Postmark: Bucharest

"Nu se poate"

Last December, a few days before Christmas, a diplomatic cable arrived in Hanoverannouncing the sudden end of an eight-yearstudent exchange program between Dartmouth and the University of Bucharest.Beset by recurrent problems, not least ofwhich was the quicksand of Balkanbureaucracy, the program nevertheless involved 46 mostly enthusiastic Dartmouthstudents. (Only three Romanian studentscame to Hanover, and, as ProfessorsCharles McLane '41 and Roger Masters,the co-directors of the program, havepointed out, they left spouses and familiesin Romania as hostage to their return.)Among the students who went to Bucharestin the last contingent a year ago wasDouglas Reichert, a senior, who set forthin the letters that follow "what happenswhen an American is cut loose inRomania." Cut loose, overcoming adversity (and enjoying good times), and, as onestudent put it, learning much "not onlyabout another country and people butabout myself," this was the Romanian Exchange.

SEPTEMBER 24: Qne week ago today we arrived in Bucharest. The arrangements went off without a hitch. Waiting for us at Bucuresti Nord were several consular officials from the embassy, an interpreter from the university, and our local adviser Silviu Brucan, former Romanian ambassador to the United States and the United Nations.* Most important, they brought a car to escort us and our belongings to Grozavesti, the international student dormitory complex where we would live for the next 12 weeks. The fact that other people were seeing to our needs meant that our arrival was altogether easy. We entered Romania at about midnight, coming on the overnight train from Belgrade. The formalities were a breeze somebody obviously knew we were coming. It was much different for the Romanians on the train. Most of them were workers returning from foreign exchange projects in Libya or West Germany. Many had prepared a little collection of "gifts" for the customs officials and the police. Others gave bills that wouldn't be refused, though they did try to pass them discreetly.

Within a few days we met most of the American community in Bucharest. Besides embassy personnel there are medical and doctoral students, private businessmen, and some visiting scholars and their families. Our friends at Grozavesti include a very helpful Iraqi, a hyperactive Palestinian, and a mooching Argentinian. Acquaintances so far come from Sudan, Burundi, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany.

Grozavesti itself is filthy and barely functional, but with a little imagination it's possible to be comfortable. A sense of humor is helpful to overlook the policemen, the crying babies, the informers, the toilets that don't flush, the urinals that empty into a leaking bucket at one's feet, the cockroaches, the prostitutes, the flies, the dust, the bureaucracy, the trash. ... In short, life really couldn't be more interesting. Just more comfortable.

Two years ago, I arrived at the same place all alone, without map or Romanian language skill to help me locate the Dartmouth students participating in the program that year. (Most of them thought I was lucky to leave again after a week of tourism. I wasn't so sure, so I've come back.)

Two years ago, I had all of the same experiences as during this week. Romania is still Romania. Then as now I ate at the Faculty Club, went to the university, rode the overcrowded buses and trains, combatted Grozavesti, met Brucan and Cornelia, our university administrator, visited the embassy mailroom and "Mom's Cafeteria."

I have only one gripe. The agreement that governs our exchange program seems to be broken and worthless, and as a result, we are not getting our stipend money for food.

OCTOBER 1: Week number two in Bucharest has been an exercise of running in place with the sensation that the sky is falling. Nothing but confusion, delay, and conflicting stories and opinions concerning our status. We've been sent from place to place and adviser to adviser to try to establish our official presence as students at the University of Bucharest. Things look bleak; of the 14 American academic exchange programs set up after Nixon's visit, ours is the only one still functioning. A permission slip is the key to all requests, and these are difficult to obtain. Usually it takes several slips for any one function.

While we cool our heels, the Romanian students are all out in the fields doing "Patriotic Labor," an idea borrowed from the Chinese for getting the harvest in at little cost. Meanwhile, the other foreign students have nothing better to do than be bored and try their tricks on us new arrivals. Being a novelty can be challenging and tiresome.

We live with armed guards patrolling the grounds of our dorm complex. It isn't precisely pleasant to be greeted by machine guns morning, noon, and night. Naturally, it's for "our protection." It seems the Arab students, and there are many thousands of them, are politically active. Not Romanian politics that's "settled." The Camp David accords pitted Arabs against Israeli medical students last year, and forced the Romanians to move the latter to a secure dormitory. Then the Yemenite war was fought in our courtyard. The Romanian army intervened. Last year there were several murders in the dorm. The police ruled suicide on every one to avoid rounding up "the usual suspects." I couldn't feel safer here.

