15th March 1848

Today is, as you may have noticed, March 15th. Not much special about that for most people, aside from that whole ides of March / et tu brute thing. But it is a big deal in the world of Hungarians, as it represents possibly the biggest day in the Hungarian calendar - the commemoration of the revolution of 1848.

Of late I've been reading a great history book called "The Hungarians: 1000 Years of Victory in Defeat" by Paul Lendvai. (The title is very apt since the history of Hungarians in Europe does seem to have been a litany of defeats - and in fact the two biggest holidays in the Hungarian calendar - today and the commemoration of the 1956 uprising both, ultimately celebrate and romanticise defeats).

The thing that really stands out about the history of Hungary prior to 1848 is that if Hungarians feel the need to hold any historical grudges, they ought to hold those grudges at two groups
(1) Their own ridiculously self-interested and anti-progressive nobility. With a few notable exceptions this group kept Hungary (and it's attendant bits) in a ridiculously backward state for centuries; and
(2) The Austrians/Habsburgs who seemingly never missed an opportunity to screw everyone over, and especially the Hungarians.

What's inspiring about the 1848 revolution which Hungarians celebrate today is that it is liberation from these very two groups that characterises the positive side of the uprising. The removal of serfdom, the emancipation of the Jews and the wresting of control from Vienna were some of the truly forward thinking things achieved by the revolution. On the negative side the leaders of the revolution, including it's most famous member Kossuth Lajos, wrapped everything up in a Magyar nationalism which ultimately led to its downfall. This was not only a political error - nothing good ever comes of nationalism, and to use nationalism as a tool or worse as a basis, always ends up badly- but it was a massive tactical error too. Rather than liberating peasants from serfdom, the sense was that it was about liberating Hungarian peasants - Romanians and Serbs and other ethnic groups within Hungary and Transylvania were not to be liberated, and so had no stake in the success of the revolution (and indeed could not have been faulted for being highly suspicious of it and fearful of its success). Austria got them to fight along with Vienna against the revolution (and promptly, when it was successfully put down, screwed them over too. The Habsburgs were equal opportunity dickheads it seems). Later in exile, Kossuth Lajos argued for a loose Danube confederation of peoples, which would have been a much better bet from the word go, but by then it was too late.

Eventually the revolution was finally put down with the support of Russia. One of the best things about Lendvai's book ( as well as it being a very even-handed and well-written history) is some little vignettes of interest - people who rose to minor prominence and/or infamy. One of these is Alexei Gusev. Alexei Gusev was a Csarist captain who realised how important the revolution was and ended up fighting alongside the Hungarians. Except that he didn't actually exist. During the time of Soviet domination of Hungary, the USSR wanted to present themselves as long time friends of Hungary - this was a problem because Hungary's most romantic historical moment (1848) was eventually put down with Russian support. In trying to form a clear revolutionary link between Kossuth and Stalin, a compliant Hungarian historian was recruited who then researched in archives and came up with the aforementioned Captain Gusev, who had rebelled against the Csar and joined Kossuth. Here was the link between the USSR and Kossuth. They even named streets after him in Budapest and other towns. Until of course it was discovered after 1989 that he had in fact been entirely made up.

But anyway, I digress. 1848. Kossuth. Petőfi. It's difficult to overstate the importance of this moment in Hungarian history, and in the Hungarian consciousness. As I look out the window today, I can see Hungarian flags all over the place. This is about the only day of the year when you see those flags here (except outside the Hungarian consulate). There will be a laying of wreaths on the statues of Petőfi and Nicolae Balcescu (who was a Romanian revolutionary leader in 1848 also, and who ought to have been listened to more by Kossuth, as much more could have been achieved)

I'll write more about the Lendvai book as I go through it. It's really worth reading for anyone vaguely interested in regional history and in particular the Hungarians' place in it.

A bit of China that is forever Austro-Hungarian

This morning (well, it was before lunch, but probably not technically morning), we went to an exhibition at the castle here in town of stereographic photos from the late 19th early 20th century (you know those 3d pictures that you have to look at through glasses one lens of which is red and one green). Anyway, some of the pictures were pretty fun, and in some cases the depth from the 3d effect worked really well (one of the Alhambra in Granada and one of the Danube in Budapest stood out - hoho). There were a couple from Transylvania - one or two in Brasov and a few in Cluj, but the others were from all over the place. Anyway, one really caught my eye, not because it was a particularly great shot, but because it purported to show the "Austro Hungarian Colony at Tien Shin, China". "Hold on", I thought to myself, and subsequently said to Erika, "there was an Austro Hungarian colony in China?"

