Like a Frenzied Fish--My week in Romania at the Appalachian/Carpathian International Conference

by Anthony Sadler

This post is Anthony's reflection of his recent trip to Romania for the Appalachian/Carpathian International Conference at Transilvania University, Brasov. He went as a US delegate and presented a paper entitled “Response and Consequence: The Asheville Flood of 1916” in front of scholars from all over the world studying Appalachian and Carpathian mountains.

At the Bucharest airport lobby, a half-dozen Romanians waited several hours to haul our tardy American convoy to their mountains.

Bogdam Petrescu wildly drove a near pristine Volkswagen coupe from Bucharest to Brasov. The car made him seem wealthy, which made him insecure. “It’s my father’s,” he sheepishly said. He drove it like a frenzied fish, which was moderate for his country. “Do you like The Script,” he asked before playing their latest CD. “Do you like Gotham?” he continued. I never expected to be talking about Family Guy with the first Romanian I’d met.

Me and an accidental friend, Castle Bran, Romania

He has pointy, full eyebrows, sandy hair, and striking round eyes with never-ending pursed lips. He is handsome by American standards, but he probably has no idea. Or, at least he failed to act accordingly. His excitement toward American culture, particularly his love of DC superheroes and Yankee TV, gave us the first inclination of America’s importance in Romania. From MTV to Hotel Transylvania 2, America’s number one export has found a home in the Carpathians. While at first petrified, throughout my stay the familiar, even Minions, made me feel at home.

Romanian accents are the envy of Eastern Europe. It has the stop and start tone of Russian with the rolling tongue of the romances; like Italian with a touch of French. The language is distinctly romantic with a dash of German. Knowing Italian or Spanish helps, but Romanian has a beauty of its own.

“This is the smell of Ploiesti,” Bogdam explained. Petrol refineries filled the air and the Volkswagen with the distinct scent of Carbon Monoxide as we sped passed the largest toy store I’d ever seen. In America, most pollution is scentless, invisible. Just as I was about to sneeze, we were out of the city. The gas circulated and exited through the A/C as the blur of neon Coca-Cola signs filled the vehicle with light. I never smelled anything else like it in Romania.

Like most of his countrymen, Bogdam’s English was better than good but not quite excellent. English became more popular after the revolution against communists in December of 1989. Pre- or post-revolution is the most distinct demarcation in Romania. We simply have no modern equivalent for that event in America. Romanians now start learning English in kindergarten. By high school, most are fluent in 3 or 4 tongues.

Bogdam became a great friend during my trip and taught me a good deal about his country and his personal history, but at first I was too enamored with foreign experiences. I was too wrapped up in my Americanness and the constant challenge of the “association game.” Carrefour is the Romanian Wal-Mart? It’s embarrassing, I know. I simply could not help myself. I commented on how relatively cheap goods were and began many phrases with “In the states…”

The birdshit-covered produce at the market boggled me. “If the water is unsafe to drink,” I asked Bogdam, “then what do you wash the fruit with?” “Water,” he replied. I failed my new friends, I fear, by judging their country according to the ridiculous standards of mine.

His girlfriend Iuliana spoke better English. As a child of a Yankophile and lover of Bon Jovi, I was not surprised. They were not blindly enamored with the “great American visitors,” as other Americans might insist. They maintained a curious reticence that led to questions deeper than most Americans ask about themselves.  Like, “Why is our banking system so messed up?” Why does an explanation about absurd policies and practices typically begin or end with, “well, a company wanted______?”  I felt like I was trying to paint water. Still, Romanians seemed more concerned with their own reality than others’.

Bullet holes in the Modorama, Old City Centre, Brasov, Romania

On December 13, 1989, Brasovian citizens revolted against the Romanian communist regime. Their bullets sliced through buildings and bodies and ended decades of totalitarian rule. My Romanian friends are among the first post-revolution generation. I tried to wrap my head around the reality of living in a nation so soon liberated. They struggle to understand what standing in line for bread that never came was like for their parents. They fall somewhere between the first generation after the Great Depression and those born just after the Second World War. Pushed and pulled, they must somehow balance opportunities not available to their parents in a time of jubilance for the new republic.

Two blocks from the Brasov post office sits a park. In the center is a monument and it maintains the look of a typical square, lined with buckeye trees. Along the north fence a row of tombstones stand uniformed in white marble. They have photos of the dead above the date of their deaths, always 1989. These are the fallen of the revolution, ages 12 to 72. Romanians do not want their visitors to bypass this sacred place. Stationed within the tourism center of the city, those dead men, women, and children occupy a central role in their history, memory, and identity.

Not all Romanians feel comfortable in the Republic. Social mobility arrived but is unfair and falls along financial lines. Political power is often obtained through corruption and politicians work to serve their own needs first. Some miss the unity between Romanians. They may have suffered, but they did so together. Family traditions crumble under commercial autonomy, and some Romanians wonder whether communism was so bad after all.

