Bucharest, Romania

Across the sky there passes

a rigid formation of cranes—

the sonnets of the masses.

-Marin Sorescu, Romanian poet

Bucharest is not a beautiful city.

That, at least, was my first reaction. It was March 21^st and I had just arrived to the place I had heard nicknamed “Paris of the East,” and yet the Bucharest I saw before me was a city with a low, sketch-gray skyline; a city full of abandoned buildings and rusted branches of rebar, stretching upward into fog; a city littered with garbage, inhabited by stray, barking dogs, and knotted in a chaos of thick, black power lines. It was like no place I had ever been.

I learned quickly that to travel in Bucharest is to travel through the pages of Romania’s relatively recent, tumultuous history. After all, it is written everywhere in the city: in “Piata Revolutiei” and “Piata 21 Decembrie 1989,” and everywhere I saw graffiti that testified to Romania’s 1989 revolution. The city is practically an open book that tells of its former life and rebellion under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

I realized with embarrassment that what I had initially imagined (Paris of the East!) was a place outside of history—one that had not seen the last several decades elapse and, with them, the rise and fall of an oppressive, communist dictatorship. In short, I had imagined a place that did not exist.

Over the next couple of days, I learned from Bucharest as much as I could about its reality in the wake of Communism. I tried to visited the Parliament Palace (built by Ceausescu as his seat of government and formerly known as the People’s Palace), but unfortunately I was unable to go in; on the day I arrived, protests against Romania’s current government closed the building to the public for the four days that followed. According to the man who owns the hostel where I stayed, the Romanian government has secured loans from the European Union but has either not dispersed them or has done a poor job of managing the money; he cited the city’s infrastructure as an example of the problem.

But I did get a chance to visit the Communist Iconography Museum, which is peculiar and, maybe for that reason, worth a look if you happen to be in Bucharest. It’s very small, almost without explanation, and located in the basement of the Romanian Peasant Museum.

The Romanian Peasant Museum, however, received the European Museum of the Year Award in 1996, and is full of valuable cultural information. Each vast room contains a kaleidoscopic profusion of Romania's renowned and splendid artistry.

In addition to the many context-specific displays of the elaborate traditional textiles—heavily embroidered scarves, vests, headdresses, and other decorative fabrics—the museum also boasts significant architectural displays, such as a staggeringly large wooden textile mill (wind and water) that was still operational through the 1980s. One can also view the remains of an 18^th century wooden Transylvanian church and stand on the porch of a completely intact peasant house, outfitted with more textiles, pottery, and wooden furniture.

Other objects of interest were wooden religious icons, decorative tiles (especially for adorning the exteriors of chimneys), and ornately carved wooden distaffs. Apparently, when a man in a peasant village wanted to marry a woman, he carved such a distaff for her as a kind of proposal gift. After the couple married, it was put on display in the house, rather than used in a practical capacity for spinning.

After some time learning about the richness of Romanian culture and, of course, becoming more comfortable in my surroundings, my eyes grew accustomed to Bucharest’s urban decay and I began to see, too, the beautiful neo-classical buildings that stand seemingly untouched by history; the dazzling Romanian Orthodox churches, covered inside and out with frescos, gold-leaf, and brightly painted tiles. I saw verdant parks full of lovely paths for walking, and florists that dotted nearly every street corner, offering wreathes and bouquets of fresh lilies, daffodils, and gladiolas.

And political and intellectual life, once forbidden under Communism, seemed to be blossoming everywhere.

On the block where the university building is located, busy stands of used books for sale go on endlessly. Crowds filter in and out of the spacious reading rooms at the National Library. In the evenings, live music swells from every bar in the Lipscani district. Brightly-lit art galleries fill with young people, drinking wine from plastic cups.

At one such gallery I met a university student who is an aspiring writer and actor. We fell into conversation about Romanian politics and the demonstrations outside the Parliament Palace; he told me that he believes the only way to a better, more democratic future in Romania is through bold, uncensored expression. He asked me to notice the street names of Bucharest.

“They teach us to remember the 1989 revolution, but also Romania’s poets and philosophers. Revolution and art—in this city, they are one.” he said.