I've recently returned from a short visit to Romania (13-24 May 2002) and thought I'd share some of my impressions. It was my first visit to the country, I travelled independently (*not* as a part of any organized tour) and alone with the 'Rough Guide to Romania', 3rd ed., 2001 as my sole (and very trustworthy) companion.

I visited the capital, Bucharest, and then two towns in Transylvania - Sibiu (aka Hermannstadt) and Sighisoara (aka Schaessburg).

Bucharest, with about two million inhabitants, is sometimes referred to as the biggest city between Berlin and Istanbul. Like any large city, it has plenty of museums but it has very little of any great age. Part of the city was rather self-consciously modelled on Paris, with wide grandiose boulevards and in the 1930's even an Arc de Triumf was added. (It's one of the few cities with a square named after Charles de Gaulle), and the main railway station is called the 'Gara de Nord' At its best, this - the more northerly part of the city - has a certain, often decayed grandeur, with some charming houses dating from c. 1890ish-1940, many in a rather eclectic French style.

Much of the city, especially around the Piata (pronounced like Italian 'piazza') Unirii, is perhaps best described as a monument to Stalinism. The proportions are *not* geared to human beings at all, everything in this part of the city is simply too big, gigantic and showy - and to cap it all, without the necessary resources even to keep things tidy and superfically in order. There's weak, thin, untended grass on much of the Piata Unirii - its uncared for state also in its way a monument to a failed experiment.

As I gradually explored further, I succeeded in finding some older houses, mainly tucked away in side-streets connecting the main North-South boulevards. Like so much else in this now desperately poor country, most of these eclectic 'belle époque' mansions are neglected, some even decayed, but not without charm. Then on the Calea Victoriei there's the former royal palace, a pleasant, sprawling, neo-classical building that was rebuilt in the 1920's following a fire. Almost opposite stands the building from which Ceausescu delivered his last public speech on 21 December 1989 and betrayed to the television cameras his utter bewilderment when he discovered that the crowd was hostile ... Of course the TV screens soon went blank, but the world had seen the look of total non-comprehension on the face of 'Great Dictator'. This pleasantly proportioned building (once the headquarters of the Communist Party) now houses the Romanian Senate, and the two-part square has appropriately been renamed the Piata Revolutiei.

Near my hotel, I gradually discovered some charming eclectic buildings dating from around 1900 (including the hotel itself), and visited the gorgeous Cismigiu Gardens, donated to the city in 1845 by an Ottoman governor of Wallachia.

Btw, in order to create the monumental Piata Unirii and the 'Palace of Parliament' Ceausescu had much of the old, pre-1860 city demolished. A handful of streets with squat, sprawling two-storeyed houses with wrought iron balconies (with, it seemed to me, just the occasional hint of New Orleans, though on a smaller scale) and other intriguing details, do however remain, but alas it covers only a very small area.

Bucharest is sometimes described as the most boring capital in Europe. There's something in this, but if one looks closely and carefully there is more of interest than at first meets the eye.

Some aspects of Romania are already apparent in the capital. Yes, in some ways it's a vibrant city with a growing cafe and restaurant life, but I was also struck by the very large number of beggars - mainly children under the age of 10, and old people. Yes, in the centre there are shops, but most of them seem to sell clothes, including a few very upmarket Italian fashion shops. Then no end of travel agents, bureaux de change and shops selling cellphones. Near the hotel there were also some little 'neighbourhood' shops selling soft drinks, mineral water (I'd been strongly advised *not* to drink tap water *s*), cigarettes, tissues, some food and so forth, but again and again I was struck by the overall *lack* of shops and, within many of the shops, by the lack of choice - all symptoms of poverty, I believe. (There just isn't the demand).

Btw, on the whole prices, especially for food, transport (and for my 'budget' hotel room at $16 a night for bed and a generous breakfast) are absurdly low by comparison with Western Europe.
So right in the heart of the capital I was able to get a single-course meal of Wiener Schnitzel or beefsteak and French fries plus mineral water and coffee *in a restaurant with musicians playing* (NOT some fast food outlet) for about $5 (including tip).

