198: How I Ran Out of Countries*, by Gunnar Garfors

Gunnar Garfors made a bet he would visit all 198 (at the time, by his calculation) countries in the world by the age of 40, and his 2014 book (English translation 2015) is a sketchy diary of his trips.  He states near the beginning that he abhors travel guides because they ‘reduce creativity and destroy impulsiveness.’  Rather, he wants to arrive with an open mind and find out from locals what is worth doing.  It is one strategy, though the traveller risks missing out on activities a guide covers but an informant doesn’t mention.  In Garfors' case it hardly matters because he has so little interest in the places he passes through in pursuit of his goal.

Romania has a page (pp. 159-160) in a section mainly devoted to culinary experiences.  It begins with a flimsy descriptive whirl that takes in the heaviness of the Palace of the Parliament; Ceaușescu; Timișoara, where the 1989 revolution started and where years later Garfors met a local named Flory, upon whom the revolution had made an impression though she was only a child; Flory lives in Sibiu, ‘not far from Transylvania’, Garfors not realising Sibiu is in Transylvania (cue Dracula reference anyway); a sentence on the plot of Stoker’s novel; hey, there was a real Dracula, ‘Vlad III Dracula’, who killed a lot of people ‘thereby earning the moniker Vlad the Impaler.’

Flory is not keen on the Dracula link, unsurprisingly, though appreciative of the tourism it brings.  However, ‘People should come to Transylvania for the beauty, not the beast,’ as she puts it, and Garfors agrees, though he still feels the mystique of the area is due to Stoker.  Garfors goes to Sibiu where he has a meal with Flory and her Polish boyfriend.  Flory is enthusiastic about the local cuisine, causing Garfors and the boyfriend to poke fun at her claim that all the dishes are ‘famous’.  Then the trio sample the nightlife, though the music is loud.  Romania, Garfors opines, is like most Eastern European countries in that the girls dress ‘extremely sexily’ to be noticed, which Flory accomplishes with style.  Then he leaves her and her boyfriend as the music is too loud.  Next entry: Dominica for half a page.

Garfors states he has not written a guidebook, something ten seconds browsing would have made clear anyway.  This reader was left puzzling about the point of what he has written, apart from the implicit invitation to express wonder at his achievements, because as travel writing it is singularly valueless.  And the Romania entry is not unique: he manages an entry on Russia remarkably saying nothing about Russia, it is all about him driving nice cars while on conference jollies.  On this evidence, Gunnar would have been well advised to invest in travel guides to use as a jumping-off point for his own explorations.  Then we could perhaps have heard more about what he found and less about his ego.

*The asterisk in the subtitle refers to a note on the title page: ‘By Visiting Random People on Incredible Travels to Every Country in the Whole Wide World’ (capitalised in the original).  Random sums it up nicely, and we could agree on incredible as well, though not in the sense intended by Garfors.

Romanian hyperpedestrians

Paul Pârvu, Gheorghe Negreanu, Alexandru Pascu şi Dumitru Dan

Fortean Times 376 (February 2019) carries an edited extract from Jan Bondeson’s book The Lion Boy and Other Medical Curiosities.  The article deals with hyperpedestrians: these are mostly men who walk extremely long distances, including round the world.  There was a craze for this occupation around the turn of the twentieth century, but it was killed off by the First World War.  Naturally it was an unregulated field, with non-standardised routes and often unverifiable claims.

The major hyperpedestrian Bondeson covers is German-American George M Schilling, but he includes a variety of others, including four Romanians who set off to walk round the world.  These were Dumitru Dan (often spelled Demetre Dann in newspapers), Gheorghe Negreanu, Paul Pîrvu (or Pârvu) and Alexandru Pascu.  The four were students in Paris in 1908 when the Touring Club de France announced a contest, with 100,000 francs (one for every kilometre covered) offered to the first person who walked round the world.  Bondeson’s FT article gives a brief account of their journey, but there is plenty of Romanian-language material available on the quartet.

The intrepid Romanians decided to enter the contest and returned to Romania to prepare.  They learned folk songs and to play instruments so they could support themselves, not being allowed to receive external funding during the journey, and between them had a good spread of languages.  In 1910, wearing traditional costume and accompanied by Harap the dog (it seems virtually all hyperpedestrians took dogs), they set out on their circumnavigation.  There were about 200 competitors in all, but the four do not seem to have been unduly worried about being beaten through starting late.

