Although I was born in Bucharest and spent many formative years of my life there (from the age 14 to 24), I was never a huge fan of Romania’s capital city. Too crowded, too dirty, too hot in summer, too full of slushy black snow in winter, and Bucharest people have a reputation for being rude and impatient. Pretty much like any big city, then! However, I quite enjoyed my latest visit there (despite the ongoing family and admin issues) and could imagine spending a couple of weeks there every year, especially in May or October, when it’s at its prettiest. I had a bit of a wander around the university area of town, where I spent many a happy day in my youth (also, many a sad or dangerous day, but you forget those when you get all nostalgic, don’t you?).
The Faculty of Letters (to the right), containing mostly female students, was and still is nicely ensconced between Maths, Geology and Architecture (all of them mostly male students at the time).
We spent many a peaceful afternoon at the ‘bar’ of the Architectural Institute, with its leafy canopy.
The library of the Faculty of Letters was a favourite spot, although I spent the majority of my time at the main University Library or the Central State Library, which had more of the books I needed.
Happy to see some of the iconic Art Deco buildings being cleaned and renovated in the centre of town.
The beautiful neo-Hausmannian building belonging to Coana Mita Biciclista (Madame Mita the Cyclist), a famed courtesan at the turn of the 20th century. She was one of the first women to be seen riding a bicycle through Bucharest, hence the nickname.
Another iconic building: the interior of Cafe Capsa, a cafe that reminds me of Vienna, opened in 1852, where all the great artists and writers of the time congregated.
The area around the main university building always was and still is full of bookshops, this one is within the Architectural Institute…
…and specialises in art books
Above all, I had fun exploring all the hip new cafes that seem to open up every month in Bucharest. This one on Henri Coanda Street also has a vintage clothing store attached.
This will just be a random rambling because I haven’t had time to organise my thoughts or fully process the multitude of often contradictory feelings I had about my short holiday in Romania last week.
The reason why I went there at this time of year was to attend the wedding in Bucharest of my second cousin (who is over 20 years younger than me), but of course I spent most of the time with my parents in the countryside. As always, I felt torn between cultures, mistress of (or slave to) none. I also noticed a profound difference between generations, and I can only hope that the younger generation does not get cynical and give up.
Romanian weddings are truly joyous occasions, with no embarrassing speeches or drunken antics, only dancing and eating and children running around (they had a children’s entertainer for them and they were outside most of the time). My cousin wanted hers to be relatively small and modern, so she only invited about 120 people (small by Romanian standards) to the reception, mostly young friends of the couple, including friends from abroad. The menu and the music were a little bit too modern for the few more distant middle-aged relatives who had been invited. I too regretted the lack of ‘sarmale’ (stuffed cabbage leaves, a wedding feast staple), but appreciated the very wide range of music for dancing, from the 1970s to 2020, from folklore to rock to pop to jazz, in a mix of languages and styles. The bride and groom had a stunning opening dance, which my cousin had personally choreographed, and, although they couldn’t bring their dog with them to the venue, she was present via the groom’s custom-made cufflinks with her portrait on them. Other innovations included an instant photo booth to provide souvenirs for all the guests, and a little buffet of savoury and sweet dishes while the guests were arriving and pictures were being taken. (Usually you have to wait for ages until the first course is served.)
Instead of presents, the tradition is to give money to the bridal couple in an envelope at the wedding (like in Japan). I’ve been reliably informed that Romanians are among the most generous in the world with the sums they give at weddings.
I was woefully underdressed for the occasion. I had bought a nice enough knitted skirt and top combo from Cos for the wedding, but it turned out to be too hot for it, so I only wore the skirt and improvised a light top, but the other guests were extremely impressive in all their finery.
I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened with an open bar tab at a wedding in England. Some of the friends did have one or two rounds of tequila shots, but it was honestly very tame. Instead, there was lot of smoking or vaping outside – so each country has its own vice, I guess. What struck me, however, is how chatty, friendly, lively, eager to dance almost all of the guests were. For an introvert it must be a nightmare, but for me, it felt great to be able to join in conversations with just about anyone, see some of the youngsters play basketball in their finest outfits, do the silliest dance moves without any shame – and huge kudos to the guests from abroad who did their best to join in the Romanian folk dances.