On my return home I spent some time looking this up. This was tricky because the way the name of the Chinese town had been rendered was unhelpful, and because there is no wikipedia article on this colony (imagine! something that doesn't have a wikipedia entry). Some concentrated searching however, led me to conclude that the town's name is more often rendered as Tianjin, and that there was, in fact, a small bit (less than 1km²) of that city which was (for 16 short years) ruled from Vienna. Weird huh? This was all part of the fallout from supression of the Boxer Rebellion, apparently, in which 8 powers helped out, and all ended up with a bit of Tianjin to call their own. You can read about it here.

I'm now intrigued to imagine this city with it's small corner of Habsburgian architecture which that article assures me is there.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Reunion

No, not the French island off East Africa.

I have never been to a school reunion. Not of my secondary school, not of my (excuse British-ism) VIth form college, not of my University. I have never even been invited to one, and have no idea if such things have ever been held. I have to assume not, since I can't be that hard to track down - while I have moved a lot and all over the shop, my folks have lived in the same place since I was 7, and I really honestly wasn't so unpopular that I would have been deliberately "forgotten" when invitations were being sent.

Here, however, these reunions are not only held, but have quite a specific format. I know this because on Friday we went to Erika's back in Marosvasarhely (Targu Mures). The whole thing kicks off with an "Oszi ora" (spelling very possibly wrong) in which the class reconvenes in their old classroom with their old teacher and says something about what they've been up to/cracks a joke etc. That is in the afternoon, and then in the evening there is the party to which the spouses, partners, etc get invited.

What's especially interesting about this particular class is that the vast majority of them have emigrated. Erika is one of the few of her classmates who still lives in Romania, while the others are in Hungary, Luxembourg, Germany, Canada, the US, Switzerland, etc. This, I think, very much reflects the time at which they graduated high school and the circumstances in which they found themselves. Marosvasarhely/Targu Mures was (for Hungarians) particularly hard hit by the Ceausescu years. This is obviously not to say that everyone wasn't hard hit by Ceausescu (well nearly everyone, people like Iliescu obviously did alright). Then in 1990, post Ceausescu, the city was the location for Romania's only serious inter-ethnic conflict between Hungarians and Romanians (Human Rights Watch report), and I think for many people at that time, especially Hungarian young adults, it may have been seen as a time to get out while it was momentarily possible. Obviously things didn't turn out for the worst, and the riots and attacks were an isolated incident and while the ethnic balance has shifted in the city (it is now majority Romanian), people's worst fears were not realised. But they have resulted in the emigration of a large section of the Hungarian population who were old enough to remember the 80s, young enough to not have built up a vast set of ties and responsibilities within the town, but adult enough to have been free to leave in the early 90s. (I susepct I have rather ungallantly given Erika's age away here, or at least led the reader to guess exactly which high school reunion we were celebrating)

Anyway, the party was very good, aside from the food which was bloody rubbish (a universally held opinion, not just mine). I'm even getting used to being at parties at which all the music is entirely unfamiliar to me. As ever it went on until the hours were no longer so wee (I'm still taken aback about how long parties go on here), and there were even people present who spoke less Hungarian than me. There was a football match the following day between the class boys and the husbands of the class girls. I didn't play, because (a) we had to get back to Paula, (b) I didn't know about it, and so had no suitable shoes, and (c) I'd only got to bed after 5 and had consumed a fair amount of booze and I am no longer capable of indulging in that kind of madness (and to be honest I'm not sure how any of the others were - I mean the nature of the event means that there isn't that great an age range between potential participants).

East and West Pakistan

Taking off from Dhaka and subsequently landing in Karachi is a study in contrasts – you rise above this incredibly wet and green world, crisscrossed with rivers, lush and verdant, and then 3 hours later you begin descending across this brown arid wasteland, crisscrossed with dry wadis and the occasional rock strewn escarpment. The two places couldn’t be more different.

The other thing one notices about the flight is how long it is. It takes something like four hours to go from Bangladesh to Pakistan. And this is in a modern 21st century aeroplane. God knows what it would have taken in 1947. It's during this long flight that I began to realise what a doomed and faintly ridiculous idea it was to create this one country with so much (sporadically hostile) territory between its seperate bits. Who thought it might be a good idea? It's amazing that it actually lasted for 24 years before imploding. For anyone wishing to read about the mess that was East and West Pakistan, and the resultant civil war/war of independence/brutal response to Bangladeshi uprsising, this Wikipedia article is worth a read. I had read before about the atrocities and the brutality that Bengalis suffered in that war of liberation (mostly in John Pilger's "Heroes"), but I had forgotten just how brutal and atrocious it really was.

