In search of paradise

It’s time for a final post about my journey through Eastern Europe in 1990. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program. For almost three months, the group made its way progressively through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. Our formal activities finally came to an end in the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv.

On 30 July, we bid farewell to our local hosts and drove towards Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Here, our group split and went our separate ways for a final week of rest and relaxation. Six of us (me, Dean, Dave, Sandy, Michele and Christine) decided to take one of our two minivans and drive south to Greece, while the remaining six members returned to Switzerland to explore the Swiss Alps.

My group decided to go in search of a remote Greek beach, set up camp, and enjoy the ultimate postcard vacation. We left Sofia early in the afternoon and headed towards Thessaloniki, 300 km south. We were keen to see the city, given its prominent role in three New Testament books (Acts, as well as 1 and 2 Thessalonians). During the early days of the Christian church it was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. 

We stopped for a night in Thessaloniki and spent the following morning exploring this ancient Greek city. That’s us in the image above at the Arch of Galerius. This is a triumphal arch in the centre of town, built to commemorate a victorious campaign against the Persians by Roman Emperor Galerius in 306 AD. It was originally an eight-pillared gateway that formed a triple arch and connected to the Roman palace. Only two of the arches remain. 

Exploring Thessaloniki was kind of mind-blowing. A revered biblical location came to life for the very first time. When you live in the antipodes ancient history often feels mythical by nature rather than stories of real places where real people live. In the decades since, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had stop and figuratively pinch myself, marvelling at the fact “this place really exists”.

However, while Thessaloniki was fun, our ultimate destination was the Chalkidiki peninsula. This is the three-fingered landmass extends south of Thessaloniki into the Aegean Sea. Its rambling coastline was promising territory in our search for the perfect beach.

We headed south along the coast of the Kassandra Peninsula, Chalkidiki’s westernmost finger, mid afternoon on 31 July. However, the further south we drove, the more crowded the beaches became. Our dream destination was proving more elusive than anticipated. We eventually stopped for the night on the eastern shores of the peninsula.

The following morning, we continued our quest for the perfect beach. We drove back up the coast and around Toroneos Kolpos towards Chalkidiki’s middle finger. It was here, at the tip of the Sithonia Peninsula, that we finally found the beach we’d been searching for. 

Porto Korfu Beach ticked all the boxes. It was a gently arcing crescent of sand hugging the eastern shoreline of a small, sheltered bay. A narrow channel between two picturesque headlands provided safe access to the sea. Even better, there wasn’t a soul to be seen.  

A few days later, we found a postcard of Porto Korfu in a local store. I've kept it as a souvenir for more than 35 years. Look for the red dot in the image above. That was our small piece of paradise.

We set up camp on a grassy flat towards the southern end of the beach and spent the next three days in paradise. We swam in the warm azure-blue waters of the Aegean Sea. One evening, we filled watermelons from a nearby village with a bottle of Ouzo and feasted on their aniseed flesh. One afternoon, we hiked over the headlands to soak in breathtaking views of the local coastline. It was truly idyllic.

We even enjoyed an unexpected taste of local culture. Every morning, a young lad passed through our campsite shepherding a herd of goats. He’d walk them along the beach to graze on the headlands and return them home in the late afternoon. You can see the herd making themselves at home in the image above.

On the afternoon of 3 August, we finally packed up camp and began making our way north. Our minivan had to be returned to its owners three days later, in Einigen, Switzerland, more than 2,100 km away. We camped for the night on the outskirts of Nea Mouldania, gateway to the bustling Kassandra Peninsula.

The following day, we crossed into Yugoslavia and drove nonstop for the entire day and on through the night, before finally reaching Liechtenstein on Sunday afternoon. I recall one driving shift I took on. We pulled off the motorway late at night to refuel and take a quick bathroom break. As I drove across the motorway overpass, I momentarily forgot we were driving on the right-hand side of the road and turned onto the wrong side of the slip road leading into the service station. The entire van erupted with shouts as we realised my error.

I also remember our stop at the Liechtenstein border. A modest road sign and a small guard hut were the only indications of its existence. A friendly border guard welcomed us to the principality. We handed over our passports, hoping for a souvenir stamp. The guard waved them off. We insisted he stamp them. He eventually relented, disappeared inside his little hut and eventually returned with a stamp pad. I suspect he had to search high and low to find it. That’s my stamp in the image above. It would be another twenty years before I’d return to Liechtenstein again. 

We stopped for the night at Camping Mittagspitze, which I’m sure is Liechtenstein’s only campground. The following morning, 6 August, we drove across Switzerland and into Einigen. Here we handed back the minivan and large canvas tent we'd borrowed from the local YWAM base. Two days later, I set off with Dean Keiller, a Victorian sheep farmer, on a new adventure, backpacking our way through Western Europe. Follow this link to learn more about our three-month odyssey through 12 countries.

Tampons and toilet paper

Here’s more about my time in Bulgaria in 1990. If you’ve been following the journey so far, a dozen of us spent three months travelling through Eastern Europe as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program. We entered Bulgaria on 11 July and spent eight days in Varna, on the Black Sea coast, before heading south to the provincial port city of Burgas.