The weather was far too hot for late October: a bonus for the wedding, but worrying in terms of climate change. At my parents’ house, close to the mountains, temperatures did drop down to 2-3 overnight, but were still 25-26 during the day, while in Bucharest it was easily around 29-30 and didn’t feel too cold even after midnight.
As always, I talked extensively to people of all ages and noticed quite a generation gap. Young people and those up to about my age are all working very hard, very long hours, and often spend many hours stuck in traffic or commuting. Many of them also have elderly parents or relatives in the countryside whom they have to visit regularly) What spare time they have, they spend on sports, meeting up with friends or travelling (mostly abroad). They are often exhausted and those who are in their 50s are all planning to retire as soon as they can, before the pension reforms kick in. There will be a huge talent and experience gap coming up in many professions.
The older generation are more traditionalist, and have far too much time to fall for and talk about conspiracy theories. Although my father as a former diplomat has a more nuanced view of the whole situation in the Middle East, many people I spoke to were racist, although, oddly enough, equal-opportunities racist about ‘the Arabs overrunning all of Europe and committing terrorist acts’ or ‘those Jews controlling too much of the world’s media and committing atrocities’.
Closer to home, my niece’s mental health problems and suicide are still regarded with utter horror as a mortal sin, and not an ounce of compassion was forthcoming from the older family members. I remember my maternal grandmother and at least one aunt on my father’s side having much more progressive views back in the days, but the Orthodox church has got a firm grip on the older generation. They have deleted all her online posts and blogs in which she discussed her struggles with depression quite frankly, and destroyed her notebooks, and have nothing but nasty stories to tell about her and speculations about her messy lifestyle which ‘made her go off the rails’.
I tried very hard to hold my tongue and not to succumb to lengthy arguments on either political or religious or psychological subjects.
However, one source of joy was the large pile of books I acquired, although I didn’t find all the ones I was searching for in the bookshops (I should have ordered them online beforehand and had them delivered at my parents’ house). I didn’t bring quite all of them back, because I also wanted to bring some of the books already on my parents’ bookshelves. such as Middlemarch (it’s not the prettiest edition, a Pan Classics, but it’s been read with much fondness – I found a Japanese bookmark in it, so I must have been reading it as a student), Kurt Tucholsky’s Schloss Gripsholm – the quintessential summer book (translation by Michael Hoffman published by NYRB) and an illustrated bilingual limited edition of What These Ithakas Mean: Readings in Cavafy, published by the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive in 2002. But I did bring back books by seven women authors (two of them from Moldova, the others from Romania), and four male authors, including a book of plays, so I hope to have some translation samples available soon and start knocking on publishers’ doors with them.
There is no such thing as a relaxing holiday with the extended family back in the home country… but there were many pleasant moments, and a complete break from the treadmill, so I can’t complain! I’ve been boring everyone with endless holiday pictures on Twitter, but here are a few of my favourites, to give you a flavour of the landscapes and ‘vibes’. I will share more in my next few Friday Fun posts. [None tomorrow, though, as I have a lot of catching up to do still]
Barajul Vidraru – reservoir and dam
The Black Sea coast
The Bran-Rucar pass in the Carpathians
Sibiu
Although I had no time to browse in bookshops (unbelievable, I know!), I brought back a whole pile of books with me, some were old favourites languishing on my parents’ bookshelves, others that I had ordered online a few months ago and got delivered to their address. Meanwhile, a few books made their way into my letterbox here in the UK while I was away.
Here’s the result!
Romanian books:
As part of my search for contemporary Romanian authors to read and possibly translate, particularly women authors, I’ll be reading Raluca Nagy, Nora Iuga, Magda Cârneci (this one has been translated by Sean Cotter) and Diana Bădică. All recommendations via Romanian newsletters to which I subscribe.
A mix of contemporary and more classic male authors as well: Gellu Naum is better known for his avantgarde poetry and prose in the 1930s and 40s, or his wonderful children’s book about the wandering penguin Apolodor in the 1950s, and this is his only novel as far as I am aware (this too has been translated into English, see some reviews here); Max Blecher’s Scarred Hearts, which I previously read and reviewed in English, but wanted to own in Romanian; one of my favourite modern poets, Nicolae Labiș, who died tragically young; an English translation by Gabi Reigh of my favourite play by one of my favourite writers, Mihail Sebastian; finally, two young writers that I want to explore further, Tudor Ganea and Bogdan Coșa.