Imagine how I felt when I was later told that for the vast majority of Romanians eating out even at these prices is a great luxury that they can only afford perhaps once of twice a year!

After three nights in Bucharest, I set off by train - yes from the Gara de Nord - for Sibiu in Transylvania. The train, an express, pulled away punctually, but with many of the doors open. No-one seemed to care.

(To be continued)

[ May 30, 2002, 07:05 PM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

the best travelogue I have read..in some time- you ought to be recruited by "Let's Go" travel books and then their pages might sound a bit more charming....

Thanks, Prof

The train made its way nothwestwards across the fertile Wallachian Plain towards Brasov. I tried to make some sense of the agriculture. The Romanian government and parliament is proud of having largely 'decollectivized' the land: in other words, the land has been returned to its previous owners and/or their heirs. However, I was struck by the enormous size of most of the fields. As in some many former Soviet Bloc countries there are disputes about who actually is entitled to what land and, as can easily be imagined, it's quite possible for even one major dispute in a village to cause serious problems for all the farmers and smallholders.

There was a striking absence of machinery on the land, which was farmed (as I passed in the train) by above all by *people*, usually working in groups of 2-6. I noticed, too, a large number of horse-drawn vehicles and a few horses working in the fields.

After a while we reached Ploiesti, the centre of the Romanian oilfields, which were of such immense strategic significance in WW1 and even more in WW2, when they supplied about half the oil needed by the Axis and its allies (in Europe). In February 1939, Romania was forced by the Nazis to undertake to sell nearly all its oil to Germany ...

At last the train began the long, steep ascent to the pass south of Brasov inthe Transylvanian Alps (part of the Carthpathians), a climb of about 3,300 feet+

Here I shall digress to say a little about Transylvania. Unlike the rest of Romania it was part of Hungary from about 1100 till the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. When the central area of Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Turks after the Battle of Mohacs (1526) Hungary was in effect split into three parts: a western fringe under Habsburg rule, the central area under Ottoman rule and Translyvania, which retained a very high degree of automony till it became part of Habsburg domains after 1686. In its heyday, it was a bastion of religious toleration - especially of Protestant sects, and it's said that Unitarianism (the group that denies the Trinity) was first founded in Cluj-Napoca, aka Klausenburg. Toleration extended to Roman Catholics but *not* to Orthodoxy, with the result that the Wallachians (Romanians in the narrower sense) were subject to discrimination.

Culturally and ethnically, Translyvania was, at least until the 1980's, very mixed. In addition to the Wallachians and Moldavians, the was a large Hungarian minority and a substantial German minority, too, and as elsewhere in Romania, also a sizeable Gypsy population. Part of the German population (nicknamed 'Saxons') had started to settle there in the 12th centry, invited by the King of Hungary to form fotified settlements, which at that stage were intended to protect the country from the powerful Kingdom of Bulgaria. Long after Bulgaria had ceased to pose a threat, the German fortified towns played an important role in defending Translyvania against the Ottoman Turks.

Already in 1970's and 1980's Ceausescu had sold exit visa to individual Germans and their families and to the German government, too. After his fall the ethnic Germans were free to leave - which most did, and a community that once numbered about 650,000 is now reduced to a small remnant of about 25,000-30,000 centred on Sibiu, aka as Hermannstadt. Outside the Hermannstadt area there is something strange and almost unreal about the German 'presence': there are plenty of architectural (and other) reminders of the Germans, but very few Germans are left in the region - after eight centuries of settlement.

(To be continued)

[ May 31, 2002, 08:35 AM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

I agree with Prof...I am now desirous of going to Romania and some of the other socialist nations in Eastern Europe. Please continue to post interesting info on Romania...we're all ears.

Question...do people own their own land now or is the land still owned offically by the state? In China, this is the case. People are now under a Household Responsibility System, and farm their own parcels of land, but the land is still offically owned by the state.

Keep up the lovely work, o Bloomsby!

Bloomsby's back and the History and Geography section is now officially back in business!. I agree, this is great. Everything I've very read about Romania (which isn't much) is extremely depressing, but what Bloomsby is giving us is a more measured overview. He's also got a new quiz out on Romania that's really helpful - check it out!