Much of the detail of the journey relies on later reminiscences by Dumitru Dan and cannot be independently verified.  He states that they plotted a route which appears eccentric but was designed to avoid wintery conditions as much as possible.  Even on board ship they kept walking, marching round the deck for up to 12 hours a day in all weathers, using a form of pedometer to record their mileage and asking the captain to verify the distance.

Unfortunately, the expedition was beset by tragedy.  In 1911 Alexandru Pascu died from opium poisoning after indulging with the Rajah of Bombay.  Gheorghe Negreanu died the following year after a fall navigating a mountain pass in China.  Paul Pîrvu made it to Florida but he had injured his legs and developed gangrene.  Dumitru Dan left him with Harap to recover but despite having both legs amputated, Pîrvu died in 1915.

So Dan was left on his own to continue, but it was not a good time to try to cross continental Europe and although he was back in Romania in 1916, he completed his epic journey only in 1923 when he walked from Bucharest to Paris.  He claimed the prize, though the amount was much reduced by inflation, having passed through 74 (or 76) countries while walking over 62,000 miles.  Dan had worn out 28 national costumes and nearly 500 pairs of traditional footwear.

Unsurprisingly Dan became a geography teacher, and in later years lectured extensively on his youthful travels.  He died in 1978, the sole survivor of a remarkable expedition, and is buried in the Heroes’ Cemetery at Buzău.  He has a very nice monument adorned by his bust and casts of part of a globe and a pair of opinci, and an inscription attesting to his role as an ambassador for Romania.

 

Update 7 November 2020:

Opinci/My Father’s Shoes (2019)

An 18-minute animated film about the expedition, Opinci/My Father’s Shoes, directed by Anton and Damian Groves (2019), was shown as part of the online 2020 Romania Rocks: Romanian-British Literature festival.  The film was introduced by Roger Bunyan, author of the book Against All Odds. The Stories of 25 Remarkable Adventurers, which includes a chapter on Dan.  He provided an overview of Dan’s and his companions’ endeavour.  Bunyan’s daughter lives in Bucharest, which gave him the opportunity to investigate the story.

It is a beautiful film, told by an older Dan to his young daughter Steliana, the story of the four friends related in flashback.  The pair live alone as they come to terms with the loss of Stelaina’s mother who died in childbirth, and the father-daughter relationship is touchingly conveyed.  Steliana was born in 1929, and the final moments cut from the animation to film of her being interviewed in old age.  The film is dedicated to her, the four companions, and Harap.  For a short film the impact is powerfully moving.

The screening was followed by a Q&A with the English directors Anton and Damian Groves, illustrators Maria and Ileana Surducan, plus Bunyan.  It was particularly interesting as it shed light on the animation process, real actors wearing large papier-mâché heads used as the basis for Dan and Steliana, cut into the animated scenes.  The undertaking was complex, and the end result took almost six years, but it was worth the effort.

The directors talked about the tone they achieved, making the film suitable for both children and adults despite dealing with themes of hardship and loss.  They ended with the hope that, like Dumitru Dan before it, the film will travel the world.

 

However…

In checking the claim that Dan had been included in the Guinness Book of World Records, I discovered an article from December 2019 which casts considerable doubt on the veracity of his story.  Blogger ‘Davy Crockett’ situates Dan’s global perambulation within a brief tradition of hoaxing in which fraudsters claimed to be in a competition organised by the Touring Club de France or similar organisations.

Crockett, who has done extensive research on hyperpedestrianism, notes that it is a field full of exaggeration.  He points out that the main source for Dan’s claim is an interview given late in life which the World Records organisation took on trust when including him in the 1978 edition, despite discrepancies with lectures he had given, certificates he had acquired, and what newspaper coverage exists.

He subjects Dan’s claim to extensive scrutiny and concludes that ‘most of his story was fiction,’ full of contradictions and falsehoods.  There was no competition, and the Touring Club de France’s focus was on cycling and latterly motoring, with no interest in pedestrianism.  The distances he said he had travelled were covered implausibly fast in the conditions of the time. (I have to say I had wondered where Dan and his companions sourced all those pairs of opinci as they travelled.)

Dan’s story changed over the years and there is convincing evidence, based on surviving records, that the trips to Africa, Australia, Central and South America, Asia and Alaska did not happen.  In fact he fought in the 1912-13 Balkan War and the following year was in various Western European countries.  There was no newspaper coverage of the alleged finish in Paris in 1923, surprising in itself for such a significant achievement, and which an organisation would be expected to milk for maximum publicity.

