Today I got up, had a little brekkie, got little work done then headed out to the airport. It was very relaxed, except when they stopped me because of my metal AK-47 keychain. I got on the plane after people were budging in line as could only be expected in this part of the world.
I landed in Romania, got an Uber because Bolt (an alternative Balkan Uber) didnʼt work, and headed to the hostel. My driver did not speak very much English, which was fine as I was enraptured with my surroundings. Bucharest so far was not what I was expecting. It was absolutely beautiful. Apparently, the location of my hostel was not on a driving street. Anyway, I got out and thanked my driver and then divined my way to the hostel. I was shown my room, a co-ed 10-topper of open bunk beds. I then locked up all my stuff, cleaned my travel vest that got undisclosed shit all over it (probably from rubbing against an unclean plane seat armrest) and headed out.
As it was later and I was hungry, I got dinner at a nearby restaurant and then walked around town. I then went into the subway and saw a whole bunch of kiosks. This reminded me of when I was in Russia and was told these little stores were the birthplace of Eastern Bloc capitalism at the end of the Cold War. 
I then walked to the end of a nearby street where I saw a statue of Romulus and Remus suckling from a she-wolf, reminding me that Romania took its name from being a Roman colony and why they speak a Romance language. I continued on and saw not only a huge shopping mall but fountains that lined a large thoroughfare as far as the eye could see. I then headed back towards my hostel but decided to grab a nightcap at Skybar, a local rooftop cafe, before I turned in for the night.
I slept very well which was surprising considering all the music and noise that was happening outside my door. I was in a touristy section with a window facing the pedestrian thoroughfare. There were shitty Ed Sheeran covers in broken English until 3 in the morning. But it was a new day.
I left the hostel and headed to the post office to mail some postcards to my nephews. After which I needed some brekkie, so I went and got a chocolate croissant and some tea at the Victoria Cafe. Across the street was their history museum and so I went to soak it in.
Like the rest of Europe at the time after the fall of Rome, Romania was a collection of principalities and city-states trading and protecting one another. Romania did not become an organized country until 1918. But that was short-lived as it was first swallowed up by the Nazis and soon after, the Soviets. In the back of the museum was a very strange exhibit regarding a tower in Rome. It was a massive stone structure that went up three stories. In the basement, there was the treasury museum that had lots of treasure (obviously,) including the crown jewels. What I found interesting was a sentimental toy exhibit including a Barbie doll in the likeness of Nadia Comeninci, the 5 time Olympic gold medal gymnast.
After the museum, I headed to lunch and had a fantastic four-course meal at a restaurant called Taverna Covaci for $8. Being heavily influenced by the Germans, there was a lot of meat on the table, which I loved. The meal made me sleepy as did the beer and wine, so I went back and took a little nap. When I awoke, I met my new Transylvanian roommate, who seemed weird, but nice. Everyone and everything is so sarcastic here and I love it. My waiter last night said he was charging me $3,000 for a plate of pasta, there are all these unspirational signs around the hostel and on beer labels and my new roommate really played up his Transylvanianess, mimicking having fangs and fluttering like a bat. I guess it comes from their dark history.
I did some research to find out where a personal hero’s house in Bucharest was and as I was walking to the restroom of the hostel I saw a poster advertising a free Communist History walking tour. It just happened to be by where I needed to meet my tour group for the next day. So, I set out to find it. When I did, I took respite at a nearby cafe and I had a beer next to this impossibly gorgeous blond and waited for my tour to start.