Jazz and Dobrov, many thanks for your kind comments. As for your question, Jazz, the land is being returned to individuals and families. That's become pretty standard practice in the former Soviet Bloc countries. It's often a complicated and messy business, as you can imagine - all the more so if there is any uncertainty as to exactly who is the rightful heir to exactly what parcel(s) of land. In 1996 the Romanian parliament banned foreign citizens from acquiring land in Romania, but the Hungarian grandee, Count Karoly, has recently requested the return of his family estates in NW Transylvania ... If this goes to the European Court of Human Rights my guess is that the ban on foreigners acquiring (or re-aquiring) land in Romania would be ruled invalid.

On one level of course, there's an element of farce about all this. What on earth would happen if the courts were to entertain an infinite regress, for example?? I can't imagine that any of the grandees, Romanian or otherwise, in any sense 'earned' by land by working on it ... Presumably at some stage, all land was seized by someone ... But that's a very hot potato!

[ May 31, 2002, 03:27 PM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

As the train made its way up the steep climb to Brasov (aka Kronstadt), it became increasingly clear to me why the two most southerly (and apparently exposed) of the great fortified cities built by the 'Saxons' managed to withstand so many sieges from Ottoman and other armies: both stand at the northern end of long, high gorges - and there's no obvious way of avoiding these for anyone attacking from the south.

At last the train reached Brasov, where there was a long stop. People came on to the train trying (for the most part unsuccessfully) to sell the passengers all sorts of things - newspapers, magazines, chocolate, pocket calculators and so on. What a depressing way to try to make a living!

The station at Brasov is in the post-WW2 suburbs -dreary concrete appartment blocks, some partly prefabricated, many neglected and now in a poor condition.

The train proceeeded to Sibiu/Hermannstadt on what seemed to be a kind of plateau. It's sometimes said that much of Transylvania has, historically been a kind of haven, protected by the Carpathians. After the mountain gorges and forests, again fairly flat land, much of it pasture, sometimes with mountains in the distance. At length, we reached Sibiu. This city, too, was endowed by the Communists with industry and the modern suburbs look exactly like those on the outskirts of Brasov/Kronstadt.

I got a taxi to a very basic little boarding house right in the town centre. Once clear of the
station, we passed through an older, 19th century suburb with long, squat, sprawling houses with neo-classical facades, reminiscent of Hungary. Then, suddenly we turned into a narrow cobbled street, and there was the tiny 'pension'. As I'd half guessed the landlady turned out to be an ethnic German ... so - no communication problems *s*.

Having checked in I went a to the end of the street, climbed the steps leading to the iron bridge nicknamed the 'Liars' Bridge' and immediately found myself standing on the Piata Mica. Literally, this means 'Small Square' (or 'Small Marketplace') but it is vast. For some reason I'd expected medieaval buildings, but nearly all the facades are ornate Central European 'baroque' or rococco. Of course, the facades often hide buildings that are much older.
On the square was a bookshop. I went inside to buy some postcards and suddenly noticed that they
had several shelves of Penguin books and the 'Rough Guide to Romania'. So funny! Then I remembered that the Guide actually lists this particular shop ...

Using a tower gateway I walked slowly to the Piata Mare or Great Square. As the name suggests, this is enormous. I was a little puzzled by the sheer size of many of the houses. The biggest house on the Piata Mare has eleven(!) bays - that is eleven windows facing the street on what in Amercia and Russia is called the 2nd floor (1st floor in most of Europe). Moveover, the closer inspection revealed that most of the houses open on to courtyards that stretch back a long way from the square (or street).

The superificial impression is overwhelmingly German - or to be more precise, Franconian. If one forgets that one's in Transylvania, forgets the poverty of Romania, one might as well be in Northern Bavaria ...

The centre of Sibiu has a third square, the Piata Huet. Most of this is taken up by a vast Lutheran Church and the a parish house and parsonage dating originally from 1502. On the other side is a 'Gymnasium', named after an 18th century governor of Transylvania, Samuel von Brukenthal, who also founded a public art gallery here. (More about this later).

I was pleasantly surprised to see notices all round the Huet-Platz announcing a 'Deutsches Treffen' (German Meeting or 'Get-Together') on the square that weekend.