This city of more than 200,000 sits on the edge of Burgas Bay, the westernmost point of the Black Sea. According to Wikipedia, Burgas is the centre of the Bulgarian fishing and fish processing industry. Our group spent five days here, hosted by a fractious local church. The congregation was deeply divided between two camps. Our group spent much of its time promoting unity in an attempt to reconcile the warring factions.

I don’t recall the cause of the schism. However, it wasn’t all that unexpected. Protestant denominations were subjected to relentless persecution in Bulgaria during the Communist era. For example, when the Communists came to power in 1946, a law curbing foreign currency transactions was introduced. At the time, many Protestant churches were funded by international donations, and many of their ministers had been trained in the West. As a result, these foreign ties were treated with suspicion, often fostering deep divisions within many congregations.

On 24 July, we headed inland to the city of Plovdiv. In many respects, we’d saved the best for last. The church that hosted us proved to be one of the strongest contacts we made throughout Eastern Europe, second only perhaps to the church we met in Debrecen, Hungary. Much like Debrecen, the church in Plovdiv boasted an active and energetic youth group that quickly took us under its wing.

For six days, we delivered daily open-air performances of our dialogue-free street drama to large and engaging crowds. The church also took on a day trip to a nearby village to share the gospel with a fledgling congregation it was sponsoring. Above you can see Dean Keiller and me with Jimmy, a member of our host church. Jimmy was simply enamoured by our group and its activities. He followed us everywhere, and we welcomed him with open arms for dinner and a laugh at our campsite more than once. That’s our campsite in the image that opens this post.

Plovdiv is Bulgaria’s second-largest city. Its greater metropolitan area is home to more than half a million people. It’s also one of its oldest cities. There is evidence of habitation in the area dating back to approximately 6000 BC. In the millennia since, it has been conquered and ruled by the Greeks, the Persians, the Celts, the Romans and the Ottoman Turks.

As a result, Plovdiv is rich in fascinating history. One afternoon, our hosts took us to visit the city’s beautifully restored Roman amphitheatre. The Roman theatre of Philippopolis (Plovdivski antichen teatar) is one of the world's best-preserved ancient theatres, and one of Bulgaria’s most famous monuments. It sits within a natural saddle between two of the city’s historic Three Hills. It is divided into two parts, each with 14 rows, separated by a horizontal aisle, and could accommodate up to 7,000 people. The first image above is mine, while the second was pulled from the web.

One final anecdote from our time in Bulgaria. Shortages of basic goods were a common occurrence wherever we travelled in Eastern Europe. However, each country had its own peculiar supply challenge. For example, in Romania, toilet paper was scarce, while in Bulgaria, women’s sanitary items were hard to come by. As we travelled through Bulgaria, the women in our group were constantly approached by locals asking for a spare tampon or sanitary pad.

During our final days in Bulgaria, the women in our group donated their surplus sanitary supplies to several grateful women. Although, if I recall correctly, in Sofia, the nation’s capital, one particularly well-heeled woman cornered a group member in a toilet. She offered a hefty sum of banknotes for a handful of tampons. We later joked that had we been better prepared, we could’ve funded our trip through Eastern Europe by simply stocking up on toilet paper and tampons.

On 30 July, we packed up our outreach camp for the last time and made our way to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Here, our group split, with half of us returning to Switzerland, while the rest of us headed for Greece. You can learn more about our time in Greece here.

The Black Sea

In 1990, I spent three weeks travelling through Bulgaria. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program, seven months after the nation’s Communist Government had voluntarily ceded power. We crossed the border from Romania on 11 July, exactly a month after Bulgaria had held its first free elections in almost fifty years.

We drove from Pitesti in Romania, via Bucharest, before crossing the Bridge of Friendship into the Bulgarian city of Ruse. This was also our last sighting of the Danube on this trip. From Ruse we drove east to Varna on the Black Sea coast. As we ventured through the countryside, we unwittingly experienced our first taste of post-Communist corruption.

In the middle of nowhere, as our minivan rounded a downhill curve, a police officer suddenly appeared from the trees holding a sign that instructed us to stop. We pulled over. In broken English, he demanded payment of a fine. David, our Canadian colleague who’d been driving the van, quietly slipped a handful of banknotes into his open hand. We were then free to go.

We encountered this entrepreneurial spirit everywhere we went in Eastern Europe. For example, almost every town had someone offering Western pornography, a once-rare item, at a bargain price. This included trestle tables set up in city parks loaded with explicit magazines. We were also frequently approached by freelance money changers offering an exchange rate two or three times more favourable than the official rate.

The use of unofficial money changers caused quite a stir within our group. Some of us, including me, felt we were normalising lawlessness in these fledgling and potentially fragile democracies. Tim, our group leader, eventually agreed that our collective expenses would only be funded using official currency exchange outlets.

Varna was a typical seaside resort destination (see the internet-sourced image above). It’s home to more than 300,000 people, making it Bulgaria’s third-largest city. It’s often referred to as Bulgaria’s maritime capital and is home to the headquarters of the Bulgarian Navy and merchant marine. We were invited to visit Varna by a local church member who’d seen us performing our street drama elsewhere in Eastern Europe. However, unlike Romania, we set up camp in each location rather than being taken in by local families.