Last but not least, a dictionary of Romanian proverbs translated into English – just to remind myself of some of the old folk sayings.
Other books:
Another expat in Berlin story, imaginatively entitled Berlin by Bea Sutton. I read Susan’s review on her blog A Life in Books and couldn’t resist.
Two Japanese crime novels: Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight by Onda Riku (I was bowled over by The Aosawa Murders by the same author) and an older crime classic by Matsumoto Seicho entitled Tokyo Express.
Two volumes of poetry, Reckless Paper Birds and Panic Response by the English poet John McCullough. I recently attended a workshop with him and found him very inspiring indeed.
Last but by no means list: a whole flurry of chapbooks of Swiss literature, translated from all four official languages of Switzerland, published by the wonderful Strangers Press at the UEA. I am hoping to convince them to do a series on Romanian literature too someday, fingers crossed!
It feels like this holiday has been a long time coming – once again, I am barely able to crawl down the finishing straight, and will have to resign myself to leaving a few things undone, a few deadlines unmet, but hopefully no one other than myself disappointed.
I am sure I am not alone in feeling that the last few months have been hard. Rising prices in just about everything, frozen or even dwindling income, very little of the work I actually enjoy coming in, lots of rejection for both translations and original work, even a personal rejection when I dared to open up a little to one person. The usual merry-go-round of concern about my sons’ academic progress and work experience (or lack thereof), house repairs, appliances going AWOL and unexpected additional expenses, plus major worries about Mlle Zoe’s state of health (and that of my parents), find a house and cat sitter etc. etc. So no wonder I feel ‘pleoștită’ – a beautiful, somewhat onomatopeic Romanian expression for someone who is battered, flattened, like a tyre with all the air let out.
I won’t be blogging or reviewing while I am on holiday, other than the Friday Fun posts which I’ve already scheduled. Nor will I be spending too much time online and reading your blogs. Instead, I will try to recapture my legendary energy and va-va-voom, if the heat permits. Here is the musical vibe I will be after:
(Although I am still mad that Stan Getz didn’t pay Astrud Gilberto any royalties for this super-hit)
When I was in my early teens, I had a craving to become a nun. Not so much for reasons of faith, but because I kept thinking what fun it must be to have plenty of time to read, write, meditate and perhaps do a spot of gardening. Of course, in the meantime, I have realised that modern monastic communities do far more than that. And yet, when I see pictures such as these, I want to go on a retreat there for several weeks, if not months.
St Mary’s Monastery in Perth, Scotland, from TripAdvisor.
Metochi Monastery in Lesvos, Greece, has been rented out as a study centre for the University of Agder in Norway, from lesvos.com
The Swiss monastery of Kappel am Albis is a place where I once ran a training workshop over several days – the food was brilliant too! From Cityseeker.
The Chartreusian monasteries are among the strictest in the world – you are practically locked up in your cell – still, when the cell looks like this, I wouldn’t mind. Photo credit Nico Angleys on Twitter, from the Grand Chartreux Monastery.
The Abbaye de Lerin runs revision sessions for high school students preparing their Baccalaureate. It’s on an island near Cannes, so there is no escape. Photo credit: Jean-Jacques Giordan.
A very modern Benedictine monastery, Mucknell Abbey in Worcestershire was built on the site of an old farm. From Mucknellabbey.org
Combining two of my favourite things: South Africa and Buddhism, this Buddhist retreat near Durban is a dream – and has accommodation ranging from the basic to the luxurious. Photo credit: Chantelle Flores, from Travelstart.co.za
After a particularly fraught and busy period at work, I had been looking forward to this week of annual leave. I was going to do so much (Cardiff, writing, day trips to London, editing translations, reviewing, major cleaning blitzes around the house) – but I should have realised that all my poor battered body and brain wanted to do was relax.
My older son vetoed Cardiff last weekend, because he wanted to watch the Euros Final in England rather than Wales. I’d been having second thoughts about travelling anyway, with the rising cases of Covid and the possibility of being pinged about going into self-isolation (which happened to a friend of mine when she went away for a mini-writing retreat in Eastbourne the week before). So we cancelled the hotel and instead wandered a little closer to home. Savill Gardens in Windsor Great Park no longer had the glorious rhododendrons, but there was still plenty to admire there.