On other historical matters, while I was in Karachi, I had a long and involved conversation with a (semi-famous?) writer on the subject of the founding of Pakistan and the role and philosophy of Muhammed Iqbal. To be honest, I hadn't heard of Iqbal before, though he was obviously crucial in the creation of the "idea" of Pakistan, and is still seen as the grandfather of the nation (with Jinnah as its father). I opined that founding a state on religious grounds (or ethno-religious grounds) was something I couldn't quite get my head around. The only two such states that I know of are Pakistan and Israel, and while I understand the rationale behind the formation of both, the "dream" on which they were founded seems to have run aground in both cases. My interlocutor said that he saw Pakistan as being founded upon an idea, rather like the US was, which I am not terribly sure I buy, but I suspect that's because he was coming from the literary perspective of the study of Iqbal. We were agreed, however, that whatever the ideal of Pakistan was, the reality was nowhere close.

Pakistan in general is more and more seen as the centre of the world - at least in a Huntington-esque clash of civilisations world. Military dictatorship vs Islamic fundamentalism vs secular / islamic-with-a-small-i democracy. The British government have realised this, it seems, and are devoting lots of resources to education there. Maybe they've got the message that education is more likely to win hearts and minds than bombing the fuck out of people, and then torturing those who are left alive. (Surprisingly the latter approach seems not to be terribly effective).

October 23rd

Bit of a busy week, round these parts as I am in sole charge of the little ones, but we'll see if I can get through a quick post about Monday evening before the littlest one wakes up.

So, as mentioned earlier Monday was the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising in which a large number of very brave people rose up against their oppressive regime, and were eventually crushed with the assistance of the Soviet army. This obviously didn't happen here, since we are not in Hungary, but there was a fairly large commemmoration event here. At 6.30 we went out to join the candelit march that was starting from "Freedom Square" outside our apartment. We couldn't get a candle/torch, as they were reserved for bigwigs apparently, but undaunted we managed to get over the disappointment. The parade/march/walk/amble was conducted in almost complete silence (though I'm not sure if that was deliberate or just because people weren't feeling very chatty), and led us up Timisoara Boulevard and then up past the theatre to the Hungarian Consulate. By the time we got there it was a fairly big gathering, of at least a couple of thousand, which for this town is a major turnout.

Speeches were spoken by various dignitaries - somebody from the Hungarian foreign ministry, the consul, some religious leader, a local politician one who has his own blog even (in Hungarian), and various others. It was getting a bit parky by this time, and Paula was getting tired so I led her home, while Erika and Bogi braved the nighttime chill of the Carpathians for a while longer, but not quite long enough to witness the unveiling of a new statue representing "The Angel of News" (I think). I saw it yesterday though, and it's not the most attractive piece of public art I've ever seen, but probably I'll get used to it.

I wanted to include some photos to give you a taste of the evening's events, but sadly my camera chose that night to seemingly expire. I'm hoping I can resurrect it somehow.

I asked around to find out what would have been the channel for this news to reach Csikszereda back in 1956, and was given a number of possible answers (nobody I asked was actually alive, so it was a bit of guesswork) - that they heard on Romanian media (which seems like it may have happened after the fact - it's hard to imagine that 1956 Romanian government would have been happy about spreading news of a popular uprising); that they heard on Radio Free Europe; and that people near the border could get Hungarian TV and they would obviously have heard, and it would have got passed around Transylvania, slowly spreading eastwards. That last one appeals to me (aesthetically, not because I like the idea of people being denied information) - it conjures up bards and wandering minstrels and the like.

Anyway, the events, such as they were, were quite moving and passed by without incident, which is obviously more than can be said for the similar commemorations in Budapest.

Hungarian readers may be interested to learn that the 1956 events more or less destroyed the far left in the UK (obviously no major deal compared to what upheaval it caused in Hungary). After the seond world war, the communist party was quite strong in Britain, but 1956 split it completely asunder between those who supported the uprising and those who advocated mother Russia sending the tanks in. To this day, the derogatory slang term for Stalinists in the UK (yes there are some) is "tankies".

Who are the Szekely?

I was searching through Google News to see whether any English language media had reported anything about the whole March 15th thing here, and there really wasn’t a great deal, but I did notice a repeated misconception about who the Szekely are. At least two reports essentially equated the Szekely with the Hungarian population of Romania, which is definitely not my understanding of the situation. And given that I’m married to a Hungarian Romanian who is not a Szekely, I reckon my understanding is correct. So anyway, I thought I’d do a bit of research and try and fill in the gaps in my knowledge about who the Szekely are and let you know what I found out. After all, I did choose a Szekely themed URL for this site when I set it up, so I really ought to have a clue who they are.

The origins of the “Szeklers” (this is the German word for the group, and apparently seems to be the official English language version too, though I reckon outside of Hungary, Romania and ethnographic faculties of universities, there are about 3 native English speakers who have even heard of the Szekely) are not certain. Some say there are basically a subset of the Magyars who came to Europe from Central Asia however many hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Others that they are not originally Magyar, but from other places – they could be Turkish, Scythian or Hittite, for example. One thing that aids the Turkish theory is the fact that ancient Szekely writing is runic.