As I’ve posted previously, public infrastructure throughout Romania was in disarray thanks to the oppressive austerity measures imposed by the Ceaușescu regime. We camped for a night in Timisoara when we entered the country. The campground was in a serious state of disrepair, with toilets broken and filled with human excrement, and basic foodstuffs almost impossible to procure if you didn’t have the right connections. We couldn’t have travelled for a month in Romania if local families hadn’t taken us under their wing.

Camping in Bulgaria proved to be a rather civilised affair. The facilities were well-maintained, and hot water was generally available, although it was sometimes available only for set hours each day. I recall an encounter I had with an old lady cleaning the male shower block at our campground in Varna. I was enjoying a leisurely hot shower when she suddenly appeared in the doorway. She immediately took umbrage when she noticed my blade shaving in the shower. She decided this was a colossal waste of precious hot water and began scolding me in Bulgarian. I dismissed her protestations and continued shaving.

A few minutes later, she reappeared. However, this time she took a more aggressive approach. She decided that the only way to stop me wasting water was to embarrass me. She began cleaning the shower block while I was still standing there. I decided that being naked in front of an elderly Bulgarian woman was a humiliation worth enduring for the sake of a leisurely hot shower. To this date, I’m sure she thought I’d rinse off and make a quick exit.

We spent eight days in Varna, hosted by a large and active evangelical church. Its bold and public proclamations of the gospel meant that it had suffered extensive persecution under Communist rule. We heard many stories of individuals who’d been harnessed by local officials, denied access to social services and other injustices. 

For example, we learned that the church’s pastor was relatively new to the congregation. Apparently, his predecessor had been arrested, imprisoned and never heard from again. It was confronting to hear firsthand of people disappearing at the hands of the Government. I believe the image above, taken from the web, is of the church which hosted us. Although, thanks to the passage of time, I am no longer certain.

We conducted daily open-air performances of our gospel inspired street drama. These regularly drew large crowds, often hundreds of people at a time. In fact, some of the biggest crowds we drew during our entire time in Eastern Europe were in Bulgaria. You see one such crowd in the photo that opens this post. The centre of Varna is dissected by a broad pedestrian boulevard filled with plazas, parks and garden beds. It offered plenty of space for us to perform without impeding pedestrians, while providing a ready-made audience every day.

After trolling Google Street View, I've confirmed that the opening photo was taken on the edge of Independence Square (Ploshtad Nezavisimost). It’s a well-known focal point where several pedestrian boulevards converge, including Preslav, the main pedestrian throughfare. Preslav starts in front of the city’s iconic Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral and ends at Knyaz Boris I, the city’s premier shopping street. Above is a screenshot of the central plaza as it appears on Google Street View more than three decades later. The red building has been repainted. However, its distinctive balconies remain unchanged, as do the balconies on the left-hand building.

When we weren't ministering in the streets, we spent time at the beach, enjoying the warm waters of the Black Sea. I still marvel at the fact that I once swam in this renowned body of water - one that's currently a battleground in the war between Ukraine and Russia.

On 19 July, we packed up camp and drove south along the Black Sea coast to Burgas, Bulgaria’s fourth largest city, before turning inland towards the ancient city of Plovdiv. You can learn more about our time in these Bulgarian cities here.

Living in Ceaușescu's shadow

Time for another retrospective post. This time, we’ll complete the story of my journey through Romania in 1990. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program, just six months after the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu had collapsed in a violent revolution. Local church families, as we travelled through the country. For many of our hosts, we were the first foreigners they’d ever met. For decades, engaging with a foreigner inevitably led to an unscheduled visit from the Securitate, Romania’s much-feared secret police agency.

In an earlier post, I wrote about our time in Drobeta-Turnu Severin on the banks of the Danube River. On 4 July, we farewelled our riverside hosts and headed 40 km north to the impoverished mining town of Motru. The town was established in 1960 to house workers for a series of new open-pit coal mines established nearby. At their peak, they were the largest coal mines in the country.

We stopped for the night in Motru after performing our street drama in another striking open-air setting. We delivered our three-part production in a park opposite the Catedrala Sfânta Treime și Cuvioasa Parascheva, a classic white Russian Orthodox church in the centre of town. Our local host later claimed it was probably the first time the gospel had ever been preached publicly in the town.

He made this claim in part because the town had been established during the communist era. A time when proselytism was illegal and religious activities were restricted to government-sanctioned denominations such as the Russian Orthodox church. Furthermore, the Orthodox church was filled with patriarchs sympathetic to the Communists. However, even then, it suffered persecution. According to historians, more than 1,700 Orthodox priests of the 9,000 Orthodox priests in Romania were arrested between 1945 and 1964.