As I continued exploring the town I discovered that even after the exodus of 90% of the ethnic Germans there are five direct flights a week (in both directions) (Bucharest-)Sibiu-Munich. At first it may seem odd that a in a very poor Soviet Bloc country there seems to be such a zest for travel to Western Europe, but of course under the Communists that was almost the ultimate in 'forbidden fruit', so it's actually quite understandable that many people go to a lot of trouble and even some hardship to save up for the occasional trip to the West. Of course, there's probably just as much or more travel in the opposite direction, with Germans revisting Sibiu and other parts of Transylvania.

The next morning I found pupils from the Brukenthal-Gymnasium preparing for the 'deutsches Treffen' that evening. I chatted to some of them and was intrigued to hear that all subjects except Romanian are taught in German, that they those who complete their studies successfully get the 'Abitur' (that is the German School-Leaving Certificate) and that if they have the money to do so they can study in Germany or Austria.

(To be continued)

[ May 31, 2002, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

This is interesting. Do you know how long the German gymnazium has been in existence? In the mid 1970s I worked with a lot of ethnic Hungarians from Romania. At that time they were very active in gathering support for the plight of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania. There were territorial overtones to their argument, as most of Transylvania was traditionally part of the Hungarian domains, but they were more concerned with more concrete problems with the Romanian government. In particular, this had to do with a law that stated that all schooling for Hungarians had to be 100% Romanian. They saw this, quite rightly, as an attempt to destroy the cultural heart of their community. There is a certain irony when one looks at this problem from an historical perspective (as usual), for the Hungarian government during the Austro-Hungarian regime, was responsible for very aggressive 'Hungarianization' amongst linguistically different groups in territories under their control - principally in Slovakia.

Hi, Dobrov The German Gymnasium in Sibiu was *revived* after the fall of Ceausescu. Under the latter, Romanian was virtually the sole language of instruction in schools, and I know that the Hungarian minority wasn't treated well by the Ceausescu régime ... It seems that the Germans were in some ways treated slightly better, or at least Ceausescu tried to avoid annoying the West German government, as those exit visas were a seen, quite cynically as a useful source of 'hard' currency. Btw, the Hungarian government has generally made a point of standing up very vigorously for the Magyar minority in Romania.

I'm aware of the irony, and I know that at their most extreme, the Hungarian nationalists in the Habsburg Monarchy even harrassed the German-speaking minority in Transylvania for a while!

The three great pizzas of Sibiu are on higher ground than most of the rest of the old town. One of the most charming features of the town is the various brick and stone stairways leading from the squares down to the lower parts of the old town. Some of these seem to date from the 19th century but at least one, that starting just behind the Piata Huet, dates from the Middle Ages. The stairs wend their way between buildings and the whole is held firmly in place by Gothic arches at various points on the stairway. The overall effect is that of a man-made, medieval canyon.

There's a second, rather similar stairway leading down from the Piata Mica, but it's shorter, straigher and may be more recent. I noticed the date 1868 inscribed on Gothic arches, and nobody seemed to be able to give me any further information about the date. Did the whole stairway date from 1868, or were the arches added or restored then? No-one seemed to know ... At the bottom of this stairway is a maze of of narrow, cobbled streets and small houses. It's very picturesque and simply *gorgeous*.

A little further down are remants of the old fortications. On this side of the town a quite long section of the old walls together with parts of the various gates are still standing. However, only one tower is really well preserved (or, more likely, restored).

The lack of readily available, reliable information on some of the sights may have something to with the departure of so many of the ethnic Germans, of course. Sibiu has a population of 188,000 and Romania's entire German population amounts, at most, to 30,000. In other words, much of the population of Sibiu has arrived relatively recently from other parts of country and may have difficulty identifying with the town's architectural heritage. (As one German put it - somewhat unfortunately - 'the place has been *balkanized*'). *s*

Later that day I visited the Brukenthal-Museum. The material issued by the town is very proud of this museum, which is apparently one of oldest public art galleries in Europe, having first opened in 1817. Alas, some of the best paintings were stolen a few years ago and have not yet been recovered. Despite that, it is strong on work by Transylvanian painters. As I stolled round I gradually became away of music blaring from one of the rooms. No, it wasn't 'piped music' but two utterly bored members of the staff who brought a casette recorder (and portable radio) in to work with them and were merrily playing music in ar art gallery. Admittedly, in Western Europe (and further afield too) people may have exaggerated notions about the 'sanctity' of art, but - oh dear!

