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.

Another birthday week

Garry’s birthday week drew to a successful close for another year on Sunday. A group of us came together for lunch at Three Blue Ducks in Rosebery. Garry and I were last here for EO Sydney’s White Christmas Party in 2023. We have a wonderful afternoon filled with great food, wine and laughter. We even roped in our waitress for a group photo at the end. That’s Sophie next to Ian on the back right.

After lunch, we retired to Archie Rose, a gin distillery across the quadrangle from the restaurant. More cocktails ensued before everyone came back to our place for cheese and wine on the balcony. I went to bed around 11:00pm. Garry was up until after 4:00am with Nat, a friend who lives in the building next door.

We kicked off the celebrations a week earlier, also on Sunday, with lunch at Biviano's, an upmarket Italian restaurant in Dural. We last dined here a couple of years ago with Rhonda and Murray. It’s the first time we’ve been back since Rhonda died. Nicole, Jason and Mitch joined us for a relaxing family afternoon.

I then surprised Garry on his official birthday last Wednesday with dinner at Mjølner, a Viking-themed restaurant in Redfern. Its meat-centric menu was a hit with the birthday boy. The restaurant was impressive. It’s located in a vaulted brick cellar on Cleveland Street and reminded us of the medieval lunch we enjoyed years ago in Tallinn, Estonia. We even drank mead from authentic drinking horns.

Once dinner was done, we walked a block to enjoy front row seats at the Wizard’s Hideout. An intimate magic show held in a converted warehouse. For 90 minutes, we were dazzled by some impressive sleight of hand. Garry certainly keeps his coins in some odd places. Afterwards, we walked home. Enjoying two unique and memorable experiences within walking distance of home was rather special. We’ve never done that before.

The road to Romania

Time for another retrospective post. This is the story of my brief journey through Yugoslavia in June 1990. At the time, I was travelling with a group of 12 from Youth With A Mission (YWAM). We’d just spent three weeks in Hungary and were now on our way to Romania. We travelled in two minivans on loan to us and camped overnight in tents along the way.

We departed the border city of Szombathely, Hungary, on 11 June and headed towards Graz, Austria. Our route took us via Vienna, the city where our European odyssey had begun weeks earlier. This included a brief pitstop in Baden, where we debriefed the local YWAM base on our time in Hungary.

We continued south before finally crossing into Yugoslavia late afternoon. We stopped for the night at a local campground on the outskirts of Maribor, about 20 km south of the border. These days, Maribor is part of Slovenia, a nation-state that broke away from Yugoslavia in June 1991. In other words, we visited during its final year in this now-defunct nation.

Crossing the border proved to be an anticlimax. A handful of relatively disinterested border personnel gave our passports a cursory review, then stamped them with a seven-day transit visa and sent us on our way. You can see the stamp in my passport above. I still marvel at the fact that this feat would have been far more fraught with challenges a few months earlier.

The following day, June 12, we continued south to Beograd, better known in the west as Belgrade. Our route took us through Zagreb, Croatia's capital. Although again, at the time, it was still part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Croatia broke away a year later, on 25 June 1991. 

The images below were pulled from the web. They show two of Zagreb’s most iconic sights. The first one shows the ornate roof of St. Mark's Church, a historic parish church located in St. Mark's Square. The second shows Zagreb Cathedral. We were lucky enough to see the cathedral without scaffolding. In late 1990, just a few months after our whirlwind drive-by, the local diocese embarked on a major restoration. Since then, for more than 35 years, its spires and facade have been progressively shrouded by scaffolding.

We spent the morning in Zagreb buying supplies in anticipation of our crossing into Romania the following day. Tim, our group leader, recommended that we purchase flour, eggs, bottled water and other essential ingredients to feed ourselves for several days while on the road. He’d previously led groups who’d survived on pancakes for breakfast for days at a time. Hence, he thought flour should be at the top of our shopping list. Ironically, these large bags of flour sat unopened in our van for the next two months. We ultimately gave them away to local families in Bulgaria.

It would be fair to say that Tim was more of a “fly by the seat of your pants” kind of guy. Don’t get me wrong, he was an experienced leader who’d successfully led many groups over the years. However, he wasn’t inclined to plan a great deal in advance. As a result, decisions often seemed to be made on the fly as we progressed.

For example, our overnight stops were rarely planned in advance. Instead, we literally drove into local campgrounds on a whim. Likewise, we were unable to enter Czechoslovakia shortly after arriving in Europe simply because Tim hadn’t researched the group’s visa requirements before reaching the border.

