Back to the Future: Romanian Style

Let’s go back to Bucharest, 1994. Packs of dogs roam the streets. Unseasonably hot, there’s no air conditioning. Many taxi drivers are from Moldova and navigate only with passenger direction. Cell phones are non-existent and landlines scarce. Many times I pick up a ringing phone and hear nothing. Are we being watched? I wondered. My support of my husband’s research into the Romanian Communist Party archives was a classic travel adventure.

My "trips" to and from Romania began in 1990. Vladimir Tismaneanu (my then future husband) moved to Washington, DC. Scores of visitors from Romania followed who stayed with us for dinner if not for days. I joked that we’d opened Hotel Bucharest, Washington. By summer 1991, I’d stayed at the real Hotel Bucharest. Once a "parentless" toddler wandered into our room. Another time, I escaped knife-wielding, female pickpockets. While the Hotel’s maids sewed up my bag, I complained: "I’ve been to Egypt and Israel and lived a year in Poland: Romania is not East-Central Europe. Romania is Middle Eastern Europe."

In Spring 2004, I didn’t revisit Hotel Bucharest, but it’s added a Casino (as have so many other hotels). Hotel Triumf, where we stayed with our son, Adam, doesn’t have a casino. Still, on the first night, I ranted: "The hotel retains all the charm of 1970s really existing socialism!" But our accommodations at a former party hotel fittingly followed the launch in the United States of Vladimir’s Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (University of California Press). Happily, I show my 8-year-old that Triumf had a "Western" evaluation: the Let’s Go sign on the front door promised clean bathrooms.

Public lavatory cleanliness is an indicator of a society on an upswing. It was true for 1990s Poland and appears true for twenty-first century Romania. The Director of The Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Dr. Dinu C. Giurescu, explained that as soon as he took up his post he visited the museum’s toilets and ordered their modernization. The evidence of Dr. Giurescu’s leadership in the museum is remarkable. I reminisced with him about 1994 when docents followed me around switching lights on and off due to the shortage of light bulbs. Now, practices that are common in the US: formal classroom space, web pages in multiple languages, and community outreach are the norm. The Museum’s annual three-day "Palm Sunday" Fair showcases peasants’ crafts and folk art. I purchased clay turtle whistles for Adam’s classmates from a craftsman dressed in peasant garb complete with a cell phone hanging around his neck. The museum has a modern look and feel and Romania is not far behind.

Our first full day in Bucharest was a Sunday, so we visited the Carrefour mall. The building is far larger than its parking lot can accommodate. While it’s full of boutiques selling leather goods and clothes, there’s also a sumptuous grocery-liquor store and food court with McDonalds and KFC. An innovation to "malling" is that we picked up a shopping cart as we entered and took it store to store! True to technology-based commerce the credit and debit card system also crashed requiring patrons to pay with cash.

Mini-malls and small shops are everywhere, so I’m stumped that some Bucharest natives can’t tell me where to buy film. They offer to call a friend who might have some. Instead, I persuade my sister-in-law, Rodica, who’s in Bucharest for the first time in years, to walk around our host’s neighborhood. We find multiple shops. I buy film. Rodica changes money.

Adam is delighted to be a millionaire. Money with too many zeros, again reminds me of 1990s Poland. Our rented, pay-as-you-go cell phone calculates the time in dollars, but needs cards that cost several hundred thousand lei. I tell Vladimir: next visit put more money down at the airport, so we don’t have to worry about phone cards. After failed attempts to reload the minutes and a couple kind English-speakers at Connex, I use the phone like a native. Later I regret adding minutes, when various reporters call to interrupt our trip to Brasov.

Unlike in 1994, when few knew us, being chased by reporters is normal because Vladimir and President Iliescu have launched their book of "Dialogues" on the end of history, i.e., Romanian Communist history. What is unexpected is the fate of several friends and former guests from Hotel Bucharest, Washington. The quiet Christina Ilinca is now a feminist civic activist. She and her daughter kept me company while Vladimir was in the archives. Then her young daughter wanted to be an actress, but today the teenager prefers sociology. I understand her goal: there’s much to study in Bucharest.

I want to give her and other young Romanians advice: study urban planning and economic development. New housing and restoration is rampant. Many apartment buildings are in desperate need of façade and elevator repairs. We visit friends who have built homes in the new suburbs, and find no street space exists for visitors to park. A few owners link private property to community development, but many owners won’t cooperate with their neighbors on the maintenance of common or public spaces.

Lech Walesa’s comments about 1990s Poland describe Romania today: Communism turned the nation’s fish tank into fish soup and democracy must reverse the process. Romania’s tank is a quirky blend: past and future, feast and famine, fantasy and fear. Meanwhile in Bucharest a public clock counts down the days left before the nation joins the European Union. I listen as friends question Romania’s readiness for Europe: too much corruption, too much bullying by and bullying of journalists. I want to say: Remember 9/11? Remember 3/11? No one, no country is ever prepared for the future. Yet modernity or post-modernity or a resurgence of a vicious past arrives and there’s not much to do except go with the flow, keep your head and spirits up, and avoid the undertow.

Mary F. Sladek lives in Washington, DC and is working on a book, The Washington Parent Syndrome.