On 5 July, we drove 35 km north to the provincial city of Târgu Jiu. Here we were hosted by another highly organised church. It kept us busy visiting local villages, where we peached the gossip in open fields, and an afternoon at a youth summer camp. You can see us performing in the images that opens this post. The guy in the grey track pants is me playing the role of Satan. I honestly don’t recall much from our time in Târgu Jiu. However, I do remember an uncomfortable conversation I had with a young man, either here or possibly a few days earlier in Drobeta-Turnu Severin.

This young man shared how he’d successfully escaped Romania by swimming across the Danube. You can see how narrow sections of the river are in the image above that I've sourced from the web. He then evaded capture by the Yugoslavian authorities and made his way to Italy. It was here that his luck ran out. The Italian authorities arrested him and eventually deported him back to Romania. Upon his return, he was held in solitary confinement by the Securitate for almost a month.

As he mentioned his solitary confinement, he suddenly froze, his demeanour changed, and he promptly terminated the conversation. Whatever memories came next, they were clearly too painful to share. I can only speculate that he was beaten, tortured or subjected to psychological abuse. Sadly, the scars of Ceaușescu were never far below the surface wherever we ventured in Romania.

On a lighter note, I vividly recall the local head of a small village inviting us to his house to drink tea. Inside, proudly displayed on the mantlepiece, was an empty Coke bottle. This quirky artefact spoke volumes regarding his power and prestige. You couldn't buy Coca-Cola in Romania for love or money. Therefore, if you had this bottle in your home, you were clearly well-connected, highly influential and potentially very wealthy. It was amusing to see an object that you or I would discard without a second thought given such reverence.

On 10 July, we made our way back to Pitești. It was fitting that our final night in Romania was in the very place we’d begun our month-long circuit of the country’s southern towns and cities. We stayed again with the families who’d hosted us in June, reporting back on all we’d seen and done. The following day, we crossed the Danube and made our way to Varna on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.

Our route east took us through the capital, Bucharest, for the first time. Driving there was a rather unique experience. A dual carriageway motorway, the Autostrada A1, linked Pitești with the capital. It was the nation’s first motorway, and for 15 years after its opening in 1972, the only one in the entire country. 

However, it wasn’t like any motorway I’d ever seen. Weeds grew in the cracks across the carriageway; waist-high grass filled the median strip and lined its shoulders, and a single, solitary, hand-painted, fading billboard (the only one we saw in all of Romania) promoted the nation's homemade Dacia motor car. It looked more like a set from a post-apocalyptic movie than a modern highway. It was just another sad example of the impact Ceaușescu’s harsh austerity programs had had on infrastructure maintenance.

 
The image above shows the motorway as it appears today. The road surface and line markings are in much better condition. However, the dense corridor of trees and long grass on either side is exactly how I remember it. At times, it really felt like the highway was slicing arrow-straight through dense green forest.

Likewise, along the entire highway’s length, shredded black rubber littered the verge. Extreme austerity and growing poverty meant people used their tyres until they literally disintegrated. Then, once dumped on the roadside, the waste was never collected. I’ve never seen anything quite like it anywhere else in the world.

Our time in Bucharest was all too brief. We stopped long enough to collect a few supplies and walked briefly through a section of town. I was fascinated by the scars of battle visible on the surrounding buildings. Bullet holes from street fighting that raged for days after Ceaușescu’s fall were visible everywhere. You can see a typical example above. It was surreal walking the streets where gun battles had been fought just months earlier.

However, the city’s biggest highlight – for me at least – came as we drove out of town. Our route took us along Bulevardul Ion C. Brătianu and then briefly across Bulevardul Victoria Socialismului (Victory of Socialism Boulevard, a dramatic arrow-straight throughfare that extends for more than three kilometres through the city’s centre. It’s since been renamed Bulevardul Unirii (Union Boulevard).

Bulevardul Victoria Socialismului was constructed by Ceaușescu as a showpiece processional avenue leading to his grand Presidential Palace. This monumental building was still under construction when his regime fell in December 1989. I was keen to see it up close. However, I had to satisfy myself with a passing glimpse in the distance as we crossed over Bulevardul Victoria Socialismului. Still, it was an astonishing sight. The intersection we crossed was a kilometre from the building, yet it still dominated the landscape.

The image above was pulled from the web. It captures the scene we briefly witnessed, including the forest of construction cranes we saw. It would be another two decades before I’d return and see it up close.

All grown up

Garry and I spent Sunday afternoon at Rouse Hill celebrating the engagement of Zoe and Ben. Zoe is Garry’s niece. She’s also the sister of Mitchell who’s worked for Garry and I for more than seven years.

The engagement party was hosted at Jason and Nicole’s house. More than 50 people attended. The weather also played its part. We enjoyed hot, sunny and slightly humid conditions all afternoon.

As I watched the happy couple enjoying one another’s company I was reminded of the first time I met Zoe. She was just a toddler. Her proud mother dragged me upstairs to show me “her baby” sleeping in her cot. 

The photo above was taken a few months later then I joined the Smith family for an early Christmas lunch in December 2003. Zoe is at the end of the table sitting on her Dad’s lap. It’s hard to believe she’s all grown up, owns her own home jointly with Ben and is now preparing for her marriage next year.

