Friday, April 29, 2011
Bucharest, Romania
Up late, relaxing, down for breakfast at 9:00am, then the tour bus arrived at 10:00. We had a small van with a driver and a guide, all to ourselves. A slow tourism day in Bucharest I suppose, early in the season and all that.
The tour was to be four hours long but we were back to the hotel just after 1:00pm, and then up to the room to watch the Royal Wedding. Jan is doing that now, as I type.
The tour was interesting, Romania is home to 22 million people, 10% of which live in Bucharest. Prior to 1989, and throwing out Caucescu, Romania was the bread basket of eastern Europe, exporting masses of grains each year together with meat and lumber. The overthrow of the dictator created a problem as people were given back their land and homes in the country and city, but didn't know what to do with them. Some farmers did well, most did not, and Romania is still to this day a net importer of grains since 1989. Both Ford and Renault build cars in factories here, and export them to the world. And there is always Ploesti, producing oil and gas since before the Nazis moved in to seize it during WWII.
It is not my intention to pass judgement on a country, or a people, I can't and shouldn't do that. Jan of course would never do that either, even less than me. But both of us have found that being here and seeing the place from closer up makes us slightly depressed. Our experience of our tour guide left us feeling all the more so. She was so defensive, and blaming everything on the prior regime that ended in 1989, a long time ago. Also, she raised the topic of 'the gypsies', and how Romania was disliked by her neighbors for being home to them. She singled out Italy, under Berlusconi (whom she regards as a lecherous old fool) and France under Sarkozy as being particularly blameful of Romania, and "Romania's Gypsies" whom they claim are a plague and a blight on honest society. I hadn't heard that, but she was quick to point out that when I did, the claims were wrong. Those, and other comments here and there about how Romania had suffered, were not entirely appropriate for a tour guide and was too much like editorializing for us.
Anyway, we were happy when the tour ended and we gave the guide and the driver a nice trip and wished them a better future, then came upstairs to watch the wedding. A late dinner in the hotel, and an early night. Not many smiles on people's faces here, and its time to go although we are glad for the experience of being here.
We called our friend Dan from the cruise but did not reach him.
