Crap Travel Pieces About Eastern Europe #76

This is beyond satire. We reproduce in full the Galveston Daily's (Texas) account of life in Romania...

Human spirit lives on in Romania

By Janice Law
Contributor

Published December 2, 2007
CONSTANTA, Romania — Villagers whispered rumors that the secret police were on their way to arrest their priest.

He had, after all, preached against the Communist dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, who did not tolerate dissent in the 1967-89 years he held this impoverished country in his iron control.

Villageers ran; gathering one by one, holding hands in a circle around their beloved priest’s home — defiantly remaining as the secret police arrived and began firing on them.

Some villagers ran to the factories where they toiled, grabbing guns kept there, and firing back at the police, who soon retreated without the outspoken cleric.

In the next days, that small 1989 uprising encouraged the downtrodden population to overthrow Ceausescu.

After a two-hour trial on Christmas day, 1989, the oafish peasant who turned on his own people was executed by firing squad, as was his wife, Elena.

Our charming 25- year old guide, Christian, saved that electrifying history for our two-hour bus ride back from Bucharest, the capital, where we spent the day before returning to the coastal city of Constanta.

We are touring Balkan countries with ports on the Black Sea. Our ship, the Nautica, is part of Oceania Cruises.

The quality of a guide is everything. A competent guide makes any trip — and Christian was the best.

A crime punishable by death was the mere act of listening to the Voice of America on the radio.

“We listened anyway. That is the only way we knew what was going on in the rest of the world,” Christian said.

“VOA gave us hope.” When he said that, I felt even more proud of America.

A network of informers working for the secret police, turning countryman against countryman, chipped away the societal structure, because no one knew who, if anyone, to trust.

“I never really, really understood what it was like to live under Communism, until I heard Christian,” one of our shipmates said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Christian told us of sporadic electricity only two to three hours a day, near-starvation subsistence with less than a kilo of meat allotted per person per month, no heat in winter — while watching a lavish parliament building constructed for, some say, $1 billion as Ceausescu’s showpiece.

The ultimate irony, since Ceausescu was not any parliament, ran Romania.

Bucharest, once called the “Paris of the East” is a shadow of its former self, because everything is very run down.

But real class never fades, and despite everything, the Communists couldn’t entirely obliterate the elegance and charm that once was.

For me, the highlight was the Patriarchal Church, with arches of darkly painted murals.

“In the end, our clergy were the only ones we trusted,” Christian said.

We were treated to folk dancing while lunching in a local restaurant. Musicians play an instrument much like a bagpipe.

We also toured the Village Museum in Herastrau Park, a collection of 300 buildings moved from regions throughout Romania to exemplify rural architecture.

Rolling past acres of yellow sunflowers, amid tiny well-kept homes, I thought how Romania, like many countries that survived dictatorships, is a testament to the indestructability of the human spirit.

That truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.

More Dogs

We at In Your Pocket have long been advocates of euthanasia programmes for the stray, wild dogs of Eastern Europe. Romania (where we have lost advertisers over the issue) and Bulgaria are particularly badly affected.

In January 2006 a Japanese man was killed in Bucharest by a stray dog. Still very little got done.

Those who continue to support the right to life of these beats might want to read this, hot from the newswires today.

Bucharest In Your Pocket is 50

Packed with stories funny and tragic (and some which are outright bizarre) of the early days at Bucharest's best city guide, from encounters with high class hookers to encounters with low class dogs, the latest issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket looks back at the first 49 issues, the first eight years of blood, sweat and dog bites.

You can download a PDF version here, or pick up a copy of the real thing in Bucharest from December 1st.

Ice Hotel Romania: Ready for a White Christmas

News reaches In Your Pocket this morning that consistently freezing temperatures over the past 10 days have facilitated an early start on construction of the Ice Hotel at Balea Lac, at an altitude of 2034 metres up in Romania's Fagaras Mountains.

The hotel - the third to be built in Romania - is nothing like as luxurious as its famous counterpart in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, but will this year feature ten spacious rooms, named after the nine planets of the solar system and... Krypton. Prices start at 178.00 leu (about €65) for a double.

As last year the hotel will also host a bar and club, and an ice church will be built in time for Orthodox Christmas, on January 7.

To reserve a room call Cabana Balea Lac on (+4)0745 07 26 02.

Go Green!

Two suggestions for heaps of family eco-fun this winter!

1. Christmas in Rosia Montana, Romania

A cause celebre for the green lobby, the poverty-stricken town of Rosia Montana in Romania’s Apuseni Mountains is the perfect destination for the environment-conscious traveler. Since an NGO made up of foreign do-gooders managed to delay the construction of a gold mine that would have regenerated the entire region, creating jobs for thousands and hope for many more, Rosia Montana will remain for the foreseeable future one of the most eco-friendly towns in the world. Most homes to do not have proper plumbing, meaning that ‘eco-toilets’ have to be used. The kids will just love having to trot down to the bottom of the garden in sub-zero temperatures to take a pee! Get them fit as they help push horses and carts out of the mud!



