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.