On Wednesday we braved a trip to London – the first time I’ve been into town since 16th March 2020. It felt like a good time to go, before the breakdown of any and all restrictions on 19th July. Needless to say, GWR lived up to my bad impression of it: there was no accurate or up-todate information about how busy the trains were, nor about changing trains and platforms. I booked tickets and was told I had to reserve seats for part of the journey, which I initially thought was reassuring. If you reserve seats, you at least know that it’s not going to be crowded, right? Wrong! Turns out that every single seat had been sold – so there was no social distancing. Although on some of the trains there were big signs saying not to sit facing other passengers, we had to sit facing other passengers, including those who did not wear masks.
We went to visit the newly-opened Japan House on Kensington High Street, so we could walk there from Paddington via Kensington Gardens. In the morning, the park was quite quiet, partly because of the cloud cover. In the afternoon, however, when the sun came out, it was a typical London summer day: dog walkers, sports activities, children playing. The streets and shops were busy too (perhaps not like Oxford Street in the pre-Christmas frenzy, but busy enough). I struggled to see what people were complaining about in terms of restrictions or having their personal liberties curtailed.
The Japan House itself was slightly disappointing – or perhaps our expectations for it had been too high. According to the website, it is one of only three such centres around the world, set over three floors, housing exhibitions, a library, a restaurant and all sorts of other things. You had to book in advance for the library, but we ended up having the whole place to ourselves, which was just as well, since it was just one small room: interesting books, but simply not enough of them (and not enough variety – mostly design or visual arts). The ground floor exhibition/shop was beautiful, but a bit too heavily curated, upmarket and expensive. The afternoon tea we had at the restaurant was delicious, but expensive and not very filling (especially with two teenage boys – they had to buy sandwiches to eat immediately before and after).
Of course, for a Japanophile such as myself, it was still very interesting and I discovered some fascinating historical Japanese photos. But do not plan to spend the whole day there, as we thought we would. There simply isn’t enough to do and the chairs in the library are not that comfortable. Still, it was not a wasted afternoon, because we managed to do some clothes shopping, which is nearly impossible to do in our town, which has only a smallish M&S and a SportsDirect. We did not go into any bookshops, although I later found out there is a Waterstone’s a little further away on High Street Kensington.
Sunset over Hammersmith Bridge.
The very next day, I ventured into London again, this time in a friend’s car to the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, to see Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. I don’t think I was too popular with my friend for choosing such a pared-down, depressing play which feels very apposite for the loneliness of lockdown. But I rather enjoyed its bleakness, and the multitude of ways in which it could be interpreted: the humiliation of old age and impotence or amnesia, the burden of caring responsibilities, the grinding down of personality in a long and not very happy marriage, the need to be seen and appreciated.
Who wouldn’t want to run on such a beautiful path?
Most of the rest of my holiday was relatively humdrum. I slept nearly eight hours most days (a record for me), read a lot of undemanding books (which is not to say badly-written – just not heavy topics), only logged onto my work email once to check if I still needed to help out a colleague with a Zoom call. I had quite a bit of school and car-related admin to do, ordered a new sofa, gave the porch a thorough clean and even went to the gym and for a run. I also tried not to get angry about news and politics and news, about not losing a gramme of weight in spite of my best efforts to eat healthily and follow an intermittent fasting programme. I have watched just two films this week, mostly because my son’s laptop (which we connect to the TV to watch things) is on its dying legs: The Battle of Algiers, a powerful documentary-style Italian film about French colonialism and the war in Algeria, and Midsommar, about which I might write a whole blog post re: the misappropriation and misinterpretation of religious cults and folklore.
Instead of feeling guilty about ‘vegetating’, I call this a ‘fallow field’ period, which, as all farmers know, is so necessary to improve the yield of future crops. As part of my ‘three field rotation’ programme, next week I start the BCLT translation summer school, after which I probably will require another week of annual leave to recover. There is no doubt that I would rather be doing that than the day job (aka ‘main crop’), though!
It seems a bit unfair to feature these two books in the same blog post, as they couldn’t be more different if they tried. And yet… it’s not just because of time constraints that I am comparing and contrasting them. Both of these books are (at least partially) about people failing to understand another culture and being judged for it.