2. Tirana, Albania

Mismanagement of, and underinvestment in Albania’s electricity grid has left many of the country’s cities crippled by daily power cuts. What better way for the environmentally friendly traveler to show his concern for the planet than spending his holiday with an ordinary Albanian family, in the dark in an unlit, unheated apartment! Walk up 11 flights of stairs and enjoy the view over... nothing...

Romania: Clearly the place to be

Not one, but two new flights to Romania from the UK were launched this week.

Budget airline Wizz Air has launched a new service between Liverpool John Lennon Airport and Romanian capital Bucharest three times a week, potentially boosting investment prospects in the Romanian market.

Wizz Air's Natasa Kazmer said: "We are glad to expand our network from Liverpool to a new EU member state." She predicted that Romania would become the new "must-see" place of Europe, due to its good beaches, cities and picturesque countryside. Wizz Air will also be flying from Luton to Targu Mures, a city in the heartland of Romania, later in the year.

Ms Kazmer also said that travellers and investors would be able to reach the country in a short time and at an affordable price.

Blue Air, a Romanian low cost carrier, this week launched a thrice-weekly service from Bucharest to Stansted, in Essex. EasyJet will launch its Gatwick-Bucharest service on October 29. On the same day, American Airlines begins a daily flight to New York's JFK.

According to the American Automobile Association, Romania saw a seven-fold increase in the number of bookings from US tourists during summer this year.

Cricket Comes to Romania

British cricket team The Effigies were in Bucharest last week to play two matches against the Transylvania Impalers. The event marked the first time a foreign team has played members of the Transylvania Cricket Club (TCC) - formed by Romanians, Australians, Brits and Indians who are living and working in Bucharest.

The main game, on Sunday, was played at the grounds of the Romanian Rugby Federation in front of a packed-out crowd of 50 or so men and their dogs. The TCC made it a winning start for Romanian cricket, winning thanks to a fine 50 from captain Andrew Begg, and a five-wicket haul from Charlie Crocker.

EasyJet to Bucharest

EasyJet yesterday announced officially what a few of us had known for a while; it will begin flying the London Gatwick - Bucharest route in November. Tickets are on sale now, from around €70 (including taxes) return.

The question is, which airport will they be flying into? Until recently all budget airlines had been using the less than satisfactory Baneasa Airport, described in this blog as Europe's worst.

Baneasa however closed in May for major renovation - which was due to be completed on July 31st - with all flights moving to the city's main airport, Otopeni.

However, July 31st rapidly approaches and there has yet to be any confirmation that Baneasa will reopen: either on July 31st or indeed at all. Romanian newspapers have reported that while repair work on the runway was being carried out, two villas were being illegally constructed just 500 metres from the end of the runway, exactly on the spot where new radar masts were due to be erected.

Quite how nobody noticed until just a couple of days ago that the two villas, the property of two Syrians, were being built is anyone's guess. Expect this story to run.

Meantime, expect all flights to Bucharest to continue to take off and land at Otopeni.

Europe's Best Airport

Baia Mare airport in the north of Romania is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the world's busiest. One small plane from Bucharest lands each night at 10pm; it leaves for the Romanian capital again at 6am the next morning. That's it.

As a result, the staff have plenty of time on their hands. This could in most cases lead to negligence of duty, laziness, or worse. Not at Baia Mare.

In fact, given the level of personal service, I have decided to rate it Europe's best airport. I mean, where else do airport security staff look after your baby daughter while you pop off for a coffee? Where else do you receive hand written boarding passes?

Where else is your luggage carried to the plane by friendly, joking baggage handlers?

All airports should be like this.

Romanian sues God

According to Libby Purves of The Times, a convicted murderer in Romania has attempted to sue god for fraud and betrayal of trust after his prayers went unanswered. The court wouldn't have it, saying that God 'is not subject to law and does not have an address'. (The claimant had provided an address for God - the heavens - but failed to include the correct postcode.)

Red Mist

The fountains in Bucharest's Piata Unirii and all along the Centru Civic were last week given added colour. There was no announcement, and no explanation. We just woke up one morning and the water was running red, green, blue...

There are more photos here. For those who speak Romanian you will also find a suggested explanation: putting dye in the water will stop Gypsies bathing in the fountains.

Sounds like typical Romanian racism to us...

Time to call a spade a spade:easyJet is a great airline

In a desperate attempt to fly from Bucharest to Belfast and back at reasonable cost last week (to help Belfast In Your Pocket celebrate its second birthday: more on that soon) I was forced to call on the services of no fewer than three budget airlines: Romania's own Blue Air, the UK's easyJet, and Hungary's Wizzair.

