Landing in a strange city at midnight, especially one where you don’t know anyone and cannot speak the language, can be intense. If that city happens to be Bucharest in the winter, and it is on the night of a Romanian drinking holiday, there is an extra adrenalin rush. What’s a drinking holiday? Did you know that in the Romanian version of Christianity, Jesus had 44 apostles, and if on this particular holiday you drink 44 glasses of something—anything--you will have good luck for the year? This holiday happened to coincide with my arrival.  “Yes, driver, I’m Mr. Cramer.”

Why visit Bucharest (other than the desire to go everywhere)? How could one not go to a country whose founding Father was Vlad the Impaler, the brutal 14^th century king who inspired the Dracula story? I mean, no contest. 

Paris of the East. Every Romanian mentions it at some point, and it is universally agreed, that Romania peaked between around 1878 and 1938. Unfortunately for them, the Romanians then made some bad choices. In the 1930’s, The Iron Guard, an ultra-right wing combination of extreme anti-Semitic Fascism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Romanian population. But all across the political spectrum, most politicians supported an alliance with the Germans against Russia. Big mistake. The Russians did not take kindly to anyone who sided with the Germans, and when the Red Army showed up they were not happy. Karma, anyone?

The bones of the “Paris of the East” are still visible amid the hodgepodge architecture and absolute lack of taste exhibited by the Stalinists and Ceausescu. Despite the Communist bulldozers and apartment blocks, amazing neighborhoods still remain, packed with formerly fabulous Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings inspired by the real turn-of-the century Paris. Here and there you see some of these buildings restored to their original splendor and you have to admit the people who lived back then were pretty cool. Unfortunately, there is a big, big problem.

When the Communists were in power, the State owned everything. After the regime fell in the Revolution of 1989, the new “State” started selling off all of Bucharest’s buildings. So, as in most corrupt “kleptocracies” pretending to be “for the people”, they sold them to their friends for a tiny percentage of what they would be worth in a truly free market. Officially, the State did not make much money on the deals and there was not much cash to restore the neglected infrastructure. The lucky “friends” then sold off the buildings at what approached market value, pocketing billions. So far, so good.

What the new owners of these dilapidated jewels did not know was that out of the woodwork came the original owners who argued that the state had illegally confiscated their property after the War, and these once beautiful buildings belonged to them. So until the courts could sort it out, no one was willing to invest in fixing them up. After twenty years only a tiny percentage of the cases have been resolved.

On the upside, Bucharest is filled with construction sites where workers are renovating the Historic City Centre, and as cases are settled, owners are beginning to rebuild. As Romanian luck (or karma) would have it, a bunch of Wall Street criminals-who-got-away-with-billions-scot-free manipulated world markets and the resulting financial meltdown put a hold on many of the planned projects. I guess what I am saying is that if the Romanians could get it together, Bucharest would be a true jewel. Tourists would follow.

I took a private city tour the first morning and pleasantly surprised my guide when I told him that I had absolutely no interest in seeing the second largest building in the world (that’s the 1300 room Communist Parliament abomination, 90% of which is vacant), nor do I really want to see any museums, especially folk art museums (I hate folk art), and really would prefer to just go around and see the different neighborhoods and their street life while he told me about life in the city and its history. He was delighted and took me places he said he had never taken tourists to before.

One neighborhood we passed through was the Old Jewish Quarter near the historic centre, and I was so intrigued by its combinations of architecture, its maze of streets, and ramshackle, overgrown gardens, that I wanted to go back on my own for some quality picture taking time. What happened next could have been in a movie.

The hotel concierge helped me find a taxi driver who claimed to speak a little English, told him what I wanted, and showed him on the map where I wanted to go. Within about two blocks it became evident that the driver did not speak more than about twelve words of English, and did not understand where we were going or why I wanted to go there. The strange twist to the driver’s limited English was that it was like he had deposited those words in a language bank, and once withdrawn and used, they were gone and could not be used again. Shrugs and hand signals remained.

The driver, both embarrassed and nervous as we became increasingly lost in the maze of Bucharest’s streets and alleys, began to drive faster and more recklessly, and soon we were alternating between hitting every curb on every tight turn, and driving on the wrong side of the street against oncoming traffic as he tried to read my map. Mr. Toadski’s wild ride. After a few very close calls I recognized part of the neighborhood I had seen the day before and ordered the driver to pull over, park and wait. I re-started my heart and set off to explore on foot.

The sad thing about visiting Europe’s Jewish Quarters is that a) they are often the most interesting parts of the city and b) there are no Jews left. When Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade in 1096 to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims, the first thing the Crusaders did was kill the Jews in Hamburg. Apparently the difference between Jews in Hamburg and Muslims in Jerusalem was too fine a distinction for the enthusiastic Crusaders to get their unwashed arms around. A precedent having been set, the Inquisition, state-supported pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust succeeded in destroying the vibrant culture of European Jewry. All across Europe, their ghosts remain.