Some buildings still have bullet holes. Sections are set aside within frames in memoriam. Within the frame, decades of grime surround the relics of destruction like a photo—captured in time. The nation is moving forward, but they are keenly aware of the risk of forgetting their past. This keeps Romania bound between tradition and progress, the old and the new. It is what makes them so special. It also makes the Carpathians so dissimilar from the Appalachians. There is an element of choice in their culture and a lack of mutual exclusivity. Having some of the fastest Wi-Fi in the world does not mean they had to forfeit their heritage. In the remote village of Magura, horses pull wooden wagons with car axles followed by juveniles on dirt bikes. The newest generation embraces tourism and operates pensions while others stack hay according to tradition—with scythes and community help. Traditional wooden homes with incredibly beautiful and ornate decorations uphold TV satellites that beam The Nanny into their living rooms. At la Ciocolata, a shack, a family serves Romanian plum moonshine called tuica (pronounced ts-weeka, with a tsunami-styled tis!) from recycled Fanta bottles alongside Coke and chips. Everywhere tradition and modernity coexist. Is this a transition or equilibrium?

Haystack, Magura Village, Brasov, Romania

I have a fantasy of returning to Romania to observe and report change. Entire cultures disappear under the guise of progress. People become lost in the pretext of modernity. They mislay their footing and the beastly mainstream sweeps them away, unromantically, into the arms of sameness and saneness or sensational normality.
Will Romania end up like us? I have no clue, but I hope not.

I thought I came to witness a world apart. Romanian visions of living history museums crisscrossed my mind. Frankly, I’d gone to see a people struggling on the land, working harder than deserved, like Adam and Eve after the fall: exiled from Eden. Instead, I found inspiration. Optimism coursed through me. Contrary to popular belief, America is not the best model for freedom. Romanians prove that we are wrong and right. We were right to take matters into our own hands against the Empire to gain comfort, but we are wrong to expect it at no cost. Freedom is not free and history is cost/benefit analysis in narrative form.

Judging from the likes of my fellow conference attendees, there is an army waiting to guard the Romanians from this fate. Some are more determined than others, but the message was clear: protect what is left. Coming from Appalachians, Carpathians should heed that advice. The mountain cultures of the Eastern United States long ago fell to the cadent call of capitalist prosperity. Cultures bled out and formed puddles of homogeneity. Industrialists raped, reaped, and rendered the mountains to remnants. Its people were set aside, where they remain, for entertainment purposes only, like the Hatfield and McCoys Dinner Show.

The Hollywoodification of Romania

Dracula is a Carpathian mountain stereotype. Romanians resent this image like Appalachians detest the “hillbilly.” They defend the honor of Vlad Tepes more than 500 years after he impaled thousands of his enemies in Transilvania. Still, they sell kitschy baubles like Dracula snow globes or Cabernet Sauvignon to pay the bills. I went to Castle Bran and paid my thirty Lei, the backdrop for Stoker’s horror masterpiece, where Vlad never slept. Our Romanian friends apologized for its disingenuousness. Surrounded by a tourist marketplace set up much like a flea market, the Castle had an entire room dedicated to the Dracula story. It is a place that knows its place in Romania, and they are more than capable of capitalizing on those blurred historical lines. Apparently my new apologetic friends have never seen Dollywood.

Castle Bran, Romania

Romania and I had a weeklong affair that bordered on the shallow but teetered into substance. It was a rocky start. I came for the stereotypes: espresso, pastries, and peasants.

It was like starting in the middle of a great book. I tried, but probably failed, to grasp the context. I left just when it got interesting. Its claws dug into my side and left a mark. Bogdam, Iuliana, Magura, and my new stateside friends, created a fresh world for me that is bound by time and experience; temporary yet meaningful. They, and Romania, seem fictional to me now precisely because of how fantastic they are.

These thoughts, and this whole experience, are selfish. Could it have been any other way? Is a truly foreign experience possible? From the moment I landed in Romania I knew my time was limited. I took from that place and those people a sweetness of life. I gained so much that I will probably never fully comprehend. My only realistic hope is that, in return, my stinginess was not so apparent. And, I hope I left a little of me somewhere along those ancient streets, the piazzas, or the uneven steps of Romania.

Blogger Bio:
Anthony received his BA in History from the University of Georgia in 2013 and is a second-year graduate student at Appalachian State University. He was born in Tampa, Florida, but lives in Boone with his wife and two cats. He is currently in the research stage for his Master’s thesis, tentatively titled “River of Sorrow, Land of the Sky: the Great Asheville Flood of 1916.” In general, he studies natural disasters within capitalist societies of the 19^th and 20^th centuries with a specific interest in how urban centers responded and learned from events and their long-term cultural, social, economic, and environmental effects.