Anyway, what ended up happening is that the Szekelys, warriors like the Saxons, were assigned to the border regions of the Hungarian empire, with them basically lining the Eastern Carpathians (the Saxons took the Southern Carpathians). Transylvania for many years was known as the “union of three nations” – three areas ruled by the Saxons, the Szekely, and the Hungarian nobility. Anyway, what this means is that while there’s no obvious ethnic difference between the Szekely and the Hungarians, and they both speak the same language, and both are predominantly Roman Catholic, it is more or less considered these days that the Hungarian speakers of Harghita, Cavasna and part of Mures counties are the Szekely, and the Hungarian speakers in the rest of Transylvania – Cluj, Targu Mures, Maramures, Oradea, Timisoara etc are Hungarians (and not Szekely). The Szekelys in general seem much more traditional and have held on to their folk culture very successfully.

I also discovered that there is another group known as the “Szekelys of Bucovina” who were descended from a group of around 1000 Szekelys who fled Szekelyföld in 1764 after the Austrians massacred around 400 Szekelys at Madefalva (Siculeni in Romanian) a village about 5 km north of here. They ended up in Bucovina (the other side of the mountains from here). One of the villages there they named “Istensegíts” (God Help Us), which gives you a sense of their flight. Their population grew to about 13,000, but after Bucovina became Romania they felt increasingly isolated, and eventually under some deal between Hungary and Romania (in 1941? This isn’t clear to me) they were all evacuated and used by the Hungarians in an attempt to Magyarise the area of Vojvodina (now in Serbia) (ie they were settled there to change the demographics of the area). This was fairly shortlived as Hungary ceded control of the area in the Second World War, and they were once again forced to flee. They eventually settled in Tolna county in Hungary where they live to this day.

So there you go, some background and information about the Szekely, so that if ever you encounter an article like this one, you can feel informed enough to think to yourself "Actually it's not true to say Romania's ethnic Hungarians, also known as Szeklers," and feel all smug.

The Wisdom of the Ages

It is a well known fact that Norman Wisdom is incredibly famous in Albania. Norman Wisdom, in case you are not Albanian, is a British “slapstick comedy actor” and music hall style comedian. He was popular (though I’m not sure how popular) in the UK in the 50s and possibly early 60s. To people of my generation, though, he is actually more famous for being famous in Albania than he is for his body of work – of which, as far as I’m aware, I have seen precisely none. Apparently, Enver Hoxha was a big fan and thus the legend of Pitkin was born. (Pitkin is, I think, a character he played in one of his films). Ask any Albanian over 30 about Pitkin and they’ll wax lyrical for hours. (I have never actually tested this, but I am reliably informed that it is the case. In some kind of hands-across-the-Balkans gesture of friendship/publicity stunt a few years ago when the England football team came to Tirana for a match, they brought Wisdom with them, and the stadium rose as one to salute the octogenarian star.)

Recently I have discovered that Wisdom, here known simply as “Norman”, is very popular in Romania too. Perhaps Ceausescu was introduced to him by Hoxha at a dinner party or at a conference of slightly maverick communist dictators. I think his popularity may be slightly less than in Albania (I have never seen a Norman film on Romanian TV, and in Tirana, if the slightly mocking media reports filed by British journalists are anything to go by, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t an entire channel devoted to his oeuvre.)

This places Norman firmly in the category of strange and somewhat obscure things that Romanians get slightly wistful about. Another is Bollywood movies. As far as I can ascertain, western films were to all intents and purposes banned during the Communist years, but when the cinemas had no propaganda films or reworkings of Tolstoy to show, films were imported from India to fill in the gaps. In fact, they still seem to be relatively popular, possibly for nostalgia reasons, and one or two of the TV channels regularly show them – though they have been shunted out of the cinemas by endless violent Hollywood action films.

Another very odd one is Smokie. I would have imagined (if I’d ever bothered to think abut it) that Smokie were only known and barely remembered by British people of between about 35 and 45. For those that don’t know, they were a 70s group of long haired blokes who sang poorly written ballads in a kind of sub-Rod Stewart gravelly voice (I was going to refer to them as a proto boy band, but even at the height of the popularity I seem to remember they looked at least 30 – at least when the young me saw them on Top of the Pops). I had, of course, entirely forgotten about them, and would have been quite happy had it stayed that way. But then, a few months ago I was at a party, and suddenly one of their tunes came on. “Good God,” I thought, “this takes me back. I wonder who put this on and why”. And then I noticed that the whole room was singing along to it. More or less everyone – old, young and in between. I also need to mention here that over half of the people at this party didn’t speak any English at all. Yet here they were singing along to the frankly rubbish mid 70s soppy ode to personal tragedy “Living Next Door to Alice”.