Much like all my tours, I learned things in rapid succession. To avoid a civil war from happening amongst the princes of Romania, the powers that were decided to bring in a foreigner to be their king. Which was a practice I never heard of before I got here. That king was the German Carol I. Flashing forward, the first oil refinery in Europe was in Romania. Again, something I did not know is that Romania is one of the most blessed countries in Europe with oil deposits. Which proved interesting when the second World War came about. Hitler promised Romania parts of the neighboring country of Moldova if they gave him oil. Had they not, it would have been that much harder for Hitler to invade as many countries as he did before he got access to oil in the Eurasian steppes. A very high percentage of the Nazi war machine’s oil came from Romania during this time. This was also how the latter Communist leader of the country, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was able to spend so lavishly during his reign while his people starved. He rebuilt Bucharest in his image after an earthquake destroyed it in 1977, the first for a European Capital in peacetime. The astronomical debts he accrued saw shelves bare and services lacking even for Communist standards as he was using Romanian goods to try and pay his debt holders. This lead to a Revolution in 1989 ending with his speedy trial and execution. During that Revolution in Bucharest, 1400 people were killed in the street by the armed forces. They erected a monument that looks like an impaled potato that perplexes locals and foreigners alike. However, the ground underneath the sculpture is made of cut-down trees in a cross to recognize the many young people who were killed during the Revolution.
It was here where our guide, a young man about my age, started talking about what his life was like under the regime. When he was going to school, one day he suddenly noticed he did not have fruit in his lunch bag. As he was walking out the door, he asked loudly, why can’t he have any fruit to eat. This display was in the family’s crowded apartment building. His father dragged him by the arm back into the apartment and slammed the door, pushing his seven-year-old son up against it. He got down on his knees and told his child to never say anything like that again especially in public. The guide confessed this was the first time in his life he felt fear. It wasn’t until after the Revolution that his father apologized to him for this incident and said that someone from their building was taken earlier in the week for making counter-revolutionary statements. He was afraid that he would be next if someone heard his son criticizing the government and he would not be able to take care of his family.
We saw the place where Ceausescu made his last speech and the memorial that was laid at its base. As we were walking, our guide discussed the political conniving of Ceusescu. Even though officially “religion was the opiate of the masses” Ceausescu knew that it was still an incredibly powerful force in people’s lives in his country. Because of this, after the earthquake that he saw as a chance to rebuild, he took several hundreds of years old churches in Bucharest, and instead of tearing them down, he had engineers move them. You would think that he would decide to move them piece by piece. Instead, I shit you not, he put these buildings on rails, moved them out of the path of his planned sprawling boulevards, and enclosed them with other buildings so as to not be seen. They were only accessible through alleys and corridors.
We continued on, and the guide and I had a little discussion about my personal hero as we took a break in the park. The guide said that his books made a lot of stuff up. At least he knew what I was talking about. Apparently, my hero’s books were released only in serial bites behind this Iron Curtain, and chapters were passed from family to family in secret.
Walking on, we reached the Romanian parliament building. Up until recently, it was the second-largest building in the world by square footage, only after the Pentagon. It was then, I chatted with another member of my tour that was former Army on a pension. He helped me define what I was doing on my adventure because he was doing it too. He called it urban hiking; walking through cities and seeing sites.
The tour ended and I slipping the guide 10 Leu (the Romanian currency even though they are in the EU,) and I walked back to my hostel as night fell. I got back to the room and was freaked the fuck out by my new roommate (not the Transylvanian) as he was sitting in the darkroom alone with his phone illuminating just his face. He introduced himself as Axl and we started chit-chatting. Apparently, he fancied himself a dating coach. So we started talking about women and I shared with him my thoughts on why there were so many gorgeous women in current and former communist countries. He told me that was very dark, but liked it. 
I then went a washed-up. Coming back to the room, I looked out the huge bay windows down onto the pedestrian street and noticed a man that, for all intents and purposes, was a 100% real vampire; sitting motionless in a long leather jacket and sunglasses watching the people pass by as if on the hunt. I hurried away from the window as he looked up at me. I then called it a night. At least as much as I could as I woke up periodically throughout the night as people came into the room and started talking and banging around. Oh well, hostel life.
I got up the next morning and headed over to the pickup point for my tour to Transylvania. My other tour mates arrived and a Mercedes van pulled up. We headed out of town as I took a nap. There was a rest stop along the way where everything was 5 Leu ($1.25) including Red Bulls! There was an incredibly gorgeous barista that winked when she handed me my Red Bulls and croissant. I knew it was going to be a good day. We all piled into the van and headed deep into the Carpathian mountains with Phill Collins and Elton John guiding the way.
