I arrived in Bucharest Friday afternoon. Frighteningly, in a typical airport glitch, my luggage seemed to not arrive with me. However, I think perhaps there was only one luggage shuttle. After about 2/3 of the passengers had their suitcases, the conveyor stopped ominously. The rest of us exchanged resigned looks and formed a line at the lost luggage office where a clerk finally was able to give us a thank-god smile and say that they would be back in a minute with more bags. Whew! Mine arrived in that second batch. My Prague friend, MJ, was on the same flight. She went to Bucharest for the weekend to celebrate the coming graduation of some of her former students and to see Romanian friends. Her luggage arrived with mine.
My hosts, Margaret and Ben, met me with a driver from the Fulbright Office. We went to their amazing flat…the upstairs of a house totally surrounded by communist era high-rise apartment buildings. It was as if they had found the secret garden.
In the evening, we took the very crowded metro part-way and then had a nice walk to get to the Radio Symphony Hall to hear the orchestra play the Mather sixth symphony. Many buildings along the way are in need of repair and face-lifting. Ben is an engineer by profession and said that much of the crumbling one notices in the facades is due to earthquake damage. Romania is on a major fault.
There were about 100 pieces in the orchestra, including 2 harps, 4 sets of drums, cow bells, symbols, a gong (like in a Japanese movie), and a 7 foot long hammer that got slammed down a few times. Spectacular. One Fulbrighter and the son of a Fulbright officer were playing. There were 7 or 8 Fulbrighters, courtesy of the orchestra members, in the audience of several hundred. The symphony hall was lovely.
The evening ended with five of us… me, Margaret, Ben, and Fulbrighters Fred and Jason… having a good meal in an Italian restaurant and walking home about 11:30.
Saturday Margaret and I spent almost all afternoon meandering through the craft fair at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. I even bought a few trinkets. It was a gorgeous day and, in Romania, spring has arrived. The flowering trees and forsythia are blossoming and leaves are opening. I didn’t need a jacket, part of the time. Ahhhhhh!
The Romanians celebrate Palm Sunday with neither palms nor pussy willows, but with weeping willow branches. Saturday and Sunday, children and street vendors where selling willow branches everywhere. We didn’t buy any but Margaret did give a child-vendor some money for letting her take his picture selling them. I like that they use local flora for this celebration since the people took palms from along the road to cover the street in front of Jesus. It’s nice that the people here don’t import palms. The only time I ever saw palms as a kid was on Palm Sunday. I think we should have celebrated with lilacs. If Jesus had come to Rochester we would probably have lined the roads with lilacs.
Romania is as Orthodox as the Czech Republic is atheist…about 80%. With similar histories of religious oppression, that’s a puzzle. I missed a wonderful photo opp on Saturday night. The director of the Fulbright office, Barbara, treated me, Margaret, and Ben, to dinner. Afterwards the four of us sat at Margaret and Ben’s apartment and chatted for an hour or so. We walked Barbara part-way home. After leaving us, she went by a church where the special Saturday night holiday service was just letting out. People were walking home carrying lighted candles. We should have walked her all the way! I would have loved to see that!
I did see another amazing Romanian sight for which, also, I have no photo. Sunday (Palm Sunday in Bucharest and Easter Sunday in Prague) Margaret, Ben and I spent several hours walking around Bucharest with Fred and Jason. Fred took us through a large city park he likes. There were two areas of stone tables and benches where men were gathered to talk, smoke, and play chess and dominoes. From a discreet distance, I took a photo of the first. But in the second was so intensely male that it felt a bit indiscreet just to walk through, and a picture would have seemed intrusive…drat! I think it was the real Romania and I wish I could share it.
The five of us walked all around the downtown. We met at 10:30 and didn’t get home until after 4:00. Bucharest does not seem to have a “center” like Prague, or Athens, or Florence. A few really pretty buildings stand out. What you have to love is “finding” things, like an old façade in juxtaposition with a modern one, or signs of the still developing infrastructure, such as coils of wire hanging on electric posts, or lovely lion head sculptures draped with electrical lines or hidden by utilitarian boxes.
Our last stop of the afternoon was a tour of the palace Ceausescu built between 1984 and 1989. It is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. It used 80% of the Romanian GDP for 5 years. All products are Romanian. Miles of draperies were woven “by Romanian nuns.” That reminded me of the book Galileo's Daughter, since she probably wove draperies too. The land was razed of all its homes and businesses to make room for this palace. We heard, not on the tour but from Romanians, that people died of heart-break at the loss of their homes and businesses. The tour described the loss to the people and also acknowledged that the palace showcases Romanian resources and workmanship. It is hard not to marvel at the fact that such a recent leader would use power to build such a monument.
That evening the five of us went to see Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte at the Opera House. Ben got us a box. Nice!
On Monday I presented two lectures at the Academy of Economic Sciences. Both groups were freshmen in entrepreneurship classes. There were about 30 in each group. They were wonderful students to lecture to. They asked great questions. They were interactive and interested. It was exhilarating. Now I know why MJ liked her students so well.
The Fulbright driver picked me up at Ben and Margaret’s, took me to the Fulbright office where I met Mihai who had arranged all my presentations, and then took me to and from the classes. It was a great relief to not have to negotiate the Bucharest metro, which was surprizingly not too crowded when Margaret, Ben and I took it other times than the first night. But it seemed pretty hard to negotiate for a newcomer like me, if I'd been on my own. Mihai is the head of the American program. He has lots of contacts and helps create great networks. All my good classes resulted from his good matching of my interests with student and professional groups of similar ilk.
Last night Ben cooked an Indian dinner, with a Romanian borscht-soup appetizer. Delightful. Fred and Jason were there too and the five of us spent the evening laughing and talking around Margaret and Ben’s table.
My final presentation was this morning. Mihai arranged for an informal discussion with about a dozen nonprofit leaders. Their organizations were a diverse set: an association of museums, a children’s defense group, an arts magazine, a historical preservation group. We talked about public relations and fund raising. I had a great time…then back to the airport. I gave the driver a key-ring with a Gator football…American football. He really seemed to like it. That was a good feeling.
I met some folks from Scotland on the plane and we took public transportation into Prague. That was a nice ending to a busy Easter weekend.
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