(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Of: Aina Villanger
What did I know about Romania? Besides being one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe, that Herta Müller fled from there in 1987 – two years before the Ceausescu regime fell – and that the space people I pass on the streets of Oslo largely come from this country? Three sad facts. Little did I know about the country's lush nature, about the Romanes' reserved kindness, or about the well-kept rose gardens around their homes.
Having the train and the bus through the country, I would rather simply describe Romania as two-fold. The south-eastern part is distinct from the northwest, landscape and cultural. The first thing that meets us, my good friend I and I, as we cross the border from Bulgaria and drive along the Black Sea coast towards the port city of Constanta, is miles of flat field landscapes, sometimes bounded by bright yellow sunflower fields, large factory areas, both abandoned and active, and villages with brown, worn house. The landscape in the east makes me think of a picture I painted many years ago. The picture shows a flat desert landscape, and on the horizon under a large, gray sky, houses and industrial buildings can be seen. Three people walk, on their way from the settlement, towards the viewer. The picture is colorless, except for an intense sand color in the desert. When my mother saw the picture, she asked if I had been depressed when I painted it.
Blandingsby. Although the first impression may have been in line with my prejudices about Romania as something poor and sad, it does change radically on the journey. Bucharest is a wild mix town where a Scandinavian (!) Café trend pops out between gray, large air-conditioned decking buildings. We drive taxis up and down the huge boulevards with monumental communist buildings on each side, strolling in the green Herastrau park, we find a villa area where the uninhabited houses have been taken in by nature, growing out of empty windows. At the fountain at Piata Unirii we have to stop. Ceausescu's Palace of Parliament sits at the end of the boulevard and testifies to inhuman madman madness. Casa Poporului was the world's second largest building (after the Pentagon) when it was designed and erected by 700 architects and 20 000 workers, over five years. An entire district was demolished to make way for it. The build gives associations to an excessive fantasy film about a crazy man who never got enough marble, crystal and soft cake. To get to the Contemporary Art Museum, located at the back of the building, we use 20 minutes to walk. Having an art museum in such a building is both a good and bad idea. On the one hand, the art is in direct communication with – and can thus constantly adjust the understanding of – the Ceausescu era as well as oppression and social phenomenon. On the other hand, the art seems to be inaccessible – it's a chore to get to the museum, and it's not just the roasting sun and asphalt air that creates a gloomy, yes, imposing mood – contemporary art is literally shielded from the rest of the city , encased in a monster colossus. Understandably, we are almost alone in the great halls.
The self-saved life. We get on the train out of Bucharest. The gloom and eclectic urban atmosphere disappear as we spiral up the valley towards the Carpathians and the forest landscape of Transylvania. It is getting greener and greener, and it is a dream to sit by the window in the cafe wagon with a glass on the tablecloth and cycle through the lush cultural landscape. Large valleys with cultivated land, mountains on the outskirts. As we move further west, it is as if we are traveling further back in time. There will be more horses with carriages and high loads along the roads, more wives with skates and short wool skirts – and few foreign tourists. Romania is mainly an agricultural country, formerly with a capacity to produce food for 80 million people, but today is far from living in its own population. When the Communist Party took power after World War II, the country consisted largely of small farms without modern aids and machinery. One of Ceausescu's goals was to modernize agriculture and industrialize the countryside, including through an urbanization project that involved the annihilation of 9000 villages. After the revolution, the land was returned to the peasants, but then to a large extent (100 targets for each family, regardless of what they had before it was confiscated) for the equipment available. This has resulted in lots of small farms, lots of fallow land and some giant farms – which we can see from the train window.
There is no Block Watne here, there is a love for the home and the quiet, self-contained life outside the beaten track.
It is not just the cultural landscape with mountains in the background that makes me think of the Alps and Central Europe; also the characteristic architecture testifies that this northwestern part of Romania belonged to Hungary until the 40 century. Valley sides and villages along the rivers are packed with soulful houses with distinctive carvings, borders and colors that change for each village – yes, for each house! – as if each family has built the home completely according to their own taste and tradition. The houses are surrounded by towering rose and vegetable gardens, the entrances decorated with perennials and grapevine gates. There is no Block Watne here, there is a love for the home and the quiet, self-contained life outside the beaten track.
When we arrive at Agapia Monastery, far into the countryside east of the Carpathians, the village idyll gets a sacred edge over it. Around the monastery are small white wooden houses of various shapes, each with its own porch, flower garden and vegetable gardens – a small settlement for 400 nuns. Several of them are out in the cool summer evening digging in their gardens, while there can always be heard singing from the chapel and the sound of smooth, hollow dunks from a nun beating with a stick on a cane as she steps around the chapel. We fell asleep that night in the empty hotel right next to the nonnebiedda.
The monasteries of Bucovina, which are on UNESCO's World Heritage list, were built in the Middle Ages and still stand in their entirety. Known Bible stories and local history are painted in bright colors right on the brick wall, like enlarged cartoons, both inside and outside the monasteries. A composition that is repeated in the various monasteries is the doomsday motif. Especially in the Voronet monastery, the fresco, which is consistently painted with blue pigment, is well preserved. Our driver Christian, a handyman in the village and one of the few English-speaking (and singing!) Romanians we meet, explains the picture's four levels. The story of how mankind is judged becomes clear with his effective, wildly gesticulating guidance.
We take the bus further to get to the small jungle border town of Sighetu. Exactly this stretch, on the border with Ukraine, has certainly not reached EU roads, and we hump over a spectacular mountain pass and down a valley reminiscent of Sogn here at home. In Sighetu we visit a prison museum, which in the 90 century was built for the victims of communism. Between 1948 and 1952, intellectuals, priests, artists, peasants and other potentially oppositionists to the Communist regime were tortured and killed here.
Duplex. Towards the end of the journey we will have a folk dance festival in a park in Timisoara, the city where the revolution started. Folk dance groups from Spain, Montenegro, Colombia, the US and Georgia hold a huge stage show all evening – free for the people! Grilled meat, the best baklava I've tasted, and beer in long courses. And as many times during the trip, I suddenly do not remember which country I am in. But I remember what Christian answered when we asked him about the future of Romania: There are two ways to see it. There is constant corruption in the country, foreign companies are buying up businesses and bribing politicians to avoid paying taxes, and it is highly uncertain whether his son at 19, who will now start his education, will get a job. But like the Romanian version of Roberto Benigni he is, the seriousness goes into something easier, and he says there is also hope – things er got better.
Yes, there are always at least two ways of seeing things, and it makes me think of my painting again. Curiously enough, the picture was bought by a psychologist in Lofoten. Unlike my mother, she believed that the picture had something good in it. In fact, she said it was just such a picture she had been looking for, to the office room where she accepts her patients.
Villanger is a writer.
ainavill@gmail.com