Our first stop for the day was Peles Castle. Although it looked more like an alpine mansion than a castle. Which I guess served its purpose as it was built for Carol I, the German prince that became king of Romania. He was 27 when he took the throne and a bit of a weapon collector, a man after my own heart. His prized possession was a noble decapitating sword from the 3rd Century. There were many international styles at this house like the summer palace in Bangkok, and for the same reason as the king was unable to travel too far outside of the country without usurpers plotting.
After Peles, we headed to the town of Brasov. We got a little walking tour showing us the fortress walls. We saw the String Street, one of the tightest roads in the world which was meant as a shortcut through the town for firemen. We saw the Black Church that got its name from the great fire that turned the white walls to black. We then separated for lunch. I sat at one restaurant for 10 mins as waiters were dodging me. I left the restaurant and went to another. At the new one, there were four waitresses just standing around and gabbing. Finally, I got someoneʼs attention and made my order.
The final stop of the day, suddenly as the sun hid from us behind thick clouds, was Bran Castle. While the name might not sound familiar, the castle’s occupant has international fame, or infamy depending on who you look at it.
Vlad III, Vlad Tepes, Vlad The Impaler, or Dracula was the ruler of the province of Wallachia, one of many that would become part of Romania. Apparently, the practice of the time was alternating the power. He ruled this place on three separate occasions starting in 1448 and ending in 1477. This was a tumultuous time for this region of the world as the Ottoman Turks lead by Sultan Mehmed II sacked Constantonolope in May of 1453 and put the Christian world on notice. The expansion of the Ottoman forces began coming into Southern Europe with their eyes moving both West and East. They were able to conquer most of the Balkins and within less than 100 years were knocking at the gates of Vienna and Kiev. However, it was not just land the Turks were after, they wanted tributes as well. The term in those times meant so much more than mere taxes. The Turks demanded women and girls from those they conquered to become part of the harems, or sex slaves. It was often a practice here for Christian women to tattoo crosses onto their foreheads to hopefully appear unattractive to these marauders and be allowed to stay with their families.
During this time of turmoil, there was one leader that was able to stave off their advances of the Turks, Vlad Dracula. Battle after battle, while Serbia, Bosina, Albania and others fell, Vlad was victorious and saved this area for Chirstiandom through his unmitigated brutality. He had the habit of impaling his enemies and leaving them in the sky to be picked over by crows, rotting in the sun as a warning to anyone that would dare try to invade his territory. This even included his Christian brothers. After his fights with the Ottomans, Vlad ruled Wallachia with a blood-drenched iron fist. He killed so many people that rumors began that he was drinking their blood. Vlad was imprisoned at Bran Castle for his crimes.
The entrance to the castle was filled with stands selling all kinds of vampire merchandise. There was a steep walkway up to the castle and a very big drop off on the facade; making escape very difficult. However, there was what appeared to be white plaster covering all the walls making the castle, even with all its dark history, almost cheery. We were able to traverse almost the entire castle, including a narrow stairway leading to a high lookout point. Apparently, Maria the wife of King Carol would abscond her with her children to get out from under the thumb of her husband.
Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, understood enough of Romania to know that the people here, much like those in the dark German woods, believe strongly in monsters ghosts, and fairy tales. This is why he set part of the story here and based on what I learned and felt, would make it incredibly plausible.
We then started to head back to Bucharest. We passed countless gypsies along the road selling berries and other fruits outside of places of interest. I arrived back at the hostel exhausted after a very long but educational day.
Axl was in the room and invited me to the kitchen for a drink with some of my other hostel mates. I met some Spanish girls and an American/Dutchman, named Alex. We got to chatting in English and Spanish when Alex asked me what I did. I was elusive as I typically am, but he pressed me. So I told him Web design, Real Estate, and oil and gas investing. His reply under his breath looking at the floor was, “Killing the planet.” This gave me pause for a few reasons:
- We just met.
- He was saying he was going to go work in Equatorial Guinea which has great oil reserves.
- I doubt he walked to Bucharest.