Thus, Pascu could not have overdosed on opium in India, nor Negreanu fallen off a cliff in China, because Dan was never in those countries.  Their involvement (and that of Harap), if any, remains murky despite the famous photograph of the quartet.  Pîrvu was actually a Hungarian living in Ohio who spent three months travelling with Dan in the midwestern United States, and he died in 1938.  Otherwise, evidence suggests Dan travelled alone.

While conceding we will never know for sure, Crockett estimates that Dan probably walked no more than 5,000 miles in Europe and North America, assuming he really walked between towns, for which there is no independent verification.  The analysis is compelling, and it is all rather sad to discover Dan was a fraud.

Presumably Roger Bunyan did not reach the same conclusion as Crockett when writing his book, or was too polite to mention any reservations during his introduction to Opinci and the subsequent Q&A, as he took the standard narrative at face value.  It seems the evidence was there all the time, but nobody (including the museum at Buzău, which spent a large sum developing a Dumitru Dan section) had bothered to look because it was a great yarn hearers wanted to be true.

 

Update 22 March 2023:

Despite Dan’s dubious claim, an exhibition dedicated to his feat (pun intended), Around the World on Foot: The Story of the 497 Pairs of Opinci, has just opened in the city of Ath, Belgium.  Marking the centenary of the conclusion of Dan’s tour, the exhibition, which runs from 18-31 March 2023, includes personal items, documents from the journey, and 20 images.  There will be lectures and a showing of the Groves’ film Opinci.

It is organised by the Brussels Romanian Cultural Institute, Buzău County Museum, Buzău County Council, the RoAth Association (‘connecting the Romanian cultural heritage with the inhabitants of the Ath region’), Wallonia City Hall and the Embassy of Romania in the Kingdom of Belgium.  The opening was attended by the Romanian ambassador, in addition to representatives of the participating associations.  So it is a pretty big deal.

Celebrating a Romanian hyperpedestrian in a provincial Belgian town may seem surprising.  The event has been mounted to mark International Francophonie Day, observed each year on 20 March to celebrate the French language.  A statement by the organisers provides the following rationale for the focus on Dan:

‘To mark the International Day of La Francophonie, ICR Brussels considers the project to be in line with the objectives of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie "to promote and protect the diversity of cultural expressions in the policy of supporting cultural heritage and artistic creation as a new form of human solidarity."

‘Also, “Around the World on Foot. The story of the 497 pairs of opinci" is a project designed to strengthen the ties between the two cultures, by (re)discovering and knowing the "other", paralleling the Romanian cultural past and values vis-à-vis the Belgian ones, in a city where folklore and traditions served as the starting point for a renewed campaign to promote them.’

One might deduce from the waffle that there was a certain amount of head-scratching to think up notable links between Romania and Belgium.  The reason given for the exhibition’s location in Ath is that according to the Buzău museum director, Daniel Costache, it is only 10-15 kilometres away from the point where Dan entered Belgium on 18 March 1914 en route to France.  As Dan received a transit paper, and there are other documents indicating his presence in the area, it is clear at least this part of his journey was genuine.

The publicity though recounts Dan’s claims uncritically and does not indicate that there are good grounds for scepticism, but as the Buzău museum is involved, and it is in their interest to promote Dan, it is hardly surprising.  If only his travelling companions had survived, we would have had independent corroboration that Dan is worthy of the exhibition and the accolades.

 

Bucharestless

Bucharestless (2011) is less a city symphony than a free-flowing jazz session, circling round the Romanian capital, picking elements here and there to build a kaleidoscopic picture of those everyday details that caught the filmmakers’ eyes.  Directed by George Dorobantu, the 93 minutes show aspects of Bucharest as organism, parts of which are barely noticed by those going about their business.  Unlike a chronologically-structured portrait we circle around, returning to scenes showing that while in some ways the city changes, in others it stays the same.

The title captures various forms of restlessness: Bucharest is a restless city, subject to changing light, weather and seasons, never the same from one moment to another.  The camera is restless as it pokes around.  The inhabitants it gazes at are restless as well.  This is not primarily about people though; in fact we rarely see faces.  Many of those shown are elderly, shuffling round with shopping bags, just getting by, but there are opportunities for leisure and play as well, and green spaces in which to relax.  Cats and stray dogs are plentiful, leading parallel lives.