But remarkably that was not to be the end of my moments of jaw dropping amazement that night. Far from it. The turgid drone reached its chorus, and as the last line of said chorus drained away “And for 24 years I’ve been living next door to Alice”, the room, as one, punctuated the line with (in English) a group shout of “Who the fuck is Alice?” That moment, I’m quite sure, will live with me for ever. This was a party in a village to celebrate a baptism, not some group of post-modern irony obsessed lovers of retro-chic. The guests were of all ages, and many walks of life. If you’ve never seen an old Transylvanian villager with few teeth and no English whatsoever, jump to his feet and shout “Who the fuck is Alice?”, well, frankly, you haven’t lived.

I have since found out that actually this version of the song was actually a recorded one, and was released by Smokie themselves, some years after their initial fame – in the 90s sometime I think- with the extra shouty bit added in by fat and rubbish racist comedian Roy “Chubby” Brown. I missed it by virtue of being out of the reach of English novelty records at the time, but clearly much of Europe was infected. Asking around I have discovered sightings (soundings?) of this oh-so-hilarious update being sung by the general public from Hamburg to Istanbul and beyond.

But, Smokie’s insidious reach extends beyond even this reworking of their most famous hit. They are known for other of their songs which don’t even have added sweary bits. I am, frankly, baffled by their appeal. It’s a rum do, and no mistake.

Oh, and in case you don't believe me about Albania,
here's a BBC piece from the time of that football match I mentioned.

Remembering Virgil Sahleanu

This month marks 5 years since the assassination of Trade Union leader Virgil Sahleanu in Iasi under the apparent orders of the former manager of his employer TEPRO. It's a sad, but powerful story that probably never made it outside Romania and the Czech Republic (the company that owned TEPRO were Czech).

In 1998, TEPRO, a Romanian producer of steel tubes and pipes, was privatised and bought by a Czech company, Zelezarny Veseli, who were one of TEPRO’s competitors prior to the buyout. The parent company then allegedly started out on a program of asset stripping TEPRO, running down the factory and preparing to shut it down. Ioan Hariton, the secretary of the union which now bears Sahleanu’s name said “The Czechs took our products and stuck the Zelezarny label on them selling them as if they had produced them. Moreover, they refused orders for certain products, recommending that potential partners sign contracts with Zelezarny Vesely. They actually wanted to occupy the international markets where TEPRO was selling its products and lead our factory into bankruptcy.”

The trade union, now headed by Sahleanu, started fighting in the courts (on the basis that Zelezarny weren’t abiding by the agreements they signed in buying up TEPRO) and demanding the reinstatement of 1200 sacked workers. For his trouble Sahleanu himself was fired and had to continue fighting from outside the company. But fight he did, and successfully, winning the reinstatement of the workers, and eventually an agreement to reverse the privatisation. The company sued him and on his way to court one day he was attacked by two men and stabbed three times.

Charged and convicted with involvement in the murder were (as well as the two assailants themselves) the former manager of TEPRO, and the manager and employees of a private security firm. In addition, Frantisek Príplata, a Czech investor/businessman who was acting as adviser to the new management of TEPRO, was convicted by a Romanian court of “inciting murder”. Even after his appeal was turned down, he remained out of jail on the grounds of ill-health, during which time he fled across the border to Hungary on foot, and thence home to the Czech Republic. The government in Prague won’t extradite him, saying "Czech law forbids Czech citizens from being extradited. The only exceptions are EU countries, and Romania is not in the EU." I'm not sure what that means come Romania's accession, but I imagine Mr Priplata is a tad concerned.

Links to the latest versions of the story (and frankly from where I culled more or less all of the above information) can be found here, from Romanian Indymedia, and here, from the Prague Post.

Cozma-ic realignment

15 years ago this week there was a major upheaval in Bucharest. Following the ousting of Ceausescu in what amounted (despite public revolution) to an internal coup, Romania’s first democratic elections in May 1990 returned Iliescu (Ceausescu’s mate and the guy who used the revolution to gain power). Then in June there were major student led protests and riots in Bucharest against the new (in reality, old) government. Trainloads of miners led by a bloke called Miron Cozma arrived from Targu Jiu (Romania’s coal country) in support of Iliescu’s government, and broke up the protests (this is “broke up” in the fairly violent sense of that phrasal verb). The miners in this action have long been thought to have been infiltrated and under the control of Iliescu and the secret police.

In 91 the same group of miners actually brought down Prime Minister Petre Roman’s government, and then again in 99 they rioted again and this time Cozma was arrested and imprisoned for 18 years.

