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.

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. 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 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. Extremes 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.