and crafts.
Rupea. A partially restored fortress sits in splendor on a hill on the edge of the farming town of Rupea. The mayor and the local performance group greeted us wearing elaborately embroidered local costumes. Every village has its own style of traditional dress, though it requires special knowledge to distinguish the differences (or at least a visit to the ethnographic museum in Cluj). In any case, each style of dress is magnificent in its own way. The mayor of Rupea, a handsome man who had spent time in America and spoke excellent English, welcomed us with a speech about the Romanian Revolution of 1989, which ended collectivist agriculture and returned the land to the previous owners. As he spoke, handsome young men and beautiful young women circulated through the crowd offering freshly baked bread, plates of salt for dipping, and swigs of Tuica (clear for the men and cherry for the women) from a plosca, an elaborately painted, hand-carved communal flask.
Next, we waited in the center of town for "the cows to come home" -- literally. About a hundred milk cows, oxen, and cattle, came unled from a nearby pasture into the street, where they separated and went home, each going its own way by habit.
The first evening was spent in town. Dinner, dancing, drinking, and singing went late into the night with locals showing inexhaustible verve and visitors simply exhausted. The second night in Rupea was spent in a covered hall beside a lake. More feasting and dancing, with lots of boot slapping, drinking, toasting to American-Romanian friendship, and singing.
Lodging in Rupea was in a "hostel." We would call it a motel. It had a swimming pool and was spacious enough to accommodate a full-scale wedding. In the morning, we visited Rupea Fortress which has been partially restored, but not so much so that one could not appreciate the scars of past sieges and conquests. A local string quartet performed classical music for hours just inside the entrance. Families, including some with small children, gathered on the nearby grassy rise and listened with rapt attention.
Frata, in the Cluj region, is a small farming village. The main attraction is a diminutive ancient wooden church, common in Transylvania. The local priest explained the various religious themes of the nativist, almost primitive, hand-painted murals covering the walls and ceiling, and then informed us that the Roman and Orthodox Churches recently “merged” into a holy alliance more accommodating to the historical dualism of Roman and Orthodox Catholicism in Romania. Stepping outside, we could see grass being harvested with scythes. The villagers were delighted to have us try our hand at mowing. On the long walk back to the village center, we pass small farmhouses with chickens and pigs and flower gardens and receive friendly greetings at every turn.
Evening and another banquet, music and dancing in our honor. And more tuica and homemade wine. Several Gypsy families live in Frata. This is not typical in Romania where the Gypsy population remains an underclass and generally lives apart. Here, they seemed to be at ease, enjoying the banquet and performing for us along with the other dancers, much to everyone's delight. The music was by the Soporul de Campie Band, featuring the famous Romanian violinist Ciurcui Alexandru, aka Sandorica.
Marisel. The road from the Transylvanian plains to Marisel winds up through mountain meadows in the Apsueni mountains reminiscent of the landscape in “The Sound of Music.” Wooden houses sprinkle the slopes. Although it is summer, it is cool here and smoke from wood fires rises from chimneys. Transport from the village center to the festival hall is by horse drawn carts with rubber wheels. As we gather in a meadow adjacent to the dining hall, set on another slope, women in ethnic costume blow on huge alpine horns. What are these horns used for? Our tour guide, a native Romanian, joked: They are sending a message: “Come now. My husband is not home.”
While our dinner cooked in a huge cast iron pot on a tripod over an open fire, we perused a selection of local craft items, drank the tuica that our hosts pressed on us, and snacked on tempting local cheeses. If you are on a diet, Romania might not be right for you. Our superb dinner was followed by lively dancing with the villagers around a huge bonfire in the meadow.
Other attractions: Sambata de Jos Stud Farm. Horses are bred and trained here for the famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Magnificent beasts, well-advanced in their training, perform to the music of Johann Strauss on an open parade ground. After the performance, we toured the numerous barns which house in separate stalls the best breeding horses and we visited the corral where the babies came up to the fence, hoping to be petted.