As I mentioned a few months ago, one of Iliescu’s last acts as president was to free Cozma, and then revoke the pardon a few days later. Well, now, on the 15th anniversary of the first “mineriada” the whole thing has blown up again. A few days ago, it was announced that Iliescu himself was to be indicted for his part in the affair, and now Cozma has been released again. (This time, as I understand it, it’s because it’s not possible to revoke a pardon once the pardoned has been released). I still haven’t worked out if Iliescu and Roman are going to be prosecuted for their acts in 1990, but they’ll probably wriggle out of it somehow. Cozma still refers to Iliescu as “Comrade Iliescu” and says he was acting under orders. It’s all very fascinating as Romania continues to go through the post-Ceausescu transition period and deals with the people who subverted the revolution.

I’m frankly struggling to follow all the ins and outs (has Iliescu really been indicted as was suggested last Friday? Will, as seems likely, Cozma be locked up again?), so if anyone more versed in post Ceausescu Romania than me (i.e. more or less everyone) would like to comment to help me grasp it, that would be great.

There is one other major post-revolutionary violent event to not be tackled, and that is the inter-ethnic clashes that broke out in Targu Mures earlier in 1990. Protests there (by ethnic Hungarian students demonstrating for a Hungarian language faculty in the university) were broken up by a nationalist Romanian group who brought in and armed peasants to attack the protesters. No-one (to my knowledge) has yet been brought to justice over that act.

[Later edit: Ah, here's a readable English language summation of the story. (Make's a fair amount more sense than the rambling attempt above)]

Peregri Nation

Csikszereda is slowly filling up. I just popped over the road to by some lunch and there are tons of people out there. There's music playing in the square behind me too. It's all very festive and uncsikszereda-like. What, you may be wondering, is going on?

Every year at a time decreed in the Roman Catholic calendar as Pentecost (what does that mean? five fruits and veg?) or possibly Whitsun (and that?), which may or may not be exactly the same thing, I couldn't possibly tell you, Catholics from all over Romania and Hungary converge on Csiksomlyo (the next-door village, effectively a suburb of Csikszereda) for an annual pilgrimage. This weekend is that weekend, and so here they are. Apparently there are normally between 3 and 4 hundred thousand of them for this event, which for a town of 40,000 seriously stretches the resources. I have, in my role as cultural consultant to everyone who bothers to read this, been doing a little research as to why they all come.

Apparently, there is a statue of the virgin Mary in the church at Csiksomlyo (I wish I could tell what the town's name is in Romanian, but I have no idea), which has resisted a lot of stuff. When the Tartars (the blokes who invented that sauce you have with fish) sacked Szekelyland a long time ago, people prayed to this statue, which despite the carnage was left unharmed (this doesn't sound particularly admirable I have to say - a statue with supposedly mythical powers elects to save itself rather than the people who prayed to it). Then after all the battle was over it was seen to cry. They always cry don't they, these religious icons? If they're so bloody amazing why don't they do something useful like fill everybody's heart with love and pacifism or something. I mean, really, what use is crying? Bloody typical.

Still, despite the weak-arsed response to their pleas, people from all over have come to visit and kiss and lay their troubles at it's feet for centuries (no doubt hoping that if it hears of enough suffering it might deign to shed yet another miraculous tear).

In case you really want to read something less sneering here are a couple of articles:

• This one's from something called the Marian Research Institute who sound like a right dodgy bunch of chancers.
  
• This one's an article about The Csangos who you may remember from a post I made sometime last year in the early innocent days of this blog. Here it is, in case you forgot.
  
• And finally something from "Catholic Culture", whoever they might be.

I was dead excited about this whole deal until very recently, when I discovered that the festival, far from being a celebration of life with hordes of revellers taking over the town for a weekend and partying all night, actually involves people praying non-stop from Friday to Sunday. And that's it. A festival of 400,000 people who just spend the weekend being very Christian. Sounds miserable.

And that music I can hear? It's not even part of the pilgrimage. It's the last day of the Harghita County "Days", which celebrates, errrm, Harghita County I guess. We went to a concert the other day which was part of it, and at which I encountered the other Brit in Csikszereda(TM), who seems nice enough despite attempting to take over my patch.

Contexts Part II: Transylvania

Transylvania is known the world over as the home of vampires. In the time I have been here, I have to confess I haven’t seen a single one. If my attractiveness to mosquitoes is anything to go by this is not because I have badly tasting blood. But I admit that it’s possible that mosquitoes and vampires are likely to have different tastes in blood.