In the evening I went to the 'Deutsches Treffen', held on the Piata Huet, just by the vast Lutheran church. German pop music and Romanian beer. (The latter unbelievably cheap at about 30 cents for half a litre, which is just under a pint). The teenagers and other young people, naturally enough, chatted among themselves, but I was able to talk to a few visting Germans from Germany. Everyone agreed that Sibiu seems surprisingly well preserved. Obviously, some of the facades need replastering and repainting, and some buildings will soon need re-roofing, but none of the buidlings is even remotely close to collapsing - unlike in some cities in former East Germany, for example, Stralsund (!), where many houses in the historic center have been allowed to fall down altogether, littering the old city center with depressing empty sites.

The Germans I spoke to included the parents of a young teacher who is currently spending a year teaching at the Brukenthal-Gymnasium on a voluntary basis. On arrival he'd been somewhat taken aback by the heavy reliance on traditional teaching methods - a lot of learning by heart and drilling, too. People were a bit surprised when I said that in some subjects, such as languages, such methods are vastly sounder than the methods used in many Western countries.

The next day I continued my travels. I had a time-consuming rail journey by a slow train that stopped at every 'halta'. Again, doors open while the train was in motion ... I had to change at Copsa (pr. Copsha) Mica. The first thing that strikes one there is a vast, totally black, derelict factory the other side of the railway tracks. Apparently it used to make black dye for fabrics and for decades also blackened and polluted the town and surrounding countryside. There are in fact all kinds of mainly small pockets of active and abandoned industrial plant in Transylvania, where such things seem rather out of place. That said, I fully understand that the region needs jobs and that it can't be preserved as a vast museum.

In due course I arrived at Sighisoara, aka as Schaessburg - usually written thus, rather than Schäßburg. Before planning my trip I'd only been vaguely aware of this amazing town. It was only when I started the detailed planning that I'd discovered that the town is sometimes nicknamed
'The Pearl of Transylvania' and that it has been formally listed by the World Hertiage Committee of UNESCO. (See web page).

Having checked in at the hotel ($13.60 for a single room with breakfast) I set off to explore.

At Hermannstadt the predominant visual impressions are Baroque and early 19th century neo-classical with some medieval admixture. At Schaessburg the overwhelming impression, at least initially is medieval.

Perched on a massif that rises to a hill-top at one end, the old town still has *nine* of its original fourteen gates/bastions standing, together with about half the old city walls. Not surpringly, the whole city within the walled area is locally referred to as 'die Burg'.

[ June 04, 2002, 11:37 PM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

A question here on the factory. Did you see much evidence of privatization? In CZ factories once dotted the countryside because it was a good way of keeping everyone in their literal place by cutting down on migrant labour. Since '89 things have changed vastly and most of the old workhorses are gone, are teetering, or have been bought out and renovated by foreign concerns. I wonder if some of the same kinds of industrial processes are happening in Romania.

Also, for all you Romania fans out there, I found some really wonderful photos of Sighisoara (yes! I finally learned to spell it!) at
www.sighisoara.com

They're worth a look.

Many thanks for adding the link, Dobrov. I hope to add further links to pictures later. I wasn't specificially on the lookout for privatization. As far as I could tell, most of the hotels have been privatized, for example, or have been let to the employees. There seems to be a lot of de-industrialization and concomitant umemployment (and under-employment).

Sighisoara (continued)

I went to the market place, also called the Piata Hermann Oberth. (He lived from 1894-1989, went to school in Sighisoara and was a pioneer astro-physicist - more about him later).