The most amusing aspect of our status as foreign students in Romania is that we are not permitted to leave the country without written permission from our university adviser. When they told me I was applying for the "Romanian Experience," I didn't realize that this entailed treatment heretofore reserved for Romanian citizens. Pretty soon I expect they'll offer us the opportunity to file citizenship papers, entitling us to "full privileges."

The book that I should be reading now is surely Joseph Heller's Catch-22. For the whole of this week my passport has been at the university gathering dust, while I've been wandering about the country on a card from the university. Little did I understand that my card had neither been numbered nor signed, making my identity useless. The catch comes when the bank refuses to take your money because you don't have the proper permission to change money in a bank. The catch is really, really bad when even with the proper permission you can't do anything because you're not the proper person!

Luckily, we have a visit from Eliza Ghil, our Dartmouth language professor and a native Romanian. She is very concerned about our precarious status and is performing feats to provide for our well-being. Apart from representing Dartmouth directly at this crucial time, and treating us to good meals, she is introducing us to life here through her own friends and family.

OCTOBER 7:1 joined my roommate Martin Weinstein and several medical students at the best restaurant in town to help them break the Yom Kippur fast in style. The next night I met a family friend at the Intercontinental for dinner. He was in Bucharest on a mission for the World Bank to evaluate the development of Romanian fruit production. With the kindness of friends to supplement our rapidly depleting resources, at least we have been eating well.

My life is pretty exotic these days. I smoke Chinese cigarettes and Cuban cigars, drink Russian vodka and Albanian red wine, enjoy exceptional Bulgarian yogurt and Turkish coffee, blow my nose and wipe myself with pink Chinese toilet paper (relatively excellent), and ride the slow train all day to the Black Sea for a therapeutic mud bath.

Eliza Ghil, her parents, and cousins took us on an excursion to the mountains to visit a famous basilica, the remains of the real Castle Dracula, and a dramatic hydroelectric project on the Arges river. We made the trip in Dacias, the basic Romanian cars licensed by Renault. Getting cars for the excursion was difficult. The Romanians recently instituted a gas-saving plan whereby cars with even-numbered plates can only drive the first and third Sunday of each month, alternating with cars bearing odd-numbered plates. This rationing method functions over and above the "price mechanism" and "planned scarcity" rationing plans. Gas goes for $2.65 a gallon, and drivers often wait in line for half an hour to get it.

One week has passed since Dartmouth cabled us food money, and the Romanian Bank of Foreign Trade still hasn't processed the transaction! I'm optimistic that much will be settled by tomorrow, as then I'll get my passport back from the police, and the student visa will allow me into the library.

OCTOBER 15: My life in Romania developed a certain amount of routine this week. I got up early every morning, went to morning language class, stopped by for a fast lunch at Mom's Cafeteria, checked for APO mail, and then made the rounds to see if my visa had been processed, if my interviews had been arranged, if the money had cleared the bank yet. Everywhere that I went, and literally every time, I was told no, not yet today, but surely tomorrow. . . . Trusting soul that I am, I repeated the routine every day this week, and at the appointed hours I returned to each person to be reassured that no, not yet today, but surely tomorrow. ... So far it has taken two weeks for some of these formalities, with only tomorrow in sight. . . .

On Tuesday our language teacher, Adriana, took us to visit the EREN '79 exposition here in Bucharest. Every year the State puts on a show of the year's progress in the production of consumer goods and the development of Romanian technology. This year's big attractions are a color TV system bought from the French and a new Renault/Dacia for the eighties.

I spent Wednesday downtown taking photographs, as the weather was warm and blue. After lunch I stumbled upon a wedding party entering a little church. Not one to bypass an interesting event, I followed. When I signaled that I wanted to take photographs, they agreed, and directly I was engaged (for a smile) to be the official photographer of an Orthodox wedding ceremony. The bride and groom were two middle-aged gypsy musicians. Afterward, I was invited to the party, where the whole family got together to play their stuff.

Friday, Martin and I met a very nice young Romanian woman on the train to Sinaia. After a day's hike in the Carpathians, we joined our friend for dinner with a crazy group of vacationing Romanians. One of the party was a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. She was glad to be on vacation because she works in the ward for people brought in by the police, not the doctors. One man told how his wife had defected to America several years before, taking their daughter with her. I constantly meet people with family in America. The third was a truck driver running international routes. He drives an American sports car and supports a wife and young daughter on a salary of 2,500 lei a month. I eat on 1,500 lei a month. Which goes to show that in Romania anything is possible, even 2 + 2 = 9!