Life on the Danube

Drobeta-Turnu Severin lies on the northern bank of the Danube River. This historical city is home to more than 100,000 people. Drobeta is the name of the ancient Dacian and Roman towns that once resided here. The modern city of Turnu Severin received the additional name of Drobeta during Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist dictatorship as part of his national myth-making efforts.

Nine hundred years ago, one of the Roman Empire’s most famous bridges crossed the river nearby. Trajan's Bridge, as it was colloquially known, was the first bridge to be built over the lower Danube. It’s 20 masonry arches spanned 1,135 metres (the Danube is now 800 m wide in that area), was 15 metres wide, and sat 19 metres above the waterline.

Although it was functional for only 165 years, it is often considered to have been the longest arch bridge in both total span and length for more than 1,000 years. These days, all that remains of this impressive structure are its two ruined entrance pillars located on either side of the river.

I spent eight days in Drobeta-Turnu Severin in late June 1990. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program. We arrived in town on Tuesday, 26 June, before departing again on 3 July. As had been the case elsewhere, our group was warmly greeted and hosted by families from a local church.

Our time here was a highlight of our month in Romania. We were welcomed by an enthusiastic and well-organised Baptist church, which scheduled a hectic itinerary for us. For the next eight days, we visited five regional churches and conducted daily street performances that drew large crowds. Romanian television and newspapers even reported on our presence in the area.

However, it was the scenery that I remember most vividly. The Danube was at its most dramatic here, and the villages we visited in the surrounding hills were easily the most scenic we encountered in all Eastern Europe. A few kilometres upstream from Drobeta-Turnu Severin are the Iron Gates. This is the name for a series of narrow and dramatic river gorges winding their way east for more than 50 kilometres. It forms the border between Serbia to the south and Romania to the north.

The Great Kazan (kazan meaning "cauldron" or "reservoir") is the most famous and the narrowest gorge along the route. Here, the river narrows to less than 150 metres. Elsewhere, steep rocky cliffs soar to 500 metres and are almost impossible to reach by land. In other words, the scenery is truly spectacular.  The images above, pulled from the web, barely do it justice.

One afternoon, we drove along the Danube to a small village called Dubova, about an hour west of Drobeta-Turnu Severin. At times, you felt as though you could reach out and touch the Serbian shoreline. The middle image above includes Dubova in the background. However, it wasn’t the scenery that created the most memorable experience.

 
At one point, we stopped to inspect an abandoned watch tower overlooking the gorge. With us were several youths from our host church. They’d joined us for the ride in part because they’d never travelled this stretch of road despite living nearby. During the Ceaușescu era, this section of the Danube was off-limits to all but a few local villagers who required a special permit to reside here. The narrow gorge was considered far too tempting for illegal border crossings, mainly Romanians trying to escape the oppressive regime and its increasingly harsh austerity programs.

As a result, the road was heavily guarded by a chain of watchtowers monitoring it and the river day and night. Alison Mutler, a freelance journalist in Romania, published this harrowing story of one man's experience swimming across the Danube in the dead of night. She also took the image above near Orsova, a town we passed through on our way to Dubova.

As one youth told me, he’d seen photos of the gorges but never the real thing. It was hard to imagine living just a few kilometres from such scenic beauty and having never seen it with your own eyes.  This fear of the past came to life during one scenic stop. We pulled over to take a closer look at one of the abandoned watchtowers. A couple of us, including me, climbed the guard tower ladder for a better view. Our hosts were visibly uncomfortable with our excursion. Such an act, just six months earlier, would have been a death sentence.

The threat of death was brought home to me by the family that hosted three of us. The couple had two children. However, the wife was considerably older than her husband. He seemed too young to be the father of their children. We later learned that he was her second husband. The first had been shot and killed trying to escape across the Danube in search of a better life for him and his family.

One day, we ventured up into the surrounding hills to visit a string of famous spa resort towns. This included the historic town of Băile Herculane. In the photo above, you see us performing in the town square surrounded by the region's spectacular granite mountains. Perhaps the town's most iconic complex is the ornate Neptune Imperial Thermal Baths, accessed by a graceful arch bridge spanning the local river. Sadly, this spa complex has fallen into disrepair in recent years. The image of the complex above was sourced from the web.

However, we weren’t here for the town’s geothermal waters; instead, we trekked up into the foothills to visit a small gypsy village. The locals greeted us warmly, cooking a meal on an outdoor wood oven (a gypsy BBQ, so to speak), before gathering to watch us perform our missionary outreach street drama in the middle of a field.

The entire experience was extraordinary. We were immersed in a completely untarnished view of gypsy life exactly as it had gone on for centuries. Equally, despite their poverty, they were among the happiest people we encountered in Eastern Europe.

We finished our day in the mountains with a quick dip in a local thermal pool. It was a popular venue. Hundreds of adults and children were soaking in the main pool. However, its hygiene standards were rather dubious. The water was rather murky, and at one point, a distinctly firm and clearly identifiable human turf floated past us. Then, shortly after we exited the pool, the complex started draining it.