Readers who know me well will testify to my passion for meticulous travel planning. While I leave room for new experiences along the way, I always have a good sense of our options before travelling to any destination. As a result, I found Tim’s lack of preparation and planning frustrating, to say the least. 

From Zagreb, we spent the afternoon driving towards Belgrade, a distance of more than 400km. Our final night in Yugoslavia was spent in a local campground. The following morning, 13 June, we finally crossed the border into Romania. The transition could not have been starker. We instantly transitioned from a relatively modern and advanced economy to one suffering acute shortages, where investment in basic infrastructure was visibly lacking.

We spent our first night in Romania camping on the outskirts of Timisoara. I couldn’t believe where we were. Six months earlier, the city had witnessed a series of mass street protests that swiftly evolved into what would later be known as the Romanian Revolution. The revolution began on 16 December 1989, when the Hungarian minority in Timisoara held a public protest in response to Government attempts to evict László Tőkés, a local church pastor. László Tőkés had been a persistent critic of Ceaușescu’s totalitarian regime.

The protests began outside the pastor’s home but quickly spread into the central city. For three days, rioting crowds gathered in central Timisoara demanding an end to Communist rule. At one point, the rioters broke into the nearby district committee building and threw party documents, propaganda brochures, Ceaușescu's writings, and other symbols of Communist power out of windows. The military was sent into the city to control the riots, and bloodshed ensued.

The uprising soon spread to other Romanian cities, including the capital Bucharest. Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife eventually fled the capital on 22 December. The dictator was subsequently executed on Christmas Day following a brief military tribunal trial. Street fighting continued around the country for several days before a new interim Government finally restored peace. I arrived six months later, a few weeks after Romania’s first free elections since the end of World War II.

On June 14, our group spent the morning visiting central Timisoara, including the city’s infamous central plaza, colloquially known as Revolution Square. That’s the square above. The first photo shows the National Theatre & Opera House. It’s located at the square’s northern end, while the Orthodox Cathedral stands about 300 metres south at the end of a broad pedestrian boulevard.

Standing in Revolution Square, now known as Victory Square, was an extraordinary experience. The scars of protest were still visible, including makeshift memorials for those who’d died in the revolution. The image that opens this post is a memorial for Jean-Louis Calderon, a French journalist, killed in Bucharest six months earlier. He was crushed by a tank while reporting on the protests on 22 December. As for the handwritten sign next to this memorial, it reads, "We ask you nicely. No! Don't shoot at us!!! We are with you, soldiers."

I recall watching queues form around the square as people waited to buy a newspaper. We assumed this reflected a hunger for independent news reporting after decades of Communist propaganda. We later learned there had been violent anti-government protests in Bucharest the previous day. The first such protests since the fall of Casuseau. Historians claim up to one hundred were killed in what’s now known as the June 1990 Mineriad. I doubt our group would’ve continued towards the capital had we been able to read the headlines. 

Instead, oblivious to the unfolding riots, we headed south to Pitesti, a city less than 100 km from Bucharest. Weeks earlier, we'd been invited to visit by an enthusiastic young woman we'd met in Hungary. I recall vividly a debate that raged in our minivan along the way. There were no motorways in the region, hence our route took us through village after village. The posted speed limit was always 50 kph, regardless of the village's size or composition. However, Dave Craddock, a friendly Canadian in our group familiar with driving on the right-hand side, didn’t always slow down when passing through the smallest of them.

This lack of respect for the law drove a Swiss couple travelling with us from Zurich completely insane. They simply couldn’t fathom how anyone could disregard road signs so blatantly. It was my first taste of immutable Germanic adherence to rules and regulations. It was one of many fascinating cultural encounters that lay ahead. Follow this post to learn more about our time in Pitesti and a day trip to the capital, Bucharest.

Hungary for Jesus

Here's the first in a series of posts about my travels through Eastern Europe in 1990. As I explained in an earlier post, twelve of us were travelling as part of a Christian missionary organisation called Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Our journey began in Hungary on 19 May.  However, this wasn't our initial destination. We attempted to cross into Czechoslovakia shortly after leaving Baden, a small town on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria. However, without pre-authorised visas, we were denied entry at the border. 

Our leader, Tim Coates, decided to head for Hungary. This time, we were more successful, arriving in Balatonfüred late in the afternoon, on the shores of Lake Balaton. We spent the next eight days at a local campground, building our esprit de corps and rehearsing a street drama called The Tale of Two Kingdoms. More about that shortly. The women lived in one large canvas tent while the men lived in another. Two married couples, a Swiss couple plus Tim and his wife Jo, had their own small tents.