As the encounter continued Axl then had questions about white people, which then lead to Alex railing against President Trump. Canʼt say Iʼm really surprised. I excused myself and headed to bed.
The next morning I got up and decided to pay homage to one of my personal heroes. Before I left on my voyage, I read possibly two of the most important books I have read in the last 10 years. One was called Red Horizon and the other was Disinformation. They were both authored by Lt General Ion Pacepa. General Pacepa was the head of Nicolae Ceausescu’s intelligence apparatus, the Secretariat, within and without the country. His training as an engineer made him excellent at this job which included espionage. He was always in the room where it happened: when Nicolae Ceausescu’s son, drunk on champagne got up on one of the tables at a dinner party, unzipped his pants, and decided to give the raw oysters everyone was eating a little of his own seasoning, when Muammar Gaddafi struck a deal with Ceausescu for weapons for oil extractions know-how in violation of several treaties, for getting the plans for Peugeot cars and modifying them to make tanks, to even being at the White House with Jimmy Carter. However, Pacepa swore on a Friends With America card that he got as a child, that he would never kill anyone for Ceausescu. Unfortunately, that day came when Pacepa was asked to rig a car bomb to kill a rival. Looking upon a painting in his apartment, his only confidant in the decades of work in intelligence in one of the most brutal communist dictatorships in the world, he made his choice. The next day, he went to the American Embassy in Bucharest, addressed a bewildered Marine, then the Ambassador, and requested political asylum. He left his grown daughter behind. He was debriefed by the CIA for two years. Ceausescu was so furious, he put a $2 Million bounty on Pacepa. No doubt, the information he shared as the highest-ranking Soviet Intelligence officer to ever defect helped bring an end to the Soviet Union. I felt it was necessary to go and pay homage to this Patriot.
Rereading passages from Red Horizon, I found his address. 28 Zois / Alexandriu / Athena street, right across from the Polish Embassy. I put the directions into my trusty Google / Apple Maps and headed out. It was exactly where he described it. I was standing there while a couple left, so I let myself into the foyer of the building. I walked up to #2, his old apartment door, and thanked Pacepa for his service. I then continued to the military museum via the metro.
I got to the train station, Gara de Nord (more French influence) then walked to the museum. There were some statues and armaments outside. I tried taking a picture of a truck with a rocket launcher, but a very nice gentleman with an AK47 persuaded me not to. I went in the museum and paid my ticket. It was interesting in that they had arms from prehistory on like the war museum in Athens. It had some good maps about the extent of the Turkish invasion and a nice collection of guns, but that was it. Only some of the displays had English translations. They had a shit ton of artillery and tanks outside, as well as a few rocket launchers, radar trucks, and a Soviet MiG jet. Walking back inside, I asked the person who took my ticket why there were armed Army soldiers here. She either did not want to answer or know what I was asking. I think the first was most likely.
I left the museum and headed back to Old Town, where I had lunch at Taverna Covaci, my now go-to restaurant. After lunch I went back to the hostel and took a nap. When I awoke and headed back out, I happened to run into Alex, the rude dude, and asked him how his night was. Told me he got bored and came home. I quickly got out of there.
I decided that I wanted to see the inside of that former Soviet department store and was not disappointed. Like most things from the Soviet era, it was designed for show, not for function. While the outside was six stories high, the inside was only two usable floors with shops, while the third floor was blocked and condemned. I made my way into an actual store where there was a front counter and some goods, but the majority of the store was behind another wall. I had only imagined something as poorly designed as this. It was kind of amazing. My amazement ended when I needed to use the bathroom, however. While there was no toilet paper, there were used syringes.
Leaving the department store, I headed back to the fountains in front of the Parliament. There was some older militia guy there with a nightstick keeping order. He never talked. If someone did something he did not like, he simply walked up behind them with the nightstick and tapped them with it. The force was dependent on the supposed infraction.
As the sun was setting, I decided to head back. I stopped at a local market and picked up some essentials: some protein bars, some water, and some beer. Upon closer inspection in the beer aisle, I saw something I had never seen before and have not seen since: beer in a three-liter plastic bottle. For reference, the biggest soft drink containers in the US are still one liter smaller than this behemoth. I wondered how well these sold and if they were for individual use.