Brancoveanu Monastery. The nearby Brancoveanu Monastery is a marvelous white Medieval complex, rebuilt in the 17th century. Approaching the monastery on a long tree-lined path, one faces a stunning view of alpine mountains and meadows. Inside the gates, hand-painted murals and frescoes, mostly in blue hues, adorn the exterior walls and interiors of the many buildings. Words cannot convey the beauty and power of the religious themes of the work. Nor can photographs capture the scale and scope of the place. The monastery deserves a full day.
Bran Castle. “Dracula’s Castle,” the model for Bram Stoker’s famous story, lies in the region of Brasov in the Transylvanian Alps. This magnificent fortress, set high on a steep rocky hill, was the home of the beloved Queen Marie of Romania, who reigned in the early 20th century. The real Count Dracula (Vlad Țepeș, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, 1431–1476/77), posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler, never lived in the castle, and never conquered it. The hike from the base to the castle is steep and requires strong legs, but efforts have been made to accommodate the disabled.
Salina Turda Salt Mine. Who wants to visit a salt mine? We were dubious, but it was spectacular! Mining here began around 1200 A.D. and operated until recently. The scale is comparable to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, but the lowest chamber, accessible by treacherous, slippery footpaths or by a tiny elevator, rivals the largest in Carlsbad Caverns. The massive chamber is lit by a dazzling display of fluorescent lights arranged to create an unearthly aura, and it houses a playground, complete with miniature golf, boat rides, and a Ferris wheel. While amusing for visitors, the area was designed for asthmatic children who are treated therapeutically in the clean, salty atmosphere of the mine. As a special treat, our tour guides arranged for a concert by a string quartet which played Brahms’ quartets in the underground amphitheater.
Ethnograpic museums. These vary in size and content, from displays of art, pottery, textiles, and ethnic costumes to crafts and farm tools, and every city and sizeable town seems to have one, often doubling as performance and social centers. The museums often feature rare, striking collections of photographs of early village life.
On the outskirts of Cluj, the Romulus Vuia National Ethnographic Park sits amid acres of undisturbed meadowland, and features original and authentically reconstructed buildings – homes, barns, and an ancient chapel, transporting you to a time when life was solely agrarian.
The population in the cities is a mixed bag. Many embrace the new freedoms, especially the freedom to travel abroad. Many of the talented performance groups we met can now travel outside Romania and welcome the change. Others, those less able to adapt to the new, mostly market economy, miss the “old days,” when they were guaranteed work, even menial work, and were afforded the “luxury” of two weeks’ vacation at a Soviet resort on the Black Sea. These are the older, shabbily dressed people with the worn grocery bags and sad faces.
Money and Language. Romanian is a Romance, Latin-based language, a hybrid of Italian and an indigenous Daco language. It’s tricky, but a few basic words and phrases can be learned with little effort, and its use by tourists is much appreciated. The educated and most people in commerce speak English and German. Some of the older folks probably speak Russian as well.
Although Romania is a member of the European Union where the Euro predominates, Romania adheres to the Romanian Lei. The exchange rate was about three Lei to the US dollar, a good travel value. Credit cards are accepted, and ATMs are common.
The cities are wired for Wi-Fi, virtually everywhere, more so than in the US. Not so in the countryside, but there is access in the larger towns.
Telephone service by cell phone is easy, even in the countryside, provided you left home with an application or service enhancement that permits international calls.
Romania today, 2022. Romania is still emerging from the horrors of WWII and from forty years of communism under Soviet puppet dictators. In 1989, the last of these, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, were summarily executed against a wall in Bucharest. Thus began the transformation of Romania, now a part of the European Union, into a fledgling democracy, a transformation that is a work in progress and far from being realized. And today, Romania, a member of the European Union and a member of NATO, is a host to refugees from Russia’s war on Ukraine. Today is probably not a good time to visit Romania unless one wants to experience the chaos caused by war, or perhaps to help the refugees.
Background reading: Balkan Ghosts, A Journey Through History, by Richard D. Kaplan, Picador, St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Interesting links.
http://www.romaniatourism.com/
http://www.romaniatourism.com/practical-information.html
http://www.tripadvisor.ca/Tourism-g294457-Romania-Vacations.html
http://wikitravel.org/en/Romania
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