Let's deal with the chaff first:

Blue Air, a Romanian private equity company which began operations in 2004, has a long history of generating bad press in the local media in Romania, mainly because of the safety record of its aircraft. Though a Blue Air plane has never been involved in a serious accident, in its early days the number of planes forced to make emergency landings was startlingly high. Lately it has been long delays that have generated bad press. I have now flown three times with Blue Air, and on each occasion I have had nothing to complain about. Planes have left promptly, and flights have been crash free.

In my experience Blue Air is an airline with a bad reputation is does not deserve. It's website needs work, and its prices are not always what could be called 'low cost,' but these are minor gripes.

Wizzair is a different matter. Don;t get me wrong: Wizz are cheap, fly a reasonably new fleet of aircraft and have a great inflight magazine that now features content from In Your Pocket... but I have taken five Wizz flights this year, and not one has departed on time (or anything close to it).

The latest mishap came at Luton on Friday: we were told to board on time, were feet away from the plane when we were told that Wizz had decided to change cabin crew... and the flight would be delayed at least an hour.

As we had already handed in our boarding passes, they had to be given back to us; they were, but in a very willy-nilly way. I got Mrs. Dumitrescu's boarding pass for example. As a result, when we did finally board, we were further delayed because two passengers were missing... and as nobody had the correct boarding pass Wizz had no idea who those passengers were. That's just amateur (though in Wizz's defence the boarding passes were returned to us by Luton Airport staff, not Wizz's).

So to easyJet. Again, everybody has different experiences with different airlines, but I have yet to hear too many complaints about easyJet's services. Their flights get delayed, just like everybody else's, but the whole easyJet experience, from reserving your ticket (on the clearest and easiest to use airline website around) through checking in to boarding is so efficient and comfortable that you don't mind so much.

And above all they are cheap. Again, might just be me but easyJet always appear to have the best prices on any of their routes. And now they are coming to Romania... only from Milan at the moment, but I am sure more services will follow. Competition for Blue Air and Wizz at last.

Americans invade Romania. Awesome!

Americans are about to hit Eastern Europe in a big way this summer. The AAA, America’s largest association of travel agents, claims that while bookings to Europe are down 2.4 per cent, booking to Eastern Europe are up 55 per cent. The stats cover booking for travel in and between June and August this year.

Romania seems to be set to cop the greatest onslaught of the yank attack, with figures showing a 700 per cent increase in American travel.

That might sound scary as American’s have a reputation of being loud-mouth, barge-arsed morons with no dress sense. Another recent survey, however, has revealed that Americans are in fact the most civil travellers, second only to the Japanese. But they’ve still got no dress sense.

Source: Travelmole (registration required).

Why Bucharest and Motor Racing do not mix

Bucharest (a city famous for its 100,000 stray dogs) tries its hand at hosting motor racing. We think it will be a one-off. This kind of thing never happens at Silverstone...

Romania's Poor Deserve Better Than This

First off, read the article, which appeared in the Guardian (where else) last week:

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2007/may/12/saturday.romania

Then tell me, have you ever read a more condescending, patronising and downright insulting article in your life?

A couple of choice quotes:

'Not much happens in the village. Depending on the season, most people are in the fields tilling or harvesting small plots of hay, oats and potatoes with horse-drawn implements handed down through generations. The most common form of transport is the horse and cart, designed to carry crops, logs, people, sheep, tools, and pretty much anything else that needs to be moved.'

'One English visitor who had a room to himself is Prince Charles, an enthusiastic patron of the trust who has bought a property in the village to be donated as a guesthouse. Following one of his visits, he wrote: "The area represents a lost past for most of us - a past in which villages were intimately linked to their landscape."'

What the area in fact represents is pitiful poverty. Most of the old Saxon villages of Southern Transylvania lack almost every basic amenity that we take for granted: running water, sewerage, reliable electricity, telephones, paved roads, good schools, public transport... the list is endless. The reason that such a past has been lost for 'us' is because we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to drag ourselves out of such poverty and move on. For reasons many (war and communism being just two) much of Romania has not had this opportunity, until now.

Alas for Romanians, groups like the Mihai Eminescu Trust have plans for them that do not involve sewerage, running water, paved roads; indeed, anything that may involve growth, and development, is a no-no:

'Patrick Holden of the Soil Association, a patron of the Mihai Eminescu Trust, suggests the old Saxon ways of Transylvania could be a model for the development of green agriculture throughout Europe.'

Notice that Patrick Holden is not a local. Patrick Holden (nor the author of the article, Gavin Bell) does not live in a house that lacks running water. I doubt he has to make do with a horse and cart either. Most Romanians in the region are not so lucky.