After my meal and drinks, I decided to head back out to see what an evening in Bucharest had for me. Again, I was where I needed to be. I heard music in the distance and I stumbled on a city-block long retro dance party in front of the Romanian History Musem I visited earlier. It was something. The setup was genius. The organizers took hundreds of beer crates and lined them four high longways to block off one lane of a street. From the beer partition to the sidewalk, hundreds of people were dancing as a DJ played retro classics. Of course, one of the songs was Drogstea Din Tei or the Numa Numa song, the 2006 pop smash hit by Ozone. But one song really hit me in the soul, the 80’s classic by Alphaville, Forever Young. This ballad was both beautiful and haunting as it discusses the possibility of all life being ended by a thermonuclear war. In front of me, there was a sea of people singing. People who not too long ago would have been my enemies, all of us wondering, “…are they gonna drop the bomb or not.” And here we all were, singing together this song of peace. It really touched me.
I then headed back to the hostel and Axl invited me out for a drink. We went to a club, had some drinks, then I slowly walked back as the women from the Old Town Bordellos beckoned to me.
The next day, I rallied after my late night and headed to the Communist Memorial Museum which was of course closed. I headed back to the hostel and decided to have an Admin Day. I worked in between episodes of Black Mirror and Chernobyl. I went out and got some supplies for my big tour the next day and finished up Chernobyl before bed. Although it would not be restful.
I finally snapped on my roommates. This group of Italian (?) guys has been staying in the room with a complete disregard for quiet hours. So, they strolled in at 2:30 am, being loud. There was a towel around my bed, so one picks it up and taps me on the shoulder to see if it is mine. I roll over and say no. They keep talking after I try to go back to sleep. So I pulled my makeshift curtain that was my bathrobe, and told them all to shhhhhh. One guy pointed at his friend while looking at me. I then pointed to everyone. They got the message. I went back to bed and they shut up.
But that did not really matter as I only got three hours sleep before I got up and had my final tour in Romania. I met my driver and guide Gabriel outside of a hotel at the end of the pedestrian street and we began our journey out of Bucharest. As we passed the beautiful countryside, he began giving me a history of Romanian Communism.
After World War II when the Red Tide of the Soviet Union swept across Europe all the way to Berlin, and it did not recede. As the Iron Curtain fell, people that had quietly started Communist organizations slowly, with Moscow’s blessing, rose to power. One such person was Gheorge Gheorghiu-Dej who became the first General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party in 1944 and became the country’s leader in 1947. When Stalin died in 1953, Gheorghiu-Dej dreamed of turning Romania into a worker’s paradise. However, while he wanted the Romanian workers to toil in factories, Kruschev wanted them to work in the fields. When factories started popping up, Gheorghiu-Dej was invited to Moscow for a chat. After his return, this modestly healthy man developed cancer and was dead two weeks later. His number 2 was then appointed to the #1 position in 1965, Nicolae Ceausescu.
In the beginning, life in Romania was not so bad under Ceausescu. However, it was when he took a trip to North Korea and met Kim Il Sung, he realized that he could have more. Much more. He created a cult of personality as the all possessing leader of Romania. He spent more on himself, his lavish homes, and his wife, using Romania oil, food and pilfered intellectual property. As his debts increased to foreign lenders, store shelves went bare. Anyone that bothered to complain was arrested, tortured, and “disappeared.” With a history of unspeakable atrocities including those committed at Pitesti Prison, people were terrified. That was until a spark.
Weeks before Christmas in 1989, with the echoes of the Fall of the Berlin Wall just two months previous, a quiet fervor grew amongst the people of Romania. Protests began in the town of Timisoara when the Communist government tried to evict pastor Laszlo Tokes. Usually, the Secretariat would be able to quash such as revolt as this. But given the austerity measures of Ceausescu’s Socialist Republic in the 1980s, the force of the people was too strong and the government was not equipped nor had the will to continue suppressing their own countrymen. The fervor spread, and soon the whole country was in protest. While there was some bloody suppression in Bucharest, after a week of fighting, Nicholae and his wife Elena tried to flee. The military, having had enough of Ceausescu and his wife, forced their helicopter to land in a field near the city of Targoviste. They were immediately arrested and held in a military barraks. This is where Gabriel and I were heading.