Stella Gibbons: The Swiss Summer was published in 1951 and already shows the desire for escapism of postwar British culture which culminated with Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Lucy Cottrell is observant, good-tempered and diplomatic, and at the age of 40+ she suddenly finds herself invited to a Swiss chalet for the summer. Although the people she gets to spend the summer with are not always the most compatible, she is nevertheless overcome by the beauty of the landscape and not at all put off by the Swiss over-reliance on tourism. She is, however, often embarrassed by the antics of her fellow countrymen, as spotted in some of the hotels and restaurants she visits.
It is a pity that they have to behave like that… because the Swiss do still like us, even though we have no money nowadays…
The entanglements (romantic and otherwise) of the people who visit the chalet over the course of the summer are amusing, and Lucy ties herself into knots trying not to lie but also not to reveal too much to the owner of the chalet back home in England. I haven’t read any Stella Gibbons other than Cold Comfort Farm, and there is none of that exuberant satire here. This is gentle fun, reminiscent in some ways of Elizabeth von Arnim’s Enchanted April, although without quite such a pleasing resolution. Above all, the descriptions of nature really resonated with me – it’s clear how much the author loved this area. Here Lucy is, unable to sleep on a full moon night.
The soft, sad, brilliant light poured into her eyes as she looked up towards the Jungfrau’s snows, which it blanched to unearthly whiteness; the waterfall spilled out of the radiance down into the vast shadow below the massif; the slopes by Murren were lost in rich brown mists. She looked down and saw patches of shut, colourless flowers scattered up the white slopes; she saw the dizzy precipices of the Monch muffled in motionless milky clouds, and the drifts of thinnest mist twisting and winding down over the highest ridges; they seemed to trail after them long wreaths of dimly glittering stars. There was silence except for the waterfall’s sound, and the air smelled of dew.
Olivia Sudjic: Asylum Road has only just come out, and is the first novel I’ve read by her. I heard her debut novel Sympathy garnered good reviews, but it was the subject matter that attracted me to this one: the heavy spectre of the Balkans and the possibilities of cultural misunderstandings. I understand that, although Sudjic is of Serbian descent, this is not based on her personal experience – she was born and raised in the UK as a third-generation immigrant and only experienced the Yugoslav war from a distance. This book also takes place over the course of a summer, although in three different locations: France, Cornwall and Croatia/Bosnia.
Nevertheless, I suspect that there is quite a bit of Olivia in her main protagonist, Anya, who was sent as a child to live with her aunt in Scotland to escape the war. Anya is engaged to the rather cool and distant Luke, who comes from a well-off and emotionally detached family with pro-Brexit tendencies. Although Luke proposes to her near the beginning of the book, their relationship is fraught with silence and resentment, and is utterly undone after their visit to Anya’s parents and old home in Sarajevo.
The war has obviously touched Anya’s family directly, but the book shows that you do not need to have experienced the trauma at first-hand to inherit its consequences. The inferiority complex that Anya seems to suffer in front of Luke and his family (while secretly despising or making fun of them) is something I have seen very frequently in East European migrants, including myself. This quote, for instance, struck such a chord:
Of the things I cared too much about then, one was appearing civilised. In ethical terms but also in aesthetic ones. I had read the right books, bought thrifted designer clothes, gained several degrees at elite institutions and, in Luke;s flat, arranged an elegant mise-en-scene that in fact held no emotional resonance. They were props, these objects I combed from life, smooth pebbles that had once been cliffs.
They meet Anya’s dead brother’s girlfriend, Mira, who, despite a successful career in publishing, is fed up with stagnation and pro-Putin posters in Belgrade, and wants to move abroad.
It’s only a shame, that’s all. To still be stuck talking about this. Even some of the publishing people I know say that we should move on, stop making art about it, they say we’re in paralysis, which is true, politically, economically, everything. That the worst books coming out of the Balkans are the ones still going on about war… But it seems impossible not to talk about it when these people, these revisionists, still exist, even if we’d prefer to forget it.
This made me smile, because it’s one of the conversations I often have with people about whether there is a tendency to ‘typecast’ a country’s literary output and only a particular type of book gets translated into English. For Croatia and Bosnia, it might be about the war, for Romania it seems to be about the Communist dictatorship in a terribly surreal or experimental or earnest prose etc. etc. Yet, at the same time, the attention span of the reading public in the West is very limited. I’ll never forget the American journalist who told me: ‘Can’t you people just draw a line under the past and look to the future?’