OCTOBER 22: With a certain amount of relief I can conclude that, having reached the halfway mark of my stay in Romania, nearly all of the preliminaries are prepared. I say nearly all because even after more than a month, the Romanian Bank of Foreign Trade has still failed to process our tuition check from Dartmouth National. We continue to exist as mere figments of a Romanian bureaucrat's helpful imagination. Armed with unofficial identity cards, I have managed step-by-step to work my way up to the point where today I even gained permission to use the university library.

This weekend I joined Martin and his visiting parents for a tour of the northern province of Moldavia. I toured this region two years ago, and was so entranced by the beauty of this one area of Romania, with its special frescoed monasteries, that I was determined to return. With a rented car we drove north to Putna, only five miles from the Soviet border. Most unfortunately, the weather was not with us, and rain muted the effect of some very spectacular fall color. Besides the weather, the biggest contrast for me this time was the novelty of traveling first class (though in Romania this doesn't mean what you think it might mean). With the car we traveled a lot more conveniently, but were tempted to move much too quickly, spoiling, I think, the magic of the area. My next visit, if I'm not too old, will have to be in good weather, and again on foot.

I went with the Weinsteins to visit the Synagogue of lasi, located in one of the most decayed neighborhoods that I have so far seen in a Romanian city. Before the war, there was a thriving Jewish population of 30,000 here. On this Sinagogilor Strada there once were 17 synagogues. Now only one remains, and the Jewish population is reduced to 2,700. The rabbi showed us around town a while, taking us to see a monument to Goldfaden, the founder of the first Yiddish-language theater. The statue is now placed in a hidden corner of a public garden, the face turned toward the bushes. There was no pride left in the eyes of this rabbi who had seen such human destruction. From him I discovered the depth of Romanian sadness.

OCTOBER 23: Professor Roger Masters sent us the following parable to lighten our spirits. It was well received.

Once upon a time there were 14 American schools that had scheduled a season in Romania. Dracula and his ghost visited Bucharest just before the Americans came. He changed all the rules of the game: Now, not only did the players have to bring their own equipment, but they also had to rent the field, with an extra charge for the goals. (The players thought of not paying the fee, but they didn't have any way of taking the goals down and putting them up again after the season was over. . . .) The other schools were strongly discouraged from attending the contest, and dropped out. The Dartmouth team of hardy souls went along anyway. They spent almost half of the season arguing with the umpires about the rules, trying to locate the field markers (which had been stored in a missing castle in Transylvania, rumored to have been sold to Disneyland). The players soon began to get very angry with their manager, because they hadn't been paid at all and didn't know if they would ever get to play a game for all of their troubles. But the manager was afraid of Dracula, and stayed home in America. He didn't even take the time to write letters to his team. AH he did was to send a couple of scouts and coaches to exhort the team to play fiercely for alma mater. When they finally did start a game, on the last day of the scheduled season, it began to rain and the game was postponed due to bad weather. . . .

Our "exchange program" reminds me of the Romanian saying: "Please do come and be my guest, I'll supply the chairs and you the rest."

OCTOBER 29: This week I'm in good spirits because we've been having a riotously good time. Larry Radway, current chairman of the Government Department and a connoisseur of good times, has been intimately sharing our experiences here in Romania, and keeping a good face on it throughout. While we were passing through Mom's Cafeteria, Radway recognized a former student, Tom Wojfson '73. The Wolfsons have been tremendous, arranging interviews, inviting us over for dinners, and even helping get our laundry done.

Number One tourist attraction during our weekend excursion with Radway was a visit to Bran Castle, billed to all gullible Americans as Dracula's original. The fine print informs the curious that the historical figure connected to the Dracula legend, one Vlad Tepes, nicknamed Dracula after his father's name of Vlad Dracul, spent a few days here back in the 15th century. Despite the "Dracula slept here" hype, the castle is an impressive medievel museum and a worthwhile place to visit.

Our real payoff was the unexpected opportunity to participate in the investiture ceremony for some Young Pioneers, the Communist version of the Scouting movement. Membership is extended to all second, third, and fourth graders. The more exemplary the student, the earlier he or she is inducted into the organization. The most interesting thing for us was the peer criticism the candidates had to enjoy or endure, depending on their reputation.

After a marvelous picnic lunch in an alpine meadow, we drove over the mountains and through a little village en route to Sinaia. In this village we came upon a parade moving down "Main Street," with about a hundred people in tow. It turned out to be a funeral procession, complete with band, two priests, and a horse-drawn hearse with open casket. We stopped to let the crowd pass, and before we could get back into the car what should come down the opposite side of the street but a drunken wedding party, with the other half of the village in tow. That day we thought we'd seen it all: children observing a rite of passage, a wedding, and a funeral.