The market-place is in the lower town. I climbed towards the main gate - the Clock Tower. It's easily the biggest of the gates consisting of three parts - an outer guardhouse, then an outer gate and finally the actual tower itself. (This last houses the town's museum). Almost immediately I found myself standing on the main square. Ahead stood an ornamental gateway, to the right the medieval Monastery Church (Lutheran). On the left is a palatial school, the Joseph-Haltrich Lyceum, which turns out to be 'Romano-German'.

Perhaps the best known of all the buildings on the square is the large house where the future Vlad III 'Tepes' ('The Impaler') was born in 1431.
The name of his mother is apparently unknown, but his father was called Vlad Dracul ... Btw, as the nickname suggests he was notorious in his lifetime for his cruelty, but until late in the 19th century he was *not* in any way associated with vampires. He is, I am told, only one of the many 'ingredients' in the Dracula legend. No doubt his horrific cruelty made him interesting, indeed spicy, to Bram Stoker and others. Part of the house is now a restaurant. The facade dates from the Renaissance, but the house itself is older.

I first went to the church. The monastery itself was demolished long ago, but the massive medieval church still dominates the square. Inside it is unusually stark, almost *bleak* with its whitewashed walls, indeed almost Calvinist in its gloomy gaunt appearance by comparison with most Lutheran churches in Central Europe. The main decoration inside is Anantolian carpets hung on the walls. For the most part, they are reddish, often dark and date from the 17th century, a few even have specifically Islamic inscriptions. These beautiful carpets go some way to relieving the dark Gothic gloom, but at the same time the colours leave one with an overall sense of sombreness, not to say gloom, even a whiff of eeriness that I don't normally associate with churches ...

According to my guidebook the only other Gothic church decorated in this way is the Black Church in Brasov (aka Kronstadt).

(Has anyone come across anything like this anywhere else? Please let me know).

To be continued ...

[ June 06, 2002, 02:16 PM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

Bloomsby, haven't had the chance to read up on your excellent accounts here, I hope you'll forgive me.
What is your general opinion of the people you see?
When I go to Italy or speak to Italians here in the area I always take the pulse of their moods etc.
I always find that Italians seem to have only a fraction of the social benefits that the French do, and yet they keep their smiles and their way of life, without complaining enough.
Well, with family members of ours in Italy, the older folks are groaning and moaning about the incursion of Albanian refugees, which is causing problems. They say, "well the smile is dissappearing!"
So I keep wondering whether the Rumanians are eager to enter the European Union, are they really really hard pressed to find jobs?
We've seen recent reports on recruiting going on with the agricultural industry, they have programs which recruit Romanians to help in the fields and they are so happy to be able to find work.

I'm wondering if they are so happy to come here and pick strawberries (back breaking work which I unfortunately know from my youth in California and Oregon), when you travel through the towns, are people looking fairly content with their lives?

Bruyere, I'm hoping to add the more general comments at the end. Actually, Romania is *very* poor in real terms, and I got the impression of widepsread disorientation. Some observers see this as the reason for the high Fascist vote, but we get that kind of thing in Western Europe, too.

Beyond the 'Dracula House', on on the next square, is a magnificent large house, dating from c.1600 which has recently been restored with a donation from Germany. It, too, has a restaurant, but also serves as a Romano-German cultural centre. This Renaissance house with an oriel window facing the square (and with certain elusive affinities with English Elizabethan and Jacobean styles) is conspicuously well proportioned, almost as if for once art hadn't quite succeeded in 'concealing art'. A plaque states that this was originally the house of a local patrician or magnate.

These two squares are compact, as one would expect in a walled town and quite unlike the vast market-places in Sibiu. (Btw, I haven't described every building on both these squares in Sighisoara). I then turned off the square and began the ascent to the top of the hill. I walked past one of the very few Baroque buildings in the town and soon found myself at the bottom of the Scholars' Staircase. This leads to the Church on the Hill and the older section of the Joseph Haltrich Lyceum. In 1642 a local benefactor had this staircase of 175 steps and 29 landings not only roofed but entirely encased in wood to provide shelter for kids going to and from school (and presumably for churchgoers). From the very bottom the staircase looks rather like a tunnel, except that some light of course penetrates the sides. Nevertheless, the eye tends to focus on the tunnel-like exit at the very top.