Yes, it is frustrating, yes, we do wish we could escape the burden of the past. ‘The past keeps intruding. We are sick to death of it.’ Anya says at one point. I like the way the author make the narrator ashamed of her family’s rhetoric, how she tries to tone down her emotions, how she endeavours to describe everything without melodrama or fuss. Underneath it all, there is a sense of disquiet, of tension building up… Better to be the crushed victim – or the destroyer doing the crushing? And if this carapace that Anya has carefully built around herself is no longer capable of protecting her – what price tearing it down and starting from scratch?
You have to admire the control with which Sudjic navigates the story of trauma, search for identity and breakdown, and the (not always physical) violence we wreak upon others and ourselves. Certainly not a comfortable read, but an accomplished one, with echoes of Penelope Mortimer and Leonora Carrington.
Last year we had a magical holiday in Romania. This year the holidays were much shorter, we stayed mainly in Bucharest and I didn’t expect any magic (and, indeed, none was forthcoming).
My parents are getting old and frail, so they wanted to talk mainly about what to do in case of ill health, emergencies or if one of them should die. I also tend to forget just how difficult it is to live in the same house as my mother until I am confronted with it on a daily basis. Last but not least, Bucharest is as chaotic, busy and polluted as most capital cities, plus a generous extra portion! So it was not the most restful of holidays.
However, there were some good bits, most of which I tweeted about while we were there.
It was nice to see that some of the 19th century architecture of Bucharest had been renovated and lived up to its reputation of ‘Little Paris’.Just opposite this, however, and right next to the 1930 example of architecture of the Post and Telephone Building, you have this horror of a Novotel modern extension to an old facade (former National Theatre building, bombed during the WW2 and never rebuilt).Other highlights include telling my older son (the history fiend) about the time when Ceausescu spoke live on TV from this balcony at the Central Committee of the Communist Party building on December 21st 1989 and was booed, sparking the full-scale public protests in Bucharest.This building belonged to the Securitate forces and was riddled with bullets during the bloody days that followed the victory of the revolution on 22nd December 1989 (inevitable glass monstrosity was added later).Rooftop bar can be used on rainy days thanks to these ingenious (heated) bubbles.More examples of preserved architecture: the George Enescu museum, in one of the most impressive mansions on Calea Victoriei. Sadly, the exhibition itself is quite small and you can’t visit the entire house.The Museum of the City of Bucharest in the Palais Sutu is really worth a visit: a carefully curated trip back in time in the history of the city.For example, here is a portrait of a typical Phanariot of the 18th century – Greek administrators from the Fanari neighbourhood of Istanbul, imposed as de facto rulers of Wallachia by the Ottoman Empire for nearly a century.I was somewhat shocked at the excessive luxury (and prices) in this giant shopping mall, complete with skating rink, climbing wall, food court, Imax cinema etc. when you consider that 80% of the population can probably not afford to buy anything other than a drink here.
I was discussing with my boys why Bucharest can feel like a shock to the system to those who live in other capital cities. It has all the traffic jams, lack of parking, crowded places, noise and building sites that we also associate with Paris and London. But, unlike those two cities, wealth and poverty jostle here more openly side by side. You can live in your protected bubble in the 6th and 7th Arrondissements in Paris, or in Chelsea and Hampstead in London, without ever coming across the less salubrious examples of daily life. That is simply not possible in Bucharest. You come out of the most extravagant restaurant and end up in a back street with crumbling old buildings. You drive your fancy Lamborghini through terrible potholes. On public transport you see fine ladies with expensive haircuts and camelhair coats as well as bow-legged peasant women with knotted scarves covering their hair – and both of them might be making the sign of the cross whenever the tram passes by a church.
The best bit was seeing that some of the beautiful older buildings had been sensitively and lovingly rehabilitated, rather than having ugly extensions built behind them.
If you are a foreign tourist with a bit of money, you can have a great time in Bucharest. For me, it will always be a city where pain and joy, anger and nostalgia blend. I can never ignore the dirt or inequality or those who have been left behind. I cannot unsee the price of foreign investment: people of my generation and younger who are being eaten alive by the Western corporations, a form of indentured labour for the present-day. The city will never be relaxing because there are too many threads binding me to it and never enough time to meet and greet all the people that I want to see – or that my family feel that I should see.
