Expat In Romania

Dear Leaders, Do you ever wonder, if only fleetingly, what your legacy will be? Will school children learn your names, will your statues stand on pedestals in parks? Will you be remembered as wise, enlightened, leaders who made Romania better? In case you ever do wonder, the answer to these questions is, of course, 'No'.  You will be remembered as 'The Post-Communism Communists', 'The Incompetents', 'The Corrupt' , 'The New Phanariotes' - though that is a generous comparison, the Phanariotes were at least educated and, at times, capable governors, patriots even.  You, on the other hand, will have done nothing more than govern, speak, and behave like the communists you replaced in 1989, though with a touch less patriotism and a lot more incompetence. How does it feel to know you cannot point to any one single nation-building accomplishment? No crowning achievements. No names to stand out and go down in history, except maybe with the l...

In the summer of 1988, my mother took me along on a trip to Cluj.  My recollections are vague; the giant 'Mathias Rex' statue in today's  Unirii Square (back then known as ' Libertatii -freedom - Square'), excitement at taking the tram and the bus, an oppressive summer sun beating down on the city. But I also remember a small leafy street, mom holding my hand tight as she pushed past a small gate into a little yard, and the affectionate welcome we received from her former French Literature professor, Doina Cornea. I knew there was an element of danger to the situation though what I understood about it is uncertain. What is certain is that they left me outside to play, while they went to speak inside a walk-in pantry. I later understood they had gone into the pantry because there were no microphones there. At the time, I did not associate microphones with singing and live music. I understood microphones to be small, hidden devices, planted inside people's ...

Notice the title is not, " Why Communism Was Good For Romania". With that out of the way, let me explain 'how' communism did us a favour in Romania. When a country is run around a massive lie (ie. Reality = people are starving. Official stance = "Everything is great!") and the lie is so blatant that any fool can see it, it doesn't take long for the Average Joe to reach two basic conclusions: 1. "The government lies to me" 2. "The government doesn't have my best interests at heart" It's like cheating in a relationship. Once the trust is gone, it's gone, baby, gone. Romania went through three successive generations where the core of understanding around governance and authority echoed these sentiments. (Granted, there are some nostaligcs who miss the guaranteed employment and yearly vacations, but, as with any toxic relationship, nostalgics only remember the good times.) You might think that, post '89, this...

On top of P-ta Mihai Viteazul (aka "Complexul Leul"), in the heart of Cluj, sits a large, brutalist, cement clock. It's so drab that, on a dreary day, you won't even notice it against the grey sky. Besides, it doesn't even tell the (right) time. For the past 26 years, it's been stuck at 12:07. A man named Jozef Palko stopped it the moment the Ceausescus fled by helicopter from the roof of the Central Committee building in Bucharest. As the building's administrator - and a witness to the previous day's shooting of anti-communist demonstrators in Unirii Square - he thought it important to capture the moment in history; the minute that communism fell in Romania. Many years later, when I took this snapshot, I found that the contrast between the crisp, bright flags and the dreary commie architecture is a reminder that, with time, things do change.

A few days ago I came across an older Observer article that attempted to recap the twenty years following the fall of Communism in Romania. It said that "it was impossible to have a revolution in Romania. So it had to be staged. " The revolution was staged by the people who took power immediately afterwards, namely Ion Iliescu and the 'National Salvation Front' party, the predecessor to today's PSD (now one half of the PSD-PNL coalition called USL). This is the truth. But it makes a lot more sense when we look at the quote in its original form, as spoken by Iliescu himself, "In a country like Romania it was impossible to have a revolution. So it had to be staged." This is what I want to focus on today. Ed Vulliamy, the Observer journalist who wrote that article in 2009, may not have realized the importance of the syntax in that particular sentence, but I do. It's not just semantics that the sentence started with, " in a country like Romania ...

Believe it or not, this is actually a topic of debate among some circles in Romania. It reminds me of an awesome joke I heard on Radio Guerrilla. This guy who lives in Bucharest goes back home to visit his parents in their small town, still stuck somewhere between 1972 and 1997, where one neighbour still drives a mint condition Dacia 1100 while the other feeds the chickens every morning at 5am. That kinda place. He gets there while one of the neighbours, Ionel, is out on the porch. "Come back to visit us, eh" Ionel says. "Well you know, I don't have much time for home visits nowadays." The guy says, detecting the underlying reproach. "Oh, yeah, I know, I know, you big city folks have everything except time these days. Wasn't like that during communism, though," he says wistfully. "Come on, Ionel, we don't need to go there..." "But of course, and in some ways it was much better, really!" "Oh stop, you're goin...