We later learned that the facility lacked any form of filtration or sterilisation plant. Instead, the pool was drained, scrubbed clean and refilled once a week. It was just our luck to arrive in the final hours before a week of human scum, urine and turds were flushed away. However, we enjoyed a more sanitary swim in Drobeta-Turnu Severin. One of our host families boasted a backyard pool – a genuine rarity in Romania. We spent several relaxing afternoons here, swimming and lounging in the Romanian sunshine.

From Drobeta-Turnu Severin, we travelled inland to the mining town of Motru and the regional mining city of Târgu Jiu. Follow this link to learn more.

On stage in Craiova

I spent four days in Craiova, a regional city in Romania, in June 1990. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 as part of a YWAM Christian missionary program. We arrived in Craiova on Friday, June 22, after a successful week of engagements in Pitesti.

Our time here was mildly controversial. I don’t recall all the details, but we were hosted by a local church that proved relatively conservative. Its congregation openly questioned our Pentecostal style of community outreach. No doubt some of them considered us blasphemous.

Our local sponsors were Lydia and George, a husband and wife who’d seen us perform on the streets elsewhere. She was a trained opera singer, and he was a former musician. They had one young daughter called Dimetrias. We later learned that Craiova was considered the cradle of classic operetta music in Romania. Its local operetta company was considered one of the nation’s best for much of the 20th Century.

Lydia and George hosted three of us in their home. You can see all of us in the image that opens this post: me, Dave Craddock, a Canadian (on the left) and Dean Keiller, a Victorian sheep farmer (on the right).  I recall Lydia asking us if there was anything we didn't enjoy eating. Our response was simply "ficat", which translates to liver. At the time, Romania was experiencing widespread shortages of everyday necessities, including basic foodstuffs like meat and bread. As a result, we were often fed dishes that featured liver as the primary protein, or offal, particularly intestines.

Much to our horror, Lydia disappeared into the backyard and returned a short time later with a freshly killed chicken from the family’s coop. She then expertly dipped it into boiling water, plucked it and butchered it. We ate like kings for the next few nights. I felt terrible that the family had sacrificed one of its prize-winning, egg-laying birds for us fussy foreigners - at least that's how I imagined it.  Lydia also made pasta from scratch, something I'd never seen before. Until then, pasta was always something sold ready-made in a bag at the supermarket.

Lydia arranged for us to perform in the local opera house, a neo-Gothic stone building featuring an ornate internal central rotunda framed by imposing Corinthian pillars.  The images above, sourced from the web, provide a good sense of this impressive building (thanks, Google Street View). Tim, our group leader, hated the experience. He complained that “this isn’t who we are”. We weren’t a professional theatre group, and thus, he felt that we didn’t fit into this kind of venue. Personally, I was comfortable being on stage, having performed in musicals and stage plays throughout high school.

To drum up interest in our performance, our hosts arranged for us to stroll through the local park, up and down forested hillside paths, playing a guitar and singing Christian songs. As we walked, our hosts handed out flyers inviting everyone to our evening show. At times, the whole experience felt like something out of The Sound of Music. Once dinner was done, we made our way to the opera house. I gave the group some last-minute tips on how to perform on an indoor stage before its massive red velvet curtain parted.

The performance wasn’t exactly Tony Award-winning material. Our group didn’t really understand how to make full use of the stage despite my last-minute coaching. As a result, everyone gravitated towards the back of the stage (a definite no-no in the world of live theatre) and huddled in a tight circle that failed to utilise the available space. To this day, I’m frustrated by the fact that Tim wouldn’t let me spend time with everyone adapting our production for a theatrical setting.

Our next stop in Romania proved more successful. On Tuesday, 26 June, we drove 110 km west towards the Danube, stopping for nine days in the riverside city of Drobeta-Turnu Severin. Follow this link to learn more.

Pitesti

Let’s continue the story of my journey through Eastern Europe in 1990 as part of a YWAM outreach program. Today’s post covers our first week in Romania, where we lived with a family in Pitesti, a satellite city located about 100 km west of Bucharest. At the time, it was a highly industrialised city of approximately 175,000, making it the 12th largest city in Romania.

We were invited to Pitesti by an enthusiastic young woman who’d witnessed us performing a street drama in Hungary. Sadly, I can’t find any record of her name. However, she was a dynamo, an eternal optimist who simply made things happen. She’s the dark-haired woman in the front row, left in the image above. Her parents are on the far left. She became our local host and event coordinator. She arranged for families from her local Baptist church to billet members of our group, organised our daily outings and translated for us wherever we went.

We drove into town late afternoon on 14 June 1990. We’d spent a full day driving through the picturesque Romanian countryside from Timisoara. Our host was shocked to see us. For two days, deadly riots had been unfolding in Bucharest, the worst violence the country had witnessed since dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu's downfall six months earlier. She’d naturally assumed we’d abandon our journey.

Until that moment, we’d had no knowledge of these riots or their violence. Fortunately, the situation calmed down over the next few days. I vaguely recall conversations about ensuring a safe passage out of Romania if things escalated. Pitesti was about 187 km from the nearest border crossing. I also recall a measure of discomfort among the local families that hosted us. They were understandably nervous about being responsible for the lives of international guests during a national crisis.