Elements of architecture are included, but not primarily the touristy bits nor the new developments.  Mostly we see scruffy-looking apartment blocks, and even the more elegant buildings are often decaying.  When new buildings are shown, it is often at odd angles, or only as abstracts, suggesting an alienated view of the urban landscape.  As significant as the macro level is the micro level, nature keeping a toehold in an unpromising environment with ants and beetles flourishing among the detritus humans discard.  The overall shabbiness is a long way from the tourist board-favoured heritage view of the Paris of the East, but it is generally a vibrant shabbiness.

The film may seem artless, its makers merely strolling round with a digital camera, taking random shots and stitching them together, overlaid with a pleasant musical accompaniment.  And no doubt there was much walking about hoping for interesting things to turn up.  But there is structure (the film is divided into 16 sections though these are not obvious to the viewer) and some of the shots have been subjected to processing, moving away from the film as a slice of reality.  The result is immersive, a documentary that gets under the skin of the city, and in a hypnotic way gets under the skin of the viewer too.  But whether an emphasis on the tiredness of the infrastructure is a fair reflection of reality can only be judged by Bucharest’s inhabitants.

The film is available through Cinepub on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2RlZRZWCW8

In Other Lands: The Balkans (1920)

Produced by the Post Pictures Corporation of New York, this is a 15-minute documentary about the Balkans.  Title cards inform the viewer where the Balkans are, and which countries it comprises: Jugo-Slavia (sic), Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Turkey and Roumania (though it adds the last is not properly part of the peninsula).  It then goes on to list the ethnic diversity of the region.

After these preliminaries the film shows footage of some of the peoples of the region before noting how the different groups have often been in conflict with each other.  Then there are some generic views of a market followed by footage shot in various of the regions: Greece, Jugo-Slavia, Montenegro, Dalmatia, and Turks drinking tea in the street.

Then we get to Romania (7:36) for literally two shots, introduced by a title card – ‘Roumanian peasants, the only reliable and trustworthy class in their country’ (if it is any consolation the film is even ruder about the Turks).  In the first shot, an elderly man walks slowly through a gate, fastens it, picks up a pitchfork and walks out of shot.  In the second, two men stand and look at the camera while women and men sit in the background.

Then it is back to generic Balkan markets, Greek Orthodox priests, newspaper reading while on a pitifully small donkey in Athens, Bulgaria, Belgrade, and scenes that are merely labelled ‘Balkan’ and could be anywhere, concluding with the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria.  Much of the film comprises people standing or sitting while being filmed staring at the camera, in takes longer than necessary.

The film can be found on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJRfU5fPyvg&t=479s

Roumania Roumania, by Aaron Lebedeff

When I first heard Roumania Roumania, without reading a translation and knowing nothing of its composer, I thought it wonderfully upbeat and it made me smile, then it became an earworm.  It was written and composed by Aaron Lebedeff, sometimes Lebedoff (1873–1960), who was born in Belarus and became a notable stage performer.  He was witness to dark days for European Jewry, although after some peripatetic years learning his craft he had the good fortune to arrive in New York in 1920, where he achieved considerable success.

Roumania Roumania was originally released in 1925 though Lebedeff made a further version in 1941 and another in 1947.  It was his most popular song.  Looking into it a little more though after I read an English translation of the Yiddish, I started to think it might not be quite the sunny song it appears on the surface.   It seems to play on clichés of fun-loving Romanian Jews eating and making merry, but there is an edge provided by the history of Jewish persecution in Europe.  Here are the words; I cannot vouch for the strict accuracy of the translation but the sense is clear:

Oh! Roumania, Roumania, Roumania …

 Once there was a land, sweet and lovely.

 Oh! Roumania, Roumania, Roumania …

 Once there was a land, sweet and fine.

 To live there is a pleasure;

 What your heart desires you can get;

 A mămăligă, a pastrami, a karnatzl,

 And a glass of wine, aha … !

Ay, in Roumania life is so good;

 No one knows of care;

 Everywhere they’re drinking wine -

 And having a bite of kashtaval.

 Hay, digadi dam …

Ay, in Roumania life is so good;

 No one knows of worry.

 They drink wine, though it’s late;

 And have a bite of kastrovet.

 Hay, digadi dam …

Oh, my, help, I’m going crazy!

 I care only for brinze and mămăligă

 I dance and jump up to the ceiling

 When I eat a patlazhele.

 Dzing ma, tay yidldi tam …

 What a pleasure, what could be better!

 Oh, the only delight is Roumanian wine.

Roumanians drink wine

 And eat mămăligă;

 And he who kisses his own wife,

 Is the one who’s crazy.