So, aside from the vampire angle, what else can I tell you about Transylvania? Those of you with the dubious benefit of a classical education will know that Transylvania means “beyond the woods”. Over the mountains might be a better description as the area is practically surrounded by mountains on all sides. It’s a very fertile region, Transylvania, and was once referred to (by Stalin, I believe, or at least someone in his government) as the breadbasket of Europe. Indeed he (Stalin) saw that as the role for Romania in the Warsaw Pact, but this pissed Ceasescu off, who thought the subtext was that Romanians were being described as peasants, and as a good communist he wanted a country full of proletariats. So rather than building up agriculture he instead filled the country with large ugly polluting factories. Thus, now, Romania’s agriculture is working at a 19th century semi-feudal level. And more surprisingly, in view of the fact that every town appears to have a tractor factory in it, there appear to be very few actual tractors in the country. I’ve mentioned before about how many horse carts and cows you see on the roads, and this is no exaggeration. I don’t think I’ve ever been stuck behind a tractor on the rods here, but horse carts? Every couple of miles. In fact one just went past the window of this apartment, despite the fact that we live more or less in the centre of a city. Well, large town. Ok, town.

Transylvanians regard their part of Romania as the “rich” part of Romania, with hard working people producing the food and other goods that keep the rest of the country in the lazy style to which they have become accustomed. Every country I have ever been to has these kinds of regional stereotypes. There are workers and those who live off the work, and this can be divided into class or they can be divided into regions. People from Lisbon for example barely ever bother to get out of bed if you listen to the people from Porto. Likewise the Sicilians are just a bunch of layabouts to the Milanese. For Transylvanians it’s the Wallachians. The Moldavians appear to have gained a kind of honorary Transylvanian status in all this. They’re not Transylvanians you understand, but at least they understand the role of the wallachian parasites. I should put all that in quotes, so you know it’s not me talking, but perhaps this sentence will do instead.

As I mentioned in the Romania post, Transylvania has something of a long and checkered history. You can read all about it on the Internet somewhere. I’ll start at about the 10th century because before that point nothing 9aside form during the Roman occupation) is very well documented, and so it’s difficult to know what really was going on. This also avoids getting into the tricky question of who the “real” Transylvanians are. So, after loads of invasions from various tribes, Transylvania started to be colonised by Magyars in about the 10th century, and by the 13th century it had become part of Hungary. (Do you se how I cunningly skipped 300 years there?) The Hungarian king, in an effort to stop various invading forces coming in and pillaging bits of it, invited two groups of people to move in and provide a buffer protection area. In the South/Southeast of Transylvania it was the Saxons, and in the East it was the Szekely. I’m not 100% sure who the Szekelys are, “a Hungarian ethnic group” seems to be the common consensus. They were renowned warriors hence their selection for this role. So there are areas of Transylvania where until recently there was a sizeable ethnic German population, and areas which are still Szekely (and there are still a lot of Hungarians in Transylvania). The Hungarian word for Transylvania is Erdely (pronounced Airday), and the German is Siebenburgen (7 towns, although one website I looked at suggested that this didn’t in fact refer to the 7 major towns of medieval Transylvania but was a Germanification of Sibiu, one of those towns, which is the most pronouncedly German still.)

So the next few hundred years is characterised by that history that goes something like “In 1479 King Wankdorf formed an alliance with Prince Mouflon of Cantaloupe, which led to the combined forces defeating the Wingnuts at the battle of Trouserpress. When Mouflon suddenly died of scrofula, his son, Prince Mouflon II joined forces with the Niblicks and turned against Wankdorf. Wankdorf immediately made peace with the Wingnuts and married Princess Lentil of Yucca. The three way alliance thus formed was too much for the Cantaloupe and Niblick forces who were pushed all the way back to the River Handcream.” Etc etc and so forth ad nauseum. You know the kind of thing.

In the grander scheme of things Transylvania was handed from empire to empire (Ottoman, Habsburg, Austro-Hungarian) Until about 1848 when the revolutions sweeping Europe engulfed Hungary and Transylvania, and ended up with a ruthless quashing of the uprising, and a subsequent policy of Magyarisation of the population of Transylvania. Under this regime, the Romanians in Transylvania, who previously had merely been disenfranchised, were now oppressed quite overtly and denied basic rights. All designed to undermine the Romanianness of the region. Language, culture, religion, you know, the whole works. It’d be nice to think that the end of this period would be the end of such oppressions anywhere in the world ever. But unfortunately not. In fact that Magyarisation has sprouted many bastard offspring all over the world in the 20th century and it’s still going on in various places.