The irony of this is that people like Holden and Bell (no doubt both from very comfortable backgrounds) can take such a mystical view of poor rural villages precisely because of the development they now want to desperately prevent taking place in Southern Transylvania.

The realisation that the 'happy peasants' whose lifestyles they now seek to preserve may actually not particularly enjoy subsistence farming has yet to hit them...

Beer Today, England Tomorrow

The BBC reports on how Polish beers Tyskie and Lech are taking England by storm, and how Romania's Ursus could follow...

Be afraid, be very afraid...

Bottled beers take Pole position

Romania and Moldova

Some excellent articles have appeared in the international press lately about relations between Romania and Moldova (a country we hope to Pocket soon) and the thorny issue of Transnistria. Here is my pick of the best:

EU visas for sale in Moldova (Tiraspol Times)
Moldova Diary (Economist web edition)
A Deal Over Transnistria (Economist print edition)

Happy reading.

Starbucks Comes to Romania

BUCHAREST, Romania-(Business Wire) - April 18, 2007 - Starbucks Coffee Company (NASDAQ:SBUX) and its European joint venture partner, Marinopoulos Holding SARL, today celebrated the opening of the first Starbucks store in Bucharest. The coffee shop is located in Plaza Romania one of Bucharest's premiere shopping malls, on Timisoara Boulevard.

"Bucharest is an ideal location for Starbucks entry into Central and Eastern Europe," said Martin Coles, president of Starbucks Coffee International. "We're looking forward to sharing the Starbucks Experience with our Romanian customers who have a deep appreciation for great coffee and a rich coffeehouse culture."

"We are delighted to open our first store in Romania," added Cliff Burrows, president of Starbucks Coffee Europe, Middle East, and Africa. "It represents the first step of our strategic expansion into Central and Eastern Europe, and demonstrates our commitment to growth in the region."

Starbucks has extended its successful relationship with its Greek joint venture partner, Marinopoulos Holding, to create Marinopoulos Coffee Company III SRL, which will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the business in Romania.

"We are thrilled to share the Starbucks Experience with Romanian customers at our first stores in Bucharest," said Panos Marinopoulos, president, Marinopoulos Holding SARL. "We are confident that our quality coffees and unique coffeehouse offerings will be welcomed by the people of Romania." Marinopoulos already partners with Starbucks in several other markets including Austria, Cyprus, Greece and Switzerland, and operates world-class brands like Carrefour, Marks & Spencer, The Beauty Shop/Sephora, FNAC and Dia.

Customers in Bucharest will now have an opportunity to enjoy Starbucks high quality coffee, legendary customer service and the comfortable "third place" environment. "We are delighted to open our first stores in Bucharest which will bring new career opportunities for Romanians with one of the most recognized brands in coffee. We will feature premium-quality coffees, beverages and food, and a sophisticated, welcoming environment where customers can connect with friends and family,"said Yannis Kalfakakos, managing director for Marinopoulos Coffee Company III SRL.

Marinopoulos Holding SARL is one of Greece's leading retail, commercial and industrial groups, representing Carrefour Marinopoulos S.A. (joint venture with Carrefour), Sephora Marinopoulos S.A. (joint venture with LVMH) and the Marks & Spencer franchise. Marinopoulos Holding SARL is also active in the industrial sector, through FAMAR S.A., one of the biggest European pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies.

Country Life

There was a time in my life when I used to occasionally buy Country Life, that printed guardian of English tradition and privilege. Many years ago polo was still a minority sport (the Queen's Cup Final not being televised on Sky Sports, heaven forbid), and reports of top games were found in just a few publications. Country Life was one of them.

In those days, when I was just a student, I often thought of what I might do with my life; what tasks and endeavours might wait in my path to some kind of achievement.

Of all the things I ever thought I might have to do, or be asked to do, however, I never, ever, for one moment considered the possibility that I might be interviewed by the mighty Country Life.

Well yesterday, it happened. Country Life came calling (on questions of buying property in Romania and Croatia).

Like most In Your Pocket editors I have answered my fair share of questions from journalists: it comes with the job. IYP is ahead of the game in most cities and so we are often called on for our insider knowledge.

But of all the publications I have ever spoken to (or written for), from The Times to La Republicca, I have never felt quite so gratified as yesterday: the lovely, polite girl from Country Life made my day. She has promised to quote me and give IYP a plug. Now I simply can't wait to see the magazine. I mean, my name, my name, in Country Life!

What a super Easter surprise.

Romania Goes Green

In order to conform with EU norms, Romania's parliament this week rushed-through legislation that will require, from April 1, all old electronic hardware and appliances to be disposed of at special collection centres. Here they will be recycled or destroyed under environmentally friendly conditions.

There's just one problem.

Romania does not have any electronic hardware disposal centres operational yet.