If you know the Cavafy poem ‘The City’, you will understand how I feel about this fascinating, infuriating, sleazy, beautiful, ugly city.
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, tunr grey in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
(transl. Keeley and Sherrard)
My dream of trawling through bookshops and cafés remained just that: a dream. Nevertheless, I did experience two nice restaurants while meeting up with people and one café for breakfast. I only entered three bookshops (two of them quite small), but somehow managed to return with a massive pile of books. More about that in my next post!
Don’t get me started about the tenuous connection between Transylvania and vampires! I suppose we have Bram Stoker to thank for tourism to this part of Romania, but there is no historical connection between Vlad Ţepeş and Dracula. According to the latest research, Stoker was inspired by a book written by a Scottish lady, Emily Gerard. She spent two years in the 1880s in Romania and wrote about the belief in strigoi, as we call them in Romanian. The belief was far stronger, however, in the rest of the Balkans (Greece, Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria), with outbreaks of mass hysteria in the 18th century and people being accused of vampirism, much the same as they were accused of witchcraft in Western Europe. When Bram Stoker heard about Vlad Dracul, the nickname of Vlad Ţepeş’s father, he could not resist using the name with its satanic connotations for his novel. And so a myth was born – and, even if it’s not really our myth, why should we turn down a good money-spinning venture?
There is a link to Transylvania in the person of Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian noblewoman related to the Báthory family who ruled over Transylvania in the 16th century. She was allegedly the most prolific female serial killer and kidnapped, tortured, killed and dismembered predominantly young girls between the ages of 10 and 14.
While Elizabeth Báthory never lived in Transylvania, there are plenty of castle/fortresses in that part of the country that were in the hands of fierce and strong females, wives of Hungarian, German or Romanian noblemen whose husbands had gone off to war. Of course, they also had a small contingent of soldiers to defend them, but the women were the ones who took the lead in economic, political and social decisions in their community. One such place is the Fagaraş Citadel, about halfway between Braşov and Sibiu, and this is where we stopped on our road trip.
Făgăraș was built over a wooden fortress razed to the ground by the Tatars; most of the building dates from the 14th-15th centuries, but was added to until the early 17th century. It was built on marshland, surrounded by a moat, which made any approaches by horse or heavy cannons virtually impossible; thus, the fortress was under siege many times but never conquered. It was initially a military fortress, but also became the seat of the local lord and his wife, so you can visit their restored chambers and view collections of old furniture, glass, local costumes and other traditional treasures.
The inner courtyard suddenly transports you to a different century.Reconstruction of the Throne Room – where the Ottoman representatives would come to discuss terms with the leaders of Transylvania.Council room for the brief period during which Transylvania was independent of any empire.Traditional German men’s costume from the region.Traditional Hungarian women’s costume from the area.Traditional Romanian costume from the area.
It has also been used as a prison in the past – and there is a rather stark scaffold for hanging in the courtyard and some torture instruments in the basement, which I did not take pictures of. The fortress has a sad history even in modern times: from 1948-1960 it was a prison for those who protested against the Communist regime. There was a small but fascinating exhibition there about the mothers, wives and sisters of the resistance fighters from the Făgăraș mountain area.
The road to Sibiu runs parallel to the Carpathians, although sadly it was not the clearest day to admire the views and acres of mountains. Those mountains feature in my novel set in Romania, and a fatal accident takes place there. (I feel much more inspired to edit the novel now after my trip to Romania, by the way.)
You can barely make out the mountains in the distance but on a clear day it is utter heaven. I’ve been hiking in these mountains many a time – and my parents live just on the other side of them, about 100 km as the crow flies.
We have visited Sibiu many times, as my younger son’s godparents live there. They have two boys of very similar age and are almost a microcosm of traditional Romanian culture: he is of Hungarian extraction, she is Romanian, but they both speak German and met while studying in Germany (which is where I too met them). So their children are trilingual and have grown up in a home free of prejudice or biased interpretations of history.
The Small Square, which marks the second set of city walls in Sibiu.The tiny windows in the attic are known as ‘the eyes of Sibiu’.Four strapping young boys braving the Liars’ Bridge. Local superstition has it that if you utter a lie on this bridge, it will collapse.