 Zets, dzing ma, tay yidl di tam …

“May salvation come from heaven … “

 Stop and kiss the cook, Khaye,

 Dressed in rags and tatters;

 She makes a pudding for the Sabbath.

 Zets! Tay ti didl di tam …

Moyshe Khayim comes along

 And takes away the best part;

 Moyshe Khayim, Borukh Shmil –

 Tickle her on the sly.

 Zets! Tay tidl di tam …

And the girl pouts, alas,

 Seems unwilling, but allows it.

 Tshu!

It’s good to kiss a lass

 When she’s sweet sixteen;

 When one kisses an old maid,

 She begins to grumble.

 Zets! Tay yidl di dam …

 What a pleasure, what could be better!

 Oh, the only delight is Roumanian wine.

As depicted here, Romania is a never-never land, sweet, lovely, fine: a Garden of Eden in fact, where good food and drink flow and there are no cares.  The song gets faster as we imagine the singer becoming more and more drunk, spouting gibberish and getting frisky, kissing any lady – even the ragged cook will do, though a young girl is better – who comes into his orbit, apart from his wife, and jumping higher and higher in his exuberance.  And when the kissing is done, there is still wine.

The carefree image contrasts with the real situation in Europe, and while there may well be an element of nostalgia, there is a greater one of irony, because Jewish life in the region was never at any time as sunny as painted here and only got worse as the century progressed.  Even though Lebedeff was in New York, he could understand the anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe during the 1920s and 30s, and by the time he recorded the 1941 version, the laughter would have turned to anger, the ‘life is so good’ aspect taken on a sarcastic slant.  Now, with the horrors receding beyond memory into history, we can again laugh at those crazy times in old Roumania, where fun was the order of the day; as long as we do not forget the reality.

But why Romania, when Lebedeff was not from those parts?  Perhaps, though unlikely, it was on his mind when he wrote it in the mid-1920s because of the formation of Greater Romania in the period after the First World War; perhaps it was simply because the four syllables of ‘Roumania’ suited the rhythm of the song; perhaps it expressed a patronising attitude by urban Jews to their country cousins, or to Romanian Jews in particular who were seen as unsophisticated; perhaps there was a genuinely affectionate feeling that Romanian Jews had fun.  What seems uncomplicated lightheartedness shows on closer inspection that it is not quite as straightforward as one might assume.  No matter, it is a classic.

There are many, many versions of Roumania Roumania on YouTube, some of which are too reverent to do the song justice.  The following list is far from exhaustive.

Those by Lebedeff, remain the gold standard by which the others must be measured:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuj-qjyUjxY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Pkq72HodA

The Barry Sisters are sedate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REoxY-iyVPU

Joel Grey has a nicely bouncy take with a punchy delivery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI5nuLELfb8

The Jewish Monkeys exaggerate the manic aspect, not entirely successfully:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa66GNZ4r2I

Cathy Berberian tries too hard to be kooky:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty0pJL-Uc5Y

Eartha Kitt is typically sultry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_F_clNKPNQ

Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra did an instrumental version in 1961, which rather defeats the point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQbxr5A2v8c

The Sirba Octet also perform an instrumental version, but it is brisk and energetic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBQGVthco6M

The Klezmer Conservatory Band captures the humour well and Judy Bressler’s singing is so pitch-perfect this is probably my favourite, apart from Lebedeff’s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K74sXKKus1w

Arthur Ransome (briefly) in Romania

Roland Chambers’ 2009 biography The Last Englishman: The Double Life ofArthur Ransome contains a reference to Romania in the First World War, albeit one so brief it does not merit an entry in the index.  It is on pp. 121-22.

Ransome, working as a journalist in Russia, was sent by the editor of the Daily News to cover the Romanian situation after its entry into the war in August 1916.  Not long back from Belorussia and looking forward to a holiday, he left Petrograd at the beginning of September on an assignment he was not happy about.  He knew Russian but not Romanian, and thought the language ‘one of the most difficult on earth’ as he undertook a crash course on the journey.

In the event he rather enjoyed the trip.  The weather was cooling in Petrograd as autumn had set in early, but the south was very warm.  ‘Romania was full of new faces, fresh perspectives, and on the train down to Bucharest, a tribe of attentive, energetic children and friendly soldiers who fed him sweets, melons, cheese, cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs and yellow wine.’

