Myths, legends, half-truths and lies. It’s all a question of spin of course, and how good a storyteller you are. Romanians, when they have the cards stacked in their favour, are superb storytellers. Indeed, for a country that is often accused of being unable to project a positive image of itself, Romania does well on the myth front. Sit on a Romanian long-distance train in a carriage with a couple of foreign visitors, an English-speaking Romanian, and listen to some of the rubbish that the Romanian will come out with, well aware that his captive audience knows too little about Romania to contradict him. Two myths in particular get a regular airing.
Firstly there is the claim that no Romanian Jews were killed during the Holocaust. “They were all protected, left alone, or helped to escape,” the myth runs. The Yad Vashem Centre for Holocaust Research disagrees, stating that between 271,000 and 286,000 Romanian Jews were killed. Remember that the next time somebody tells you otherwise. Certainly the Romanian authorities do appear to be remembering, however slowly, and spurred into action by the European Union and by individual efforts such as Andrew Begg’s excellent documentary on Romania’s Holocaust screened last year on Pro TV. Alas it may be some time yet before the average Romanian, especially of the older generation, accepts responsibility for so many Jewish deaths.
The second myth you will hear is the absurd idea that during the 1920s and 1930s Bucharest was known as the ‘Paris of the East’. If I had a leu greu (i.e. hard ROL, the redenominated Romanian currency soon to be introduced) for every time I had heard that myth I’d be publishing my own newspaper as opposed to writing in somebody else’s.
Now, besides writing and researching newspaper columns, I am also about to begin researching and writing a guide book to Romania for a well-known UK publisher. Having spent much of the past few years writing guide books to various other parts of Europe, I am almost childishly excited at the prospect of visiting the all too many places in Romania that I have yet to see, as well as revisiting some of my favourite spots.
The first task in such an endeavour is to work out where in Romania it is essential for a visitor to go. Here, Romania is unique in Europe, and one of only a few places in the world, in that its capital does not make the essential list. For as important as Bucharest is, it remains an ugly, dirty, disorganised mess, where civic pride is non-existent. And, to dispel the myth that it was once the Paris of the East, it has always been thus. The idea that Bucharest was an architectural gem until the bulldozers destroyed everything and created a concrete hell in the 1980s is as absurd as the idea that no Romanian Jews were killed during the war.
Walter Starkie, travel writer without compare who traversed much of Europe in his jalopy in the 1930s, remarked when arriving in Bucharest, in 1933, that “I was unable to see any beauty… and I only saw dirt and squalor everywhere.” Hardly reminiscent of fin-de-siecle Paris. Starkie does later concede that Calea Victoriei vaguely reminded him of “a Paris boulevard in miniature”, though whether that can be taken as a compliment or not is up to the reader to decide. Certainly, it hardly forms a sound basis for the myth that Bucharest was the Paris of the East.
Last year the black American actor Wesley Snipes briefly visited Bucharest to film some scenes for one of those forgettable action films he stars in. As Romania plays host so infrequently to real stars, second-raters like Snipes are feted, and his every word lapped up by a desperate media. A gentleman, Snipes told the press pack what they wanted to hear: “Yes, I really like Romania, it is a beautiful country; Bucharest is a city of fabulous architecture; I hope to return some day.” This was reported on Romania’s increasingly dumbed-down news bulletins as though some Supreme Being had given Romania and Bucharest its blessing. The fact that Snipes was merely offering platitudes to his hosts was ignored. The fact that Snipes is as well qualified to offer architectural critiques as Lord Rogers is of making a Hollywood blockbuster was lost in the milieu. Clearly, he had been driven around for ten minutes, told by some interpreter that Bucharest was once the Paris of the East, and swallowed every word. Why not, he hardly knows any different. Those of us that do, however, have a duty to challenge what we are told.
And that is why the medieval cities of Transilvania, the Fagaras and Bucegi mountain ranges, and the painted monasteries of Moldova will make my essential list. I will write at length about Bucharest, as I have done for a number of years now, but I will not pretend the Emperor is wearing new clothes. Bucharest is a vibrant capital that has a lot going for it, but its apologists should stop hiding behind an aristocratic past it doesn’t actually possess. For East of Paris it is, Paris of the East it is not.
* Craig Turp is the author of the forthcoming Berlitz Guide to Bulgaria, the Eyewitness Guide to Budapest and acts as the editor of Bucharest In Your Pocket.
ctu@inyourpocket.com