Bucharest and Sofia

I’m finally back in Freiburg after a long trip, an even longer journey back to Freiburg, and a long silence on this blog. I’ll start at the beginning and end with Bulgaria. Greece and everything that came after it will need their own post later.

We left Freiburg for the airport in Köln/Bonn for our flight to Bucharest over two weeks ago on a Wednesday night. I’m generally not a fan of six-hour bus rides to begin with, but a six-hour bus ride preceding an airplane ride in the middle of the night was arguably worse. It was apparently cheaper to fly out of this out-of-the-way airport. Regardless, we were all super excited to begin our trip. We landed in Bucharest the next morning and took a private coach to our hotel.

I think we were all surprised at how rundown Bucharest is. Some of us, including me, had imagined Eastern Europe as a generally dilapidated post-Communist region, but it turned out to be completely true in Romania’s capital. While there was some older architecture, I was blown away by how many purely utilitarian (read: ugly) buildings dominated the entire city. Romania was especially hard-hit by the Communist era under the brutal leadership of Nicolae Ceauşescu and it really shows in the city’s architecture, run-down status, and enduring poverty. Many buildings were crumbling or in ruins and the sidewalks were nearly all potholed and cracked. That being said, we were staying in a vibrant area with lots of restaurants, bars, and young people enjoying the nice weather. Our hotel was also really nice and centrally located. There seems to be a lot of potential for a revitalized Romania, and in a lot of areas, we could really see the transition occurring in modern buildings and international businesses.

Crazy wires in Bucharest...

On the first day, we enjoyed a city tour led by a local Romanian. As we walked through the dilapidated areas, he told us that many of the communist buildings are currently occupied by squatting Roma (non-PC term: gypsies) people and therefore cannot be demolished. There is apparently a tendency to blame the Roma for all of Romania’s problems and I’m not sure if we can believe our guide, but it was interesting nonetheless. The highlight of our tour was by far the Palace of the Parliament, but not in a good way. This MASSIVE building was built by Ceauşescu in the 1980s as the seat of government despite the fact that the Romania people were suffering growing poverty and food shortages. If there is any symbol of the personal excess of his regime, this building is it. It’s the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon.

The "Palace of the People"

We saw many other interesting states on the tour, including the site of the Bloody Revolution in 1989 and other recent historical monuments. We also began our academic meetings. I think the best meeting was with an NGO devoted to anti-corruption. The speaker gave a fascinating presentation about the presence of high-level corruption in the Romanian government and parliament and spoke about the difficulties in stopping it. Some think that Romania and Bulgaria never should have been admitted to the EU given their enormous corruption problems, at least not until the EU’s entry requirements could have been more fully met. Now, they both suffer from an entrenched corruption that originated as a survival strategy during the communist regime. When basic goods and living standards could not be attained, Romanians at all levels of political and home life resorted to corrupt deals just to function. The Romanian parliament also contains leaders from the old regime and is struggling to create a new generation free of the same problems.

The last thing I’ll say about Romania is that we ate some delicious food. We were there for two nights and we went to the same restaurant both times since it was so good. It was highly recommended by the hotel and by our Romanian academic advisor from IES. The interior was traditionally decorated and the evenings were punctuated by folk dance performances. I ate delicious Moldavian stew, the Romanian equivalent of polenta, and some deceptively strong local wine. We all had a great time, especially when the dancers would start a new performance.

The next leg of our trip commenced with another bus ride, but this time to Bulgaria. There is exactly one bridge over the Danube connecting the two countries and we joined all the other vehicles on the journey. We made it through border control and made two stops at bathrooms, one of which was a squat toilet. It was a bit of minor culture shock, but those toilets aren’t common anymore anyway. We made it to downtown Sofia to our hotel around 11 p.m. and headed to bed to rest up for the next day. Our city tour got started bright and early. Our guide was clearly a history student because she exhausted us with details about Bulgaria, Sofia, the Cyrillic alphabet, and everything we could ever want to know about every building we passed. It was interesting, but too much to remember! I’ll sum up by saying I was surprised at how nice Sofia was. The downtown area was bright, lively, and clean, and the historical influences of the Romans and the Ottomans showed in different ruins, churches, and mosques. It was also really cool to see the Cyrillic alphabet everywhere. Luckily, one of our friends is Bulgarian and helped us translate whenever we needed it. The only things I learned how to say were “yes”, “no”, and “I don’t speak Bulgarian”. I would have liked to learn a little more, but it’s hard to remember any of the phrases you’ve practiced when an expectant waiter is standing over you waiting for your order…

Our group in Bulgaria

Our academic meetings in Bulgaria were generally excellent. I especially enjoyed going to the Foreign Ministry, even though we only had half an hour to talk to the deputy foreign minister. At one point, he mentioned the need for stability in the Western Balkans given Bulgaria’s proximity, so I asked a question about potential EU accession for Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia given their political problems after the break-up of Yugoslavia. Like many of the politicians we spoke to, he emphasized that the two countries could join as soon as they fulfilled the accession criteria. This will be a struggle for those two in particular, but Croatia (another former Yugoslav state) is poised to join the EU soon. Slovenia already joined in 2004. I wish we had more time for questions, but we unfortunately had to leave before we could get really into it. I really appreciate the fact that IES arranged meetings with high-level politicians throughout our whole trip, even if they don’t always have a lot of time to speak to us.

The best part about our time in Sofia was when we visited our Bulgarian friend’s grandparents after the city tour. They live on the outskirts of the city and we were invited over for “lunch.” Little did we know that lunch actually meant a 7.5 hour feast with more delicious food than we could ever hope to eat. Our friend’s grandfather met us at our hotel and took us on the subway to their house. There, we met the grandmother, an aunt and uncle, and a cousin. We got our first introduction to incredible Bulgarian hospitality on this visit, and I can safely say that it was one of the best afternoons I’ve ever had. We began the meal with traditional Bulgarian liquor (it tasted like vodka but was MUCH stronger) and an assortment of salads, sausages, and pickled vegetables. I’d never had pickled carrots or peppers before, but they were actually really good and complemented the liquor that was a bit too strong for most of us. Next, we ate steaks, bread, devilled eggs made with some type nut filling, and wine. The highlight, though, was definitely dessert. We all sat there open-mouthed as trays of homemade coffeecake and baklava came out of the kitchen accompanied by fig cake, puff pastries with cheese and spinach filling, and the chocolates we brought as a thank-you present. We were already full from the first courses, but the dessert was too delicious to pass up and we had many hours in which to enjoy it. The food was accompanied by good conversation with the family as well as an embarrassing hour where we attempted to demonstrate traditional American songs. The family was expecting old-style drinking songs like most European countries have, but we chose to butcher “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and various children’s songs instead. When we finally realized how horribly wrong our singing was going, we sat back and listened to the Bulgarians sing instead. It was really enjoyable to have a traditional meal with good company and old songs, and we only got up to leave when it was getting really late. I was full until lunch the next day, but even still, I wish I had more of the homemade baklava.

Our flight to Athens was moved up and we didn’t get to spend an additional day in Bulgaria. I was sad to miss the opportunity to see more of the city, but it was great to be there for as long as we were. Bulgaria suffers from many of the same problems as Romania, especially corruption and the Mafia, but Sofia was beautiful and we heartily enjoyed our time there. I’ll write more about the Athens/return trip leg when I can and I'll post links to photo albums ASAP. All I’ll say now is that it involves a rooftop terrace, the beach, the Acropolis, feta cheese, “hit the brakes!”, a volcano named Eyjafjallajoekull, and an 80-hour return trip back to Freiburg. Bis dann!