By way of comparison, here is a picture of three of the same boys a few years back. It is delightful for us to see the friendship extending to the next generation as well!
One side note: In the past, the only language my boys and their boys had in common was Romanian, so it was lovely to hear them chatter. Sadly, this year it became clear that the Sibiu boys’ English has become better than my boys’ Romanian, so they mainly spoke in English. Still, we all spoke Romanian at the table, and my sons understood everything and by the end of the trip, their tongues began to loosen a little. I have to make more of an effort to speak to them in Romanian consistently at home, a habit I lost while we were in France (when I was concerned about keeping up their English).
When I was young, I always wanted to go to the seaside on holiday in Romania and couldn’t understand why we had to follow the national tradition of a week at the seaside followed by a week in the mountains. Nowadays, however, I much prefer the mountains (at least in my home country – for beaches are pretty similar everywhere in Europe).
The first part of our road trip was heading north out of Bucharest up the picturesque Prahova Valley (particularly colourful at this time of year) to Braşov. We only stopped for lunch because both the cable car at Buşteni and the Peleş Palace in Sinaia were closed on a Tuesday, but if you ever go that way, you should stop and check out both. (By the way, the s with cedilla is pronounced ‘sh’).
Peles, the summer residence of the Romanian kings in the 19th/20th century. From gandul.infoThe Sphinx, rock formation caused by the heavy winds at the top of the Bucegi mountains, accessible only on foot from the Busteni cable car.
We stayed a few days in Braşov, also known as Kronstadt in German, because its symbol is of a crown on an oak tree. Not to be confused with the Russian Kronstadt near St Petersburg, it was a bustling medieval and Renaissance town of craftsmen and merchants, where German, Hungarian and Romanian ethnicities lived together in something resembling harmony.
The coat of arms of the city on the town hall.
While it does not have the grand architecture of Sibiu (which is where the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy lived), it is still full of beautiful old buildings, some of them more renovated than others.
Nightfall in the main square of the Old Town, with the Hollywood-style lit-up sign of Brasov.View of the city from behind the sign.
It is also home to one of the narrowest streets in Europe, appropriately known as ‘Rope Street’. Each window looking out onto the street has been decorated by a different artist.
I have a soft spot for Braşov, though, and not just because it has been the scene of many an escapade during my high school and university years (it is only 2 hours from Bucharest, so we went skiing or hiking nearly every other weekend). It is also surrounded by mountains, so in just a few minutes you can be in the forest and feel that you have left all the urban hustle and bustle behind you.
We stayed at a very nice hotel here too, in the Schei neighbourhood, which was just outside the Old Town walls and was traditionally the only place where Romanians were allowed to settle. This was the view from our balcony.
The weather was not as kind to us here as it was throughout the rest of our trip. It only rained a little bit, but there was cloud cover, which meant we didn’t get the best views of or from the mountains. And it was very cold for two days, with some snowfall, especially up in the ski resort Poiana Braşov, where I learnt to ski again as a grown-up after a ski accident in my childhood put an end to winter sports for me, as far as my parents were concerned.
A world away from the mellow autumnal landscape below.All is well, however, when you can warm up your icy toes in a hot tub at the Hotel Sport.Since it was out of season, we had the whole place practically to ourselves.
But it was the interplay of nature and architecture, as well as the friendly cats, which made us love Braşov.
Gate to the Old Town.The tower of the famous Black Church in the background.We kept passing this abandoned house on our way back to the hotel. I would love to renovate it and keep a few cats there.
This is getting too long, so I will have to tell you about the next stage of our journey in a separate blog post. I had some hard choices to make about which route to take to Sibiu, where my younger son’s godparents live. I was initially planning to go via Sighişoara, which is the most beautiful medieval towns in Romania, but a bit farther away. In the end, time and other circumstances made us opt for another route. But, as you will see, we discovered a lesser-known treasure there as well.
One last fond look at Braşov.
If you go there, try their Bulz (a sort of polenta and cheese mix rolled up into a ball) and their Papanaşi – enormous doughnuts traditionally served as a pair with blueberry jam and cream. Extremely filling – I can’t believe I used to be able to tackle those as a dessert. I now could barely finish one as a main course!
findingtimetowrite 