My major working event for the week was a hard-won interview with an up-and-coming gymnast. My first appointment was for last Friday, and I went out to the training center all prepared to go to work. However, I was greeted by the coach with the famous Romanian words - "nu sepoate" - meaning, you can't do it. I asked when I could do it. He said, "anytime." I said, how about now? He said, "No, but name a time." I said, how about next Wednesday? He said, "Can't do it then, either; how about this afternoon?" Fed up, I inquired what was wrong with next Wednesday, and he told me that was the day of the Romanian championships in Cluj. With visions of Nadia dancing in my head, I got him to agree on Wednesday. Nadia ended up being in Dallas for the world championships, and he didn't let me do the interview, either. That's the way it goes in Romania.

NOVEMBER 5: I took last night off to read Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I found to contain some remarkably apt descriptions of the Romanian character. My Iraqi friend came by near the end to see if I would help him finish off a bottle of Cinzano. When I showed him I was reading Dracula, he recounted the nightmares he suffered after reading this book. The poor fellow has been a doctoral student in Romania for five years and has many "Transylvanian tales" to share. Since many Americans have read Stoker's book, or seen the movie, it must influence our perceptions of Romanian personality. Though Stoker is reputed to have never visited Romania, he provides a brilliant exposition of some of the more mysterious aspects of the Balkan personality. I swear I've met some of his characters.

My research is finally underway, with interviews and school visits scheduled every day for the next couple of weeks. My projects are organized under the general rubric of "Romania and the Right to Education." Promoting the concept of the right to education through the United Nations is a Romanian foreign policy trademark and a human-rights topic they are eager to discuss. Through the generosity of Maurice R. Robinson 'l9, I have the opportunity to study Romanian children's literature as a point of access to traditional and socialist culture.

NOVEMBER 42: The professors whom I've met with so far have offered to be of great assistance. They usually assume that I'm some eminent professor or doctoral candidate, so that it takes some time to bring them around to my position and to get them to understand that it is even possible for an undergraduate to come all the way to Romania with the support of his university to do independent research. They are impressed with Dartmouth. Everyone has been of good will, though communication is not always easy. My interviews are conducted in English, French, or Romanian, depending on our combined skills. With their help, I'll get this research done!

DECEMBER 12: I've been busy as can be these last four weeks, attending two UNESCO conferences, and interviewing two to three people every day, often in different languages. I'm exhausted and look forward to a rest on Red Sea beaches when I leave Romania in two days. Looking back on these three months, I'm satisfied to have survived the challenge of an independent odyssey, to have learned something about society in the Second World, and to have tested my ability to bring different skills to bear on the shortterm study of a subject with which I had little prior familiarity. For an American out on a "walkabout," Romania provides a sufficiently alien environment to test reactions to stress and disorientation. I remain frustrated and disappointed that we encountered so many more difficulties with the organization of our program than I anticipated. However, the rules of the game are different here, and the social signals and expectations more difficult to comprehend than any I have encountered elsewhere in my travels.

To understand something of society in the Second World is an essential aspect of life in these times, and I believe that it is in the interests of Dartmouth students that the College work to provide similar opportunities as one of its educational services. The practical value of this independent program lies with the educational challenge of applying a line of inquiry to an essentially unfamiliar problem or situation, given a limited period of time. For these reasons the Romanian Experience, while frustrating, is worthwhile.

On Thanksgiving we learned that the Ministry of Education decided to cancel our program until they send some Romanians to Dartmouth. That will not be in the foreseeable future. Since in this country they try to have everything planned out at least five years in advance, our exchange has actually been terminated.

Well, that's all there is to relate. I hope that these letters have proved interesting to you, and that I've communicated at least a small part of the education received through these many strange experiences here in Romania. Know now with assurance that Bucharest, not Budapest, is the capital of Romania, and that Transylvania is a real place with real nice people and probably no vampires.

Voroneti Monastery: frescoes of Moldavian heroics and biblical themes.

A married couple, middle-aged gypsies, pose with the wedding party in Bucharest.

Romanian heavy goods on display at the annual EREN exposition, an international trade fair in Bucharest.

Local transport by horse and wagon is still prevalent in rural areas of Romania.

"State capitalism": banners of the Socialist Republic on the facade, a New Yorkbank on the first floor, and on the roofa billboard promoting the state lottery.

Hitchhiking in Moldavia,the author got a ride inexchange for chocolate.

*The spelling of "Romania" in this article follows the English form preferred by the current government. This usage more closely conforms to the Romanian spelling, and it evokes an association with Roman heritage, an attachment re-emphasized by the maverick socialist regime.

Douglas Reichert 'BO studied internationalhuman rights as a Senior Fellow, also completing a major in philosophy and a specialmajor in the social sciences.