We spent eight days in Pitesti. It was an extraordinary, eye-opening experience. None more so than the abject poverty we witnessed everywhere we went. The nation’s collective impoverishment was the result of a draconian austerity program Ceaușescu had launched in 1980, designed to pay off Romania’s national debt within ten years. Vast chunks of economic production originally destined for domestic consumption were diverted for export, plunging the population into painful shortages and increasing hardship.

The Romanian TV channels were reduced to a single channel, which transmitted only 2 hours per day. Electricity was interrupted for hours, mostly at night. Repairs of basic infrastructure ground to a halt as spare parts disappeared. There were long lines at the grocery stores for the most basic goods, including meat, eggs, milk, bread and more. The queue in the image above was typical of those we encountered everywhere we went. 

Likewise, streetscape and structures were in disrepair wherever we went. For example, whenever a footpath was dug up or a road repaired, the residual soil, broken concrete and other debris were left piled in place. Painted surfaces were always worn and flaking. Nothing had a new coat of paint. Weeds grew everywhere. I distinctly recall that the apartment building we stayed in had hot water for just a few hours each day, and one of its external walls had a large crack running down its façade, starting at the roofline and extending for several stories.

Without a doubt, the most striking visual difference between Romania and other nations was simply the lack of advertising and promotional signage. Billboards and posters didn't exist, except for the occasional socialist propaganda poster. Neither did neon signs nor promotional signage outside stores and cafes. 

The result was a remarkably clutter-free urban environment that gave the city an old pre-war newsreel look and feel. It often felt as if I’d stepped into the world of grandparents, as if it were when they were my age. The image above came from the web. It's dated 1986. Romania looked no different four years later.

In fact, the only advertisement I recall was a faded, weather-beaten billboard promotion for the nation’s popular Dacia motorcar. It had been painted directly onto the concrete beam of a flyover bridge that spanned the motorway between Pitesti and Bucharest. The Dacia probably deserves its own blog post.

S.C. Automobile Dacia S.A., commonly known as Dacia, is a Romanian car manufacturer. It was established in 1966. For years, almost every car driven in Romania was one of a handful of Dacia models manufactured in a large facility about 15km from Pitesti. They looked like a classic small car from the 1960s. Their design remained largely unchanged for decades. We saw them everywhere we went. Often the same colour, the same dated style and in the same slightly drab condition. It was another visual prompt that left me feeling as if we’d stepped back in time.

For many of the families that hosted us, we were the first foreign nationals they’d ever engaged with. For decades, fraternising with a foreigner simply raised suspicions and invited trouble. Nicolae Ceaușescu had ruled Romania with an iron fist, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition with the help of a secret police service known as the Securitate. At its peak, the Securitate operated the largest network of spies and informants in Eastern Europe.

Neighbours, and even family members, were encouraged to spy on one another and report the most minor of civil infractions, or seditious chatter, no matter how banal. As a result, foreigners were avoided like the plague. It was fascinating to watch our hosts alternate between intense curiosity about the West and instinctive discomfort whenever they were in our presence.

I recall a conversation one evening with an older woman. I commented on the sound of children playing and laughing in the apartment grounds outside. She froze, explaining that the sound terrified her. Under Ceaușescu, parents discouraged their children from playing in groups for fear they’d inadvertently reveal a civil disobedience indiscretion happening in the home, be it a passing conversation, a black market transaction or otherwise.

I also recall our host receiving a phone call and then disappearing for hours. The calls were usually friends or neighbours advising that the local store had received a shipment of bread, eggs or some other commodity in short supply. Shopping bags would immediately be gathered, and off she’d go to stand in a queue for hours. Out of curiosity, we visited several supermarkets. Their shelves were always filled with aisles of tinned tomatoes, bottles of beer and little else.

However, despite these hardships, families in Pitesti welcomed us with open arms. I stayed in an apartment owned by the family of our energetic host and interpreter. She and her family lived in another apartment a few floors down. Our host's father was particularly proud to have us stay. As you can see in the image above, he’d break into song or play his flute to entertain us. Given the language barrier between us, music was the only way he could express his joy at our presence.

One night, an elderly man came for dinner. It may have been our host's grandfather. He was introduced as the first Christian in his village. It was fascinating to hear, through our youthful interpreter, snippets of his life story. He and his extended family were truly inspirational role models. It was the first time I came to learn that wealth doesn't necessarily bring happiness. Yes, it makes the necessities of life easier to obtain.  However, real joy comes from the people you connect with along the way.

At times, austerity created some amusing moments. One day, our enthusiastic young host invited us to visit the town centre. She took pride in showing us Pitesti’s premier department store. In particular, she wanted us to see its internal escalators. It was one of the only buildings in town that had them. Let’s just say these moving stairways were arcane in both their style, with worn wooden foot treads, and their less-than-smooth rumbling motion. Likewise, the garments on sale resembled eclectic op-shop fashion statements, and many of the goods, like everything in Romania, looked dated and lacked the functionality we take for granted.
 