He stayed in Romania for six weeks and ‘treated the entire excursion as an Indian summer holiday,’ leaving just ahead of the invading German army ‘in hot gorgeous weather…as happy as a bird and as burnt as a brick,’ with a Turkish coffee mill he had bought for 12 lei in a street market on the Black Sea coast.  He briefly returned to Petrograd ‘full of the usual filth and snow of winter’ before leaving on that deferred trip to England.

Marele Jaf Comunist/The Great Communist Robbery

The Great Communist Robbery (2004) is a documentary by Alexandru Solomon detailing the strange event on 29 July 1959 when five men and a woman robbed a Škoda car carrying banknotes, valued at over 1.6 million lei, to the National Bank of Romania in Bucharest.  This was despite the currency having no value outside Romania, and the difficulties of spending it inside the country, where citizens were closely monitored and abnormal spending patterns would be expected to draw the attention of the police.

As Romania was a police state the crime rate was very low, so the robbery took the authorities by surprise and there was pressure on the security apparatus to solve the crime.  The initial suspects were the bank staff, but attention switched to disaffected members of the Communist Party.  The pressure was on the investigators, who were told that failure to arrest the perpetrators within a short period would mean they were out of a job.

After rounding up a large number of suspects and using robust interrogation methods, the group responsible – brothers Alexandru and Paul Ioanid (who gave the group its name the Ioanid Gang), Saşa Muşat, Haralambie Obedeanu, and husband and wife Igor and Monica Sevianu – was uncovered and arrested in September 1959.  Significantly, all of the members of the group were Jewish.  Confessions followed, but then the case became even stranger.

The six were told to participate in a film about the robbery.  The result was Reconstruction, a propaganda film made on Communist Party orders by Virgil Calotescu in 1960, in which the robbers played themselves.  (Rather confusingly there is a 2001 film also called Reconstruction.  Directed by Irene Lusztig, Monica Sevianu’s granddaughter, it is about the case but focuses on Monica.  A further Romanian film called Reconstruction, directed by Lucian Pintilie in 1970, is not about the 1959 robbery.)

The 1960 documentary, fragments of which are included in Solomon’s film, comprise crude reconstructions, with the accused unsurprisingly giving stilted performances.  Naturally the method of obtaining confessions is glossed over.  Instead the suspects sit at a small table looking uncomfortable while the interrogator narrows his eyes and asks questions in a firm voice.  Showing a pile of weapons is enough to elicit a statement of guilt.  The reality would have been far different: the family of one of the bank staff initially suspected were told he had died of a stroke while being questioned, a not uncommon occurrence they were informed matter-of-factly.

Screenings of the film were reserved for Party members, emphasising the efficiency of the state in dealing with malefactors and acting as a warning to others who might be similarly tempted.  The six cooperated in the project because they were led to believe they would receive lighter sentences, but the state failed to uphold its side of the bargain and their trial followed a standard Stalinist format, with pre-rehearsed public confessions.  Death sentences were handed to all six, but that of Monica Sevianu was commuted to life imprisonment as she was a mother, and she was later allowed to leave for Israel where she died in the 1970s.

The Great Communist Robbery dissects the robbery and the 1960 reconstruction by visiting locations and interviewing people who were connected to the robbers, the robbery and its aftermath.  Several were involved in the investigation and prosecution, including the judge who handed out the death sentences.  These retired functionaries skirt any hint they behaved improperly, and the lack of an interviewer’s voice means they are never asked hard questions; even when a former prisoner mentions the name of a Securitate officer who had ill-treated her and there is a brief shot of him, one of the interviewees.

Definitive answers on the robbery are not forthcoming in Solomon’s documentary.  Naturally the state-ordered 1960 film had its own agenda and cannot be trusted as impartial evidence.  Surprisingly, the men in the group had been significant Party members and intellectuals, while Monica Sevianu was on a watch list after having emigrated illegally to Israel where she married and had children before, for reasons never stated, returning to Romania and remarrying.  Some of the audience members in 1960 would presumably have known members of the group, who had been long-term Party activists.  But to show that such people had acted against in this way would have been embarrassing for the government.

Instead there were orders to the filmmakers not to include any political motives, nor to refer to the perpetrators’ political or Jewish backgrounds.  The reasons for their bizarre act were subsumed to the state’s requirements for obedience.  They were depicted as lumpen elements acting solely from base impulses of greed.  The Securitate were shown to be the heroes, assisted by the public, in bringing the perpetrators to justice so efficiently.