When I reached the top I found two teenage girls sprawled on the only two benches, but they made way for me and let me sit down. It emerged that both attend the Lyceum and use the stairs daily. One spoke English very well. Yes, this was indeed the church where in 1631 the Transylvanian Diet had elected George Rakocz (I) Prince of Transylvania and proclaimed him King of Hungary. I also asked why the lyceum is called 'teoric'. Does it mean a 'humanistic' (that is, classical) school? I asked. On the contrary, it denotes a school with a bias towards the natural sciences and information technology, they told me.

We spent a while chatting. They seemed genuinely cheerful, chatty and happy to use their English.
They asked me what I thought of the plan to create a Dracula theme-park a few kilometers from Sighisoara. I asked them whether they felt that the Dracula legend was plain vulgar and an insult to Romania and the Romanians. The girl with particularly good English replied, 'Of course it's vulgar, but Sighisoara desperately needs jobs! And as for being an insult, that depends on whether foreigners think we actually *believe* in vampires and similar superstitions.' We chatted for quite a while.

After we'd parted I went right to the very top of the hill, and it was at this point that I had that unfortunate encounter with a stray dog ...

As I strolled round exploring this remarkable dream-like town I asked myself time and again what had befallen the place after the c. 1700. What had created the time-warp? My guidebook mentioned a serious fire in 1676, but it obvious that the town had overcome that disaster. I asked a few people but no-one seemed to have any idea.

This seemd to bear out that the point (made in very discreet terms by UNESCO) that the town had lost most of those inhabitants who had sustained its culture. Most of the ethnic Germans had left and many of the inhabitants seemed to be relative newcomers, not necessarily well informed about or even interested in the history of the town. The girl who had confirmed my information about George Rakocz had perhaps been exceptional - after all, a lyceum (in Romania) is in effect a kind of élite secondary school. Anyway, for me the mystery remained for another day or two.

Next day I visited the town's museum which is housed in the Clocktower - once the Town Hall. I find a whole room devoted to Hermann Oberth (1894-1989), rooms devoted to local industries, especially pottery - some blue and white and some much more varied in colour and design.

There's also quite a lot on the history of Sighisoara, too, and how it was organized in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern times. Btw, as in the great cities of Germany the more prosperous guilds each have to build and maintain one gate or bastion.

Also quite a lot on the clock itself. It has figures, one for every day of the week and these change every morning at 6am.

Hermann Oberth, it emerges, was born in Sibiu but spent his schooldays here, where his father was a surgeon at the town's hospital. He, too, began by studying medicine, but then following his interest in space travel - yes, jawohl, space travel - switched to maths, physics and chemistry.
His studies were interrupted by WW1, but he was wounded in 1916 and released from the Austrian Army and able to continue his studies. In 1922 he submitted a doctoral dissertation on the subject of 'Rockets into Interplanetary Space'. At least one of the examiners, it is said, took the trouble to check and recheck all the facts and calculations, but not surprisingly, the dissertation was rejected. Presumably, the University of Heidelberg feared it would somehow compromise its reputation if it *appeared* to award a doctorate for something that looked more like science fiction than science ... Such, at least, was Hermann Oberth's interpretation of what happened, and he spoke scathingly of the University's lack of imagination. He continued to work on the subject, both practically and theoretically. In 1938 he was given a post in Vienna (plus German citizenship). Later he was sent to Peenemuende to work on the German rocket programme. After a difficult time in the immediate aftermath of WW2, he worked on the American space programme in Huntsville, AL for a while from 1955 onwards.

I climbed right to the top of the tower which affords outstanding views of the town and the surrounding country. On my way out I bought a little guide and history. This began to provide some of the answers to my question about the reasons for the 'time-warp'.

Sighisoara recovered quickly from the fire of 1676. Those fortications that had been damaged
were repaired quickly and with only minor modifications. (After all, the Ottoman Empire still posed a real threat).

The real catastrophes came soon after 1700. The town was ravaged by a variety of the plague in 1709 which killed over 40% of the inhabitants, a very high proportion indeed even by the standards of the time. Moreover, after the Austrians regained central Hungary (1686 onwards) they asserted their claim to Transylvnia and the principality was annexed in 1697 and was confirmed by the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699). There then followed a series of Hungarian rebellions in 1704-11 and the town with its outdated fortications was occupied a number of times. It appears that it never really recovered from these misfortunes.