In 1940 there were approximately 800,000 Jews in Romania, roughly 5% of the population. A larger percentage lived in Bucharest. The so-called Paris of the East period between the Wars was, in part, the result of the secular Jewish culture of art, music, theatre, science and education. The Romanians started killing Jews and stealing their property well before the German Army arrived, but the Germans were just more efficient. Between the two, they murdered half the Jews and the remaining half fled after the War. According to the last census, less than 10,000 remain. The Romanian-Jewish father of a friend of mine survived the Death Camps. He said that in the beginning, before they knew about the extermination camps, they were less afraid of the Germans than their own countrymen. The Germans were polite as they organized the ghettos and then began to load the trains to the “labor camps.” There were rules, and if you followed them, everything seemed almost normal. But it was not unusual for a Romanian to walk up to a random Jew, hit him over the head with a shovel, and as the victim bled to death, walk away laughing with his friends.

A university educated Romanian woman told me there were still too many Jews in Romania. I said, “Really? I thought they were all killed or fled?” “Well, you know,” she replied, “they [the Jews] did do things. You have to face the facts.” Old habits die hard.

Where was I… oh yes, the Jewish Quarter. Got some good pictures.

I liked my city guide from the first day here, so I joined him again for a full-day tour heading north over the Carpathian Mountains into Transylvania. Dracula country. Stop! My guide, Claudiu, wants me to tell you that the Romanians have no Dracula myth, no vampire stories, and none of it is true. Bram Stoker, the 19^th century novelist, made the whole thing up.

Here is the background of the story, and I am pretty sure that I will repeat it incorrectly… Back in the 14^th century there was a Transylvanian “king” named Vlad who fought bravely against the Wallachians on behalf of his benefactors, the Hungarians. Yes, I know, it is hard to keep the White Tribes of Europe straight as they have a tendency to keep conquering one another, back and forth, forever and ever, but try to keep up. So… the Hungarian King awards Vlad by bestowing upon him membership in the Order of the Dragon, an order made up of a bunch of tough guys who conquer things.

The word Dragon is linguistically Romania-ized into something like Dracul. It has a few other meanings and associations. One is a man of power, the other is, well… The Devil. With me so far? Vlad Dracul has a son, also named Vlad. I am pretty sure this makes baby Vlad, Vlad Dracula, as in Son of Vlad the Dragon. Now it gets good.

Young Vlad Dracula grows up to be a pretty tough guy in his own right, and has the preference of punishing his enemies by impaling them on a sharp wooden stake. Hence his second name, the one that endears him to us to this day; Vlad the Impaler. And if you are not sure what impaling is, look it up. It’s pretty bad. In his defense, however, the museum at his castle explains that Medieval Europe had, I quote, a “climate of cruelty,” unquote, and so it wasn’t Vlad’s fault that he tortured his enemies before killing them. He just hung around with a bad crowd.

Vlad’s enemies spread vicious propaganda about him.  They said he was particularly cruel and blood thirsty. I mean, impaling probably is a bloody mess, but did he really drink it? Vlad was eventually beheaded by the Turks, themselves no slouches in the cruelty business, and so we will never really know Vlad’s beverage of choice.

End of story? Nope. Along comes Bram Stoker, hears some of these legends and stories, and decides to set his Victorian Horror Novel in the mountains of Transylvania. The damage is done. Romanians are vampires. For the record, Bela Lugosi was Hungarian.

Just a couple of other items worthy of note:

Romania has the largest wild bear population in Europe with approximately 4,000 of them roaming the Carpathians. Hey, I thought it was interesting.

Romania also has thousands upon thousands of feral dogs roaming the entire country in packs. Bucharest is so bad that people are afraid to walk alone at night, more for fear of dog attacks than of being robbed. It is also why no one rides bicycles here. It tends to get the dogs excited and being chased through the narrow streets of old Bucharest by a pack of wild dogs is just not cool. I am not sure why this situation got so out-of-hand, but I was told that it started during the Communist era when they bulldozed many private homes and built apartments. The ex-home owners were forced to move and many of them abandoned their pets. I love unintended consequences.

One last thing about the dogs. The government finally decided to do something about it and began rounding up the dogs and, well… killing them. No, not impaling or beheading them, but killing them nevertheless. In comes Bridgette Bardot, of all people, and makes it into an international “thing.” Cruelty to animals, blah blah. The PR is so bad for Romania they stop the program. So far, efforts at sterilization have failed to clear the streets of the problem. I guess Bridgette Bardot does not have to ride a bicycle in Bucharest.

And finally… one of my favorite vignettes. I was talking to a rather tough, young Romanian women about what it was like to live here. “Here in Romania,” she said, “ you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t get caught.” She smiled a big, big, smile, and with her eyes closed, tilted her head back, opened her arms wide and said, “Freedom!”

To see pictures of my trip visit my page on Facebook, www.Facebook.com/TheCramerCollection.