While the 1960 film was unable to arrive at a definitive reason for this quixotic act for ideological reasons, by 2004 many of those involved were dead.  The son of one of the robbers is shown examining the extensive files on the case, but they reflect the official position and shed no new light on why the robbery was carried out.  Various suggestions are propounded in Solomon’s film and found wanting, such as revenge for discrimination against Romanian Jews, or to gather funds to assist illegal emigration to Israel.

However, the extent of the group’s Zionist sympathies is unclear, nor why they would feel it worth taking such risks.  Using the money to pay bribes to corrupt officials within the country (not something which could have been aired in 1960) seems a plausible reason, but it is discarded with little discussion.  The film argues that state control would have made it difficult to spend the money in Romania, but amenable officials might have been able to launder the funds and use the proceeds discreetly, or the group themselves might have hoped to spend the money while remaining under the Securitate’s radar.  Perhaps the answer is to be found in personal psychology, a search for excitement in a grey society where individualism was frowned on, and the act was the significant factor rather than considerations of its aftermath.

In a world of mirrors where nothing is what it seems there is a possibility the robbery never occurred and the group was set up, with alleged eyewitnesses coerced into their testimony, in order to expedite an anti-Jewish purge.  If so, it seems an improbably elaborate strategy, but there is a precedent of a sort in the theory that Sergei Kirov’s assassination in Leningrad in 1934 was sanctioned by Stalin and the NKVD as a pretext for a purge of the Bolsheviks.  Agreement to participate in the 1960 (fiction rather than documentary) film could have been secured by threats to harm family coupled with the offer of emigration – but would Monica then have been allowed to leave, with the risk of her exposing the fraud?  The rumour that the executions were faked to allow the five men to operate secretly as intelligence agents abroad is certainly unfounded.

This is a window on the way Romania worked under the communist regime, where dissent was repressed and anti-Semitism was forcing Jews, many of whom would have preferred emigration to Israel to life in Romania, out of their jobs, even if they had previously been staunch supporters of the Party.  The truth of the robbery will probably now never be known, but Solomon has gone some way to airing the issues.  Greater rigour in interviews would have been welcome, but might not have elicited any more information.  More seriously, there is a sense that delving further into the biographies of the six could have thrown up insights about their behaviour, and this is the film’s greatest weakness.

The Great Communist Robbery is available on YouTube courtesy of Cinepub:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOt-JNz2mqE

Make the Most of Your Time on Earth, by James Smart (ed.)

With the strapline ‘1000 ultimate travel experiences’, the second edition (2012) of the Rough Guide compilation Make the Most of Your Time on Earth: The Rough Guide to the World consists of personal recommendations contributed by Rough Guide authors.  Each entry is a couple of paragraphs, with a link to brief further information.

There are four entries relating to Romania: ‘Tracking carnivores (i.e. wolves and bears) in the Carpathian mountains’; ‘Journeying to the end of the Danube’; ‘Riding on horseback through snow in Transylvania’ (a somewhat waffly entry, perhaps because there is not much to write about riding a horse in the snow, even in such beautiful surroundings); and the outstandingly predictable ‘On the Dracula trail in Transylvania’.

There is also an entry for Moldova, ‘Nightclubbing back in the (old) USSR’; it makes the valid point that Moldova does not have a reputation as an oasis of hedonism.  The writer did find some nightlife though at the Military Pub in Chisinau, notable for having an ex-Soviet tank in the middle of the dance floor to house the DJ.  As far as I can tell the place no longer exists, which is a great shame.

Such a volume has to be subjective, and a travel experience one particular type of reader will love is going to leave another one cold.  Whatever type of trip one favours, it is easy to agree with the aim expressed here of moving beyond the familiar, even if in the age of mass mobility it is increasingly difficult to find ‘authentic’ experiences, and these suggestions only patchily fulfill that aim.

The Legend and Romance of the Vampire, by Derek Hall (2010)

Derek Hall’s superficial examination of the vampire, aimed primarily at the teenage market, has a chapter on Vlad Țepeș and another on Transylvania, which despite being crassly titled ‘Land of the Vampire’ expands on the region’s folklore.  The book is nicely illustrated with some very attractive photographs that will delight the Romanian tourist board.  The text, however, while it is useful background for anyone whose ideas of the historical Vlad and of Transylvania come from films and mass-market novels, does not delve particularly deeply and is at times simplistic when dealing with the complex historical material.

