Dracula, politicans and life in Romania

Brasov 11/6/07

Perched above a small cemetery in the Calvinist church guesthouse, I am watching two men hauling buckets of dirt up the steep steps toward the yard. It’s night and they’re working by lamplight while snow falls into the new grave. The in-town plots are so close and so old I wonder how there’s room for one more. “Probably stacking them one on top of another” is Karen’s answer. We are in Brasov, Romania in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and a few miles from “Dracula’s Castle”. Actually, Vlad the Impaler only spent the night here at Bran Castle and it turns out he wasn’t a blood sucking bat either but a tyrant with a big, sharpened stick.

Learning something of the history around here is similar. I hear one story and then another version seems to contradict the first. The only thing that might be agreed on is that it’s been hard, even gruesome to live here through the 20th century. The Hungarian/Romanian border moved over the heads of the people no less then three times in twenty years and then was closed off for fifty more behind the Iron Curtain. The three large ethic groups remaining, (Romanian, Hungarian and Gypsy), speak different languages and somewhat, sometimes don’t seem to trust each other. There’s a long history of backstabbing and bad blood.

My new friend Oliver Kiss is the editor of the Hungarian language newspaper in Cluj Napoca, Romania. He explained it with a joke. “A Hungarian and a Romanian are friends for twenty years. One day one of them says, “I can’t be your friend anymore for what your family did to mine in the revolution of 1821.” “But that was more then 150 years ago!” says his friend. “Yes well, I just heard about it yesterday!”

“… the executions, torture and reprisals that took place on both sides are enough to turn sympathy into a simmering hatred of an enemy that at one time was a fellow countryman. This kind of hatred can continue for generations.”

“I don’t like Canadian’s or Austrians. They say they’re easy-going but they’re boring”, so says Mihai. I’ve invited him for coffee in Budapest to ask him about traveling in Romania. We met on couchsurfing.com where I read in his profile that he has traveled extensively in the Balkans and is an avid music collector. He’s gruff, opinionated and easily offended by the owner of the restaurant who offers some suggestions of his own on our itinerary. “I am Hungarian but not as Hungarian as him” the restaurateur scoffs back and we are caught in the middle of a rapid exchange of insults in a language we don’t understand. The rest of the night Mihai discredits the man whenever possible. This sort of thing, on various levels, plays out over and again as we travel through Hungary and Romania. While everyone is relieved to be living free of the communist regime the different languages and ethnicity sometimes breeds nationalistic extremity. There is a tension and a fear that someone, some neighbor even, might take their identity away...again.

Comments

[Mom & Dad]

Hi Hon,

Wonderful to receive your's and Karen's blogs and hear about your fabulous journey.

Love, Mom and Dad

[Roz]

Sounds exotic and a real eye-opener! My grade school friend is Hungarian - parents immigrated - and, ps, she's a fabulous cook. Enjoy the warmer climes....we leave Dec 21 to spend Cmas in Salzburg, Munich and cruise from Passau, to Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, docking in Emmersdorf. Lots of warm clothes!...hugs, rozzie

[Dányi Dániel]

hi Lisa & Karen,
great to see youre still having a time and on the move.
(as far as I know, the Vlad owes some of his notoriety to an early woodprint newsletter comissioned by King Mátyás of Hungary, a sort of demonizing political media-hack.)
keep writing, I'll be keeping an eye on this blog.
high five from Bp!
D.