We arrived at the former military compound now turned museum where Nicholae and Elena were held, tried, and executed over the course of three days. I walked in and after taking my ticket, found myself in the “court room.” It was basically a small classroom with wooden chairs like you would find in any 1980’s middle school. It was here evidence was presented that both Nicholae and Elena were guilty for crimes against Romania.
The tour continued to their sleeping chambers. They were very modest, but the interesting part was that they were never alone; a guard was posted in the room to make sure that neither tried to check out early.
There was another room where the guards waited with a television, but my attention turned to what I had come to see. Out in a courtyard, against a still bullet-ridden wall, was where Nicolae Ceausescu, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Romania and his wife Elena Petrescu Ceausescu with the charges of crimes against humanity, genocide, and harming the Romanian economy, their sentence of death by firing squad was carried out on Christmas Morning, 1989.
In the courtyard, I looked at the wall for a good ten minutes before I approached and placed my hand on it. At my feet were the painted outlines of where their bodies fell. While I was too young to remember it, I had seen all this play out thanks to YouTube. It was an indescribable feeling to be in such a place where I was actually touching history. I stayed a few minutes more and took a final look as I walked away to find Gabriel.
We headed back to Bucharest as there was still more to see. It had been an hour and a half ride out, so it was an equal amount back. I began talking with Gabriel about his experiences during this time. He told me that he was about 18 when the revolution happened, so 10 years older than me, about. He said that he and his friends were living in Bucharest and heard there was something going on in the streets. Of course, being curious teenagers, they wanted to go see what the fuss was about. Innocently on the streets, one of his friends was shot in the head by the military right next to him. He died on the spot. Gabriel and his living friends got the hell out of there.
We started talking a little about American politics as the 2020 election was looming. He mentioned a tweet that Bernie Sanders made regarding Romania where he said, “Today, people living in Bucharest, Romania have access to much faster Internet than most of the US. That’s unacceptable and must change.” I shared with Gabriel the reply of someone from Romania, “In Romania we have faster internet b/c we killed our commie dictator on Christmas morning in 1989Then we open up the markets.” I do not think Gabriel liked that too much.
Our next stop was the cemetery where Nicholae and Elena were buried, exhumed, then reburied. Located deep within the cemetery next to various other plots, the non-descript headstone was a fitting crimson with gold lettering.
Moving on, Gabriel took me to the parking lot of the Parliament building and made one of the funniest jokes about Romania. He said in his thick accent, “I do not know why people go to Transylvania to see vampires. All the real vampires are right here,” he said pointing to the Parliament. Apparently, Romania, a country the size of Colorado, has over 400 parliamentarians.
Our final stop for the day was Ceausescu’s Spring Palace. Bucharest, thanks to influence from the larger countries has a fantastic architecture scene that rivals that of Paris, New York, or Philadelphia. This even includes personal houses. Like any Communist that takes the best for themselves, this house was utterly breathtaking. During his life, while no one knew which of his dozens of houses he would stay, it was pretty obvious when the Ceausescus were in residence given the heightened security.
Upon entering the foyer, I needed to hand over my ticket. A tour was just about to begin. My guide was a hilarious combination of Gabe from the Office and Lurch from the Adams Family. As we walked around the estate, dodging live peacocks, admiring the gold leaf on the pool frescos, and ornate French chandeliers, he would always take a moment to say things in complete deadpan like, “This is humble Communist bedroom of the Genius of the Carpathians” etc. To say this spread was lavish would be an understatement. I ended up giving my tour guide a 50 Leu tip because he was hilarious and seemed like a nice guy that was working hard.
After a full day of touring, Gabriel dropped me off where he picked me up. We shook hands and I thanked him for taking me around. I then headed out to get some dinner as this was my last day and I needed to catch an early flight.