European Stories: EUPL Winners Write Europe

European Stories: EUPL Winners Write Europe is an anthology of short stories by winners of the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) published in 2018 and available free online.  In the foreword, ‘Writing Europe – how literature helps us build communities’, Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, says:

‘Europe’s cultural and linguistic diversity is a tremendous asset. Yet, this diversity makes it difficult for cultural works to circulate across borders, and this is especially true for literature. This is why, in 2009, the European Commission decided to launch the European Union Prize for Literature to support outstanding works of fiction by new and emerging authors writing in their national languages. In the past nine editions, we have recognised 108 talented authors from 37 different countries. We are very proud to have such a great number of excellent laureates, who represent Europe in their diversity.

‘2018 is a very special year: we are celebrating the European Year of Cultural Heritage, as well as the tenth anniversary of the European Union Prize for Literature. To mark this occasion, we organised a specific contest “A European Story: European Union Prize for Literature Winners Write Europe”. This is a unique competition for short works of fiction, exclusively open to previous winners of the prize, to celebrate the wealth and creativity of Europe’s contemporary literature.’

Of these winners, 36 from 26 countries, writing in 23 languages, entered.  All the submitted stories are presented in the original language and in English translation. Short biographies of the writers preface their contributions.  There are two Romanian writers in the anthology.  Claudiu Florian’s first novel, Vârstele jocului. Strada Cetăţii, won the EUPL in 2016.  His story ‘The Inheritance’ (‘Die Erbschaft’) included here is in German (he is Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Berlin).  Ioana Pârvulescu won the EUPL in 2013 for her novel Life Begins on Friday (Viaţa începe vineri).  She is represented by her short story ‘A Voice’ (‘O voce’).

‘The Inheritance’ recounts a meeting in the mountains near the Carpathian Sphinx between Adamovicescu, a Romanian lecturer who is working on a system of philosophical thought called kaputmunditism, and what at first appears to be an alien.  However, by the end it would seem (if I have figured this out correctly) the creature is actually the grandchild of the mythological Pasiphae, who gave birth to the Minotaur on Crete. 

As Adamovicescu had had a stroke (his background is full of improbabilities and his four alleged doctorates were acquired with ludicrous ease), it is possible he is an unreliable narrator.  Most of the story is taken up by a dialogue in which he tries to explain life on earth to the visitor but only manages to confuse the situation by his incoherence.  The story concludes on a cliffhanger with ‘To be continued’, but hopefully that is a joke.

‘A Voice’ is a beautifully structured story about a homecoming.  A young woman at a passport control booth in an eastern European airport is processing passengers who have just arrived on an aeroplane from Paris.  Since the December 1989 revolution, the flights coming in from western Europe have been full and passengers are dealt with on autopilot by the overstretched staff.  One elderly lady proffers her passport, but when she speaks, the passport controller is overcome with emotion, rushes out and hugs the newcomer, even though she has never seen her before.   The scene shifts to 1947 and a young woman is trying to get into American-controlled Austria en route to Paris.  Despite having valid documentation she is put off the train, and only manages to complete the journey after much difficulty.

The third section, 44 years later, switches to a first person narrative and the same woman and her husband fly eastwards from Orly.  In exile she had worked for Radio Free Europe, broadcasting to her home country despite physical violence towards her and the murder of her mother, giving hope to those suffering from its repression.  Now at last she is free to return.  At passport control she proffers her passport and says “Good evening, Miss!” , whereupon the young woman in the booth comes round to hug her hard.  “I am crying like a fool because only now do I realise that we’re actually free,” she says.

There is another story in the volume, by Macedonian Lidija Dimkovska, dealing partly with Romania, at least obliquely.  ‘When I left “Karl Liebknecht”’ (‘Кога заминав од „Карл Либкнехт“’) consists of a series of short statements ostensibly by individuals gathered for a meeting organised by the Society of Admirers of Karl Liebknecht at Karl Liebknecht House in Leipzig.  All had emigrated from their countries of birth, and had lived at an address associated with the name Karl Liebknecht prior to emigration.

The first concerns Vitalie who had grown up in a house on Karl Liebknecht Street in Tiraspol, Transnistria.  One afternoon in 2006 he was on a trolleybus in the city when a bomb exploded.  He moved to Bucharest, and his father advised him to forget Transnistria and present himself as coming from Moldova.  When his father died he brought his mother to Bucharest but while he uses Latin script his mother struggles because she is used to Cyrillic, and he finds himself using it as well when jotting shopping lists, his sole legacy from Tiraspol.  Sometimes he misses the Dniester, he says, and feels Romania is a foreign country to which they have to adjust.