On one of the store’s upper floors, we came across some Smurf blue long pants. While not at all on trend, we decided they’d make superb costumes for group members playing the roles of God and Christ in our street play. However, our interest in these pants quickly drew a crowd. Within minutes, everyone wanted the same outfit as the well-dressed foreigners. I still chuckle that, for a moment, we created a hot new fashion trend in the city of Pitesti.

Our new costumes worked a treat. We spent a week conducting outreaches (street performances) in local churches and on the streets of Pitesti. We frequently drew crowds of several hundred people at a time. We generally conducted just one outdoor performance each day, but occasionally performed for a local church before or after these public events.

After a week of street performances and engagement with the local Christian community, we packed our bags and headed for the city of Craiova. You can follow this link to learn more about our time in this regional city, home to more than 300,000 people.

Making a beeline for Bowral

My EO Forum has just completed its annual mini retreat.  This is our overnight event where we go away as a group to bond, learn together and experience something new.  Once again, I was our retreat organiser.  I’d set myself a high bar after a memorable event in Queenstown in June this year. I’m delighted to report that I successfully delivered on the brief once again.

This time we travelled to the Southern Highlands, about 90 minutes south of Sydney. After staying in a large homestead in New Zealand, the group was keen to do the same again. After a little research, I stumbled across a fabulous old sandstone homestead on a small acreage a few miles out of town near Mittagong.

Booking the homestead required a minimum two-night stay. As a result, I went down on Wednesday afternoon to do our group grocery shopping and prepare the homestead for our time together. This includes resetting the dining room as a boardroom, preparing the outdoor courtyard as a breakout space, preparing for breakfast and so on.

I also took advantage of our proximity to Bowral. Garry and I needed to purchase some unique gifts for two special occasions, including a 50th Birthday celebration last night with Liz Benson (dinner for four of us at Gowings in the QT Hotel) and Zoe Hollis’ engagement party tomorrow. I found a couple of superb gifts for both events in some of Bowral’s popular upmarket gift boutiques.

We gave Liz a pottery cottage that doubles as a tealight candle holder (or incense holder), and I found a large wooden cheese board or serving platter that Zoe and Ben can use for hosting guests in their new home. That’s the pottery cottage in the image above.

We kicked off our mini retreat on Thursday with morning tea in a spacious, light-filled lounge room before retiring to the converted dining room for a two-hour training session hosted by Rachael Heald. Rachael delivered a brilliant session on change management principles and practices. The group loved it - several even said it was the highlight of their retreat. We then broke for lunch in an intimate cobblestone courtyard outside.

The rest of the day was spent on our monthly forum meeting. We then finished with wine and cheese before a shuttle bus collected the group and took us to Eschalot in Berrima. Here we enjoyed a private dining experience in an old sandstone cottage. More great wine and food were consumed!

On Friday, we enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast in the dining room before departing for Bowal Honey Farm for a once-in-a-lifetime experience (OIL). The honey farm operates from a national trust property near Bowral, which was once owned by the Fairfax family, founders of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper empire. Owner and Master Beekeeper Hamish Ta-Me spent the morning with us delivering a special VIP tour.

Hamish normally conducts these tours for overseas groups and high-profile guests of Tourism Australia. However, he kindly agreed to do the same tour for us. Over the course of three hours, we learned about bees and their lifecycle, opened a hive while wearing a full-length beekeeping suit, held a handful of bees, collected a frame of honey, and harvested it to take home. We also spent time tasting a variety of honeys. I honestly never thought you could spend three hours talking about bees and love every minute of it.

It was a truly spectacular experience. Holding a handful of bees was exhilarating. We could literally feel them vibrating, an amazing sensory encounter, as they attempted to communicate—just as they do with their sisters within the hive. In the video below, my hand is in the middle on the right-hand side. Yes, I am holding a handful of bees! 

Here are a few fun facts we learned from Hamish. The average lifespan of a bee is approximately 60 days. 20 days as larvae inside the honeycomb. 20 days maturing inside the hive and a final 20 days foraging for nectar. Almost all the bees in the hive are females. Only 20-30 bees are male drones.

Queen bees live for five years. They mate only once. After hatching in the hive, they fly off to join male drone bees in a mass mating location. They mate with about 30 drones, gathering enough semen to continually fertilise eggs for five years. However, the mating ritual is a death sentence for the male drone. The act of copulation literally rips them open, and they fall to the ground dead. If the queen fails to mate with enough drones, she’ll be killed by the hive after her return.

The hive creates new queen bees by simply enlarging a handful of honeycomb cells and feeding nothing but royal jelly to the larvae inside. The first queen to emerge then goes on a killing spree. She kills all her unborn princess sisters before they can hatch. In other words, to become a queen, a princess bee must murder her siblings and inspire the manslaughter of dozens of males before she can live a long and happy life.

We concluded our time together with a relaxed farewell lunch at Franquette Crêperie, an upscale French crepe restaurant in Bowral. I was a bit sceptical about savoury crepes. However, our lunch was delicious. About 2:30 pm, we said our farewells, and I drove back to Sydney in time for Garry and me to venture out for dinner with Liz and Adam Benson.