To be continued

[ June 08, 2002, 08:40 AM: Message edited by: bloomsby ]

I am looking forward to the next installment and would like a little more about that dog! But no matter. I have another link here for all non-scientists including myself. It's an interesting site on Hermann Oberth with pictures and good links. It's at

www.kiosek.com/oberth/

Enjoy!

(Continuation) I spent about three days exploring Sighsoara. I've travelled quite widely in Europe and never come across such a beautiful town of this size.

Yes, there are a few 18th and even early 19th century houses, and the grandest of these is being turned into a hotel.

Further problems arising from the discontinuity resulting from the departure of the Germans. Unlike in other medieval and Renaissance towns, many of the houses slope *backwards* from street-level. Elsewhere it's much more common for the upper storeys to jut out into the street. However, here some of the houses have massive 'bases', rather like the the lowest section of a pyramid ... Perhaps a precaution against the earth tremors and minor earthquakes that sometimes affect the region? Nobody seems to know ...

After four nights I returned to Bucharest and the next day flew back to London.

(General observations to follow)

General Observations

Romania is one of the poorest countries I've ever visited. Per capita GDP at the exchange-rate is a little under US$1,700. The CIA 'World Factbook', 2001 ed. calculates that 8adjusted for purchasing power*, the figure is about US$5,900. In other words real living standards are about one-quarter of those in most of Western Europe. When making such comparisons one has to be careful. As was pointed out to me, for most Romanians there's very little left for luxuries after they've paid for food, rent, electricity, gas and clothes ... One potentially misleading sign of propserity is the large number of cellphones, but I was told that this is largely attributable to the inability of the main telephone companies to install landlines: one can often have to wait 18 months +

The overriding impression is of poverty with a depressing number of beggars, many very young and very old ... Then there are people who try, very inexpertly and persisently to sell one things - ranging from chocolate to taxi rides and sex. I found this irritating, and also a kind of barrier to communication in the end. I soon had the unwarranted feeling that Romanians are only interested in foreigners for what they can get out of them. Time and again, I found myself drawing comparisons with Bulgaria (which I visited in May 2000). It's almost as poor, but the Bulgarians display amazing stoicism, dignity and self-discipline by contrast with Romania.

Well, I've got that irritant stated and, I hope, out of the way now. For many ordinary Romanians it's very galling that in material terms they were much better off under Communism.
Many that I spoke to said that they found it hard to decide whether this price for freedom had been worth paying, a couple said yes, it was worth the hardship ...

I found it hard to assign Romania clearly to a *region*: certainly, it's a Balkan country - for the most part converted to Christianity from Byzantium, not Rome - with all that that implies in cultural terms, too, and of course until 1821-22 Wallachia and Moldavia were part of the Ottoman Empire. However, Transylvania was for centuries on the south-eastern edge of Central Europe. To add to the complication, much of Moldavia and the northerly areas of the country border on the Ukraine. So the country also stands at the cross-roads between three regions of Europe ...

That said, since c. 1860 (if not earlier) the country has tended to look westwards to France, to Italy and to Ancient Rome ...

Even in the Ceausescu years the country tended to be just about the least co-operative member of the Warsaw Pact and COMECON, and traded and invested as the regime chose instead of meekly taking orders from Moscow.

While in Sighisoara I was fortunate in being able to chat at length two mornings to the Manager of the hotel where I was staying, as the place wasn't particularly busy. She spoke of a widespread sense of 'disorientation' and ascribed the high level of support for the neo-Fascist party 'Romania Mare' ('Greater Romania') to this sense of rudderlessness. If she's correct - and I have no reason to doubt her view - then it is probably a more fundamental sense of disorientation than that leading to support for the extreme Right in Western Europe. She herself had a preference for restoring the monarchy subject to the condition that it 'behaves itself' - unlike in the inter-war period.

On that note I'll conclude this unduly long account.

A couple of websites. For Sibiu see web page and for Sighisoara web page