The lake proved to be a popular summer holiday destination. As the weekend approached, Empty campsites around us began to fill. Our portable boom box blasting out an instrumental soundtrack certainly drew a crowd. Before we knew it, locals had gathered on folding chairs and sun loungers to watch us rehearse, including on more than one occasion, several topless women. It was an eye-opening introduction to European sunbathing etiquette. The images below, pulled from the web, provide a good sense of the campground's location.

On 28 May, we packed up our campsite and headed west for the city of Debrecen, Hungary’s second-largest city by population. At the time, it was barely 100km from the Soviet border, that is, the territory which subsequently became the sovereign state of Ukraine. For the next 11 days, families from a progressive Pentecostal church hosted us in their homes. Our visit was coordinated by an enthusiastic local who'd witnessed us rehearsing in Balatonfured the previous week.

The city’s proximity to the Soviet Union was abundantly clear from the moment we drove into town. I still vividly recall passing a large military compound. It was surrounded by high concrete slab walls. However, through the metal grill gates, we caught a glimpse of dozens and dozens of artillery tanks parked in long rows. I’d never seen so much military firepower in one location, that is, until we visited Bucharest a few months later. More about that another time.

Over the years. I’ve tried to identify the location of this massive tank parking lot. As best I can tell, it was possibly military barracks located at MH Bocskai István 11. Páncélozott Hajdúdandár in Debrecen. It was the first of many reminders that NATO and the Warsaw Pact were once locked in a relentless ideological battle, backed by unprecedented military might. Nothing about life in New Zealand or Australia could have prepared us for such an extraordinary experience.

We filled our days with a range of activities, including street performances in the centre of town and a memorable day trip to a gypsy church near the Russian border. As a former university tutor of 20th-century political science, living on the opposite side of the globe, I couldn't believe I was a mere handful of miles from the Soviet Union. 

We also spent several days training the local youth group to perform our street drama. In the image above, you can see them performing at their local church. The photo above it was taken in Kossuth Square outside the Great Reformed Church, one of Debrecen's iconic buildings. I've pulled an image of the church from the web in the bottom photo above. 

The image that opens this post is our group performing on the street in central Debrecen. In case you're curious, Jatekterem, the sign on the store window, translates to amusement arcade. In other words, we were performing outside a supermarket featuring a video games parlour. I'd later write in a travel diary that our time in Debrecen, along with a church group in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, was the best local contact we made during our entire time in Eastern Europe.

On 8 June, we drove almost the entire length of Hungary to Szombathely, a regional city located less than ten kilometres from the Austrian border. Our route took us back through Budapest. I recall driving along the Danube riverbank in crawling traffic, but little else. Sadly, for a second time in two weeks, we stopped for little more than a brief bathroom break. It would be another 17 years before I’d return to finally explore Hungary’s picturesque capital.

According to Wikipedia, Szombathely is Hungary's oldest recorded city. It was founded by the Romans in 45AD. The photos above, taken from the web, show County Hall, home to the region's municipal council, along with the main city square (Attribution: Pennyjey, Flickr). Much of the city's architecture reminds me of nearby Vienna and Graz in Austria.

For three days, we were hosted by a local house church. A house church is a group of Christians who gather to pray and worship in private homes rather than a traditional church building. House churches were common in the early days of Christianity. In modern times, they've become popular again among Christian denominations operating outside dominant institutional churches, such as the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches.

We'd been invited to Szombathely by a church member who'd seen us performing on the streets of Debrecen. They arranged for us to perform at a non-Christian children's Summer camp, and assisted with several street performances in the centre of town. Our performances, which we colloquially called "open airs", were typically structured around three distinct activities. 

We'd begin the program with a 15-minute non-verbal production set to a soundtrack on a suitcase-sized boom box. It told the story of God creating heaven and earth, and populating it with the human race, the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden and the subsequent corruption of the human spirit by Satan. The drama then concluded with the story of salvation through the ministry and crucifixion of Christ.

A member of our group would then deliver a message of salvation, translated by one of our local hosts, before the program would conclude with us ministering to anyone who came forward to learn more.  We'd typically conduct this program once a day. On some occasions, we'd draw a crowd of close to two hundred people. The image above shows us performing in Varna, on the Black Sea coast - but more about that experience later.

After three weeks of travelling in Hungary, we headed for Romania. For four days, we travelled through Austria and Yugoslavia before reaching our final destination in Pitesti, Romania, on June 14. Follow this link to learn more.