In the First World War Hungary sided with the Germans, while Romania sided with the British/French/Russian alliance. At the end of the war, then, Transylvanian was effectively handed over to Romania, a fact on the ground which was confirmed by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Then of course the entire process of Magyarisation was reversed and replaced with Romanisation. Hungarians were stripped of their land, property etc, and Romanians from other parts of the country were brought in to ensure the Romanian majority. In the 2nd World War, Hungary made the same mistake again and sided with Germany - mostly it seems to get back Transylvania. It did for a while, until Hitler and Stalin fell out and then Romania sided with Russia, eventually leading to being again on the “winning side”. Transylvania reverted to Romania after it’s brief bit of Hungarianness (in reality it was more like part of a greater Nazi empire, but since that empire only really existed under war conditions it’s a bit of a weird one (describing the nazis as weird is I suspect setting myself up for abuse, so I’ll just add in here that the empire and its status as a constantly fluctuating entity is the bit that’s weird. What happened within its expanding and contracting borders goes beyond weird and into the realms of fucking awful. Just to clear that up).

Post war and under Ceasescu, the Romanisation continued. Romanians were moved in from other parts of the country, Hungarians were often moved out and moved to barren bits of land or to work on one of Ceasescu’s grand projects (like the Danube Black Sea canal). People couldn’t have Hungarian names (Erika’s dad for example, born Laszlo, is officially Ladislau the closest Romanian equivalent to his real Hungarian name), large Romanian Orthodox Churches were built al over. The most prominent building in Csikszereda for example is the Romanian Orthodox church – even though the town has very few Romanians in it. I imagine the congregation is dwarfed by the interior of the church. Also under Ceasescu much of the German population of Transylvania left for West Germany. Germany has apparently always had a policy of offering all Germans anywhere in the world citizenship, and paid to “repatriate” their countrymen from Ceasescu’s Romania. Ceasescu wanted the money so was happy to let them go. Thus now, there are almost no Germans left in Transylvania.

After Ceasescu’s fall, and the general collapse of Eastern Europe many Hungarians fled to Hungary (these days you see thousands of Hungarian registered cars touring the countryside in summer, as people come back to visit their families). There are now about 1.5 million Hungarians in Transylvania. The population of Romania as a whole is 22million, but I don’t know what proportion of that is in Transylvania. So what’s left is a land of probably about 75% Romanian, 20% Hungarian and 5% Roma and a few surviving Germans. I’m making these figures up, but they’re a relatively informed guess.

God, I’ve gone on a bit there haven’t I? What I really ought to add is that Transylvania is gorgeous. Hills, mountains, forests, attractive and traditional villages, attractive gothic cities, rivers, lakes, gorges, and valleys. I perhaps ruined the effect of that final statement by wittering on about the divided history of the region. But really you should come. And visit.

Context pt 1: Romania

I thought I ought to provide some context, as you probably don’t know much about Romania. I am basing this assumption on my own ignorance before I came here, and as some of my readers are actually Romanian, my contextual writings here will probably be pulled apart as naïve uninformed bollocks. And rightly so. But uninformed bollocks are what make up his blog (and the vast majority of the entire Internet to be honest). The only question I have is whether to start big and go small (i.e. Romania -> Transylvania -> Szekelyfold -> Csikszereda) or to go the other way around. As you will no doubt be painfully aware by now, my writing style tends to leap clumsily from topic to topic like a drunken mountain goat, so this concern about how to organise my writing is a complete waste of my (and your) time. Apologies. I ‘ll try to have more respect for your precious minutes in the future.

So, we’ll go big to small, and hang the consequences.

Romania

As all of you are probably aware (unless the Foxnews morons have already got here), Romania is a fairly large country in Eastern Europe, the capital of which is Bucharest. It’s kind of hexagonal (bear with me here), and on the six borders (i.e. the six borders which I have just created with this arbitrary and frankly ludicrous attempt to geometrize the nation) you will find in order (running in clockwise order from the top one first): Ukraine, Moldova, the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Serbia & Montenegro, and Hungary. I’d draw you a picture of that to make it clearer, but I don’t think I can in this blog. Instead, here (is a link ) to the Lonely Planet’s map.

On the hexagon you have drawn (you did draw it, right?) draw a vertical line down from the right hand side of the top to the middle of your diagram and then horizontally left across to the middle of the left hand side. This represents the Carpathian Mountains. Everything in that top left corner is Transylvania. The bottom half of the diagram is Walachia. And the bit you have left (next to Moldova) is Moldavia. Try not to get Moldavia and Moldova mixed up as there’ll be a test later. This more or less represents the division of the country into its constituent three regions. One expression I have learnt while here is “South of Braşov”. This refers to things which are, how can I put this, less than perfect. If you put Braşov on your hexagon diagram at that Carpathian elbow, you will see that what “South of Braşov” actually means is “Walachian”. I’m sure people from Walachia don’t refer sneeringly to things “South of Braşov” for obvious reasons. Possibly for them, it’s “North of Braşov” which is a mark of contempt.

Historically, I’m on much more shaky ground. Ask me to describe countries in terms of geometrical shapes and I’m your man, but ask me to sum up thousands of years of history in a few pithy sentences without offending anyone, and I am definitely not your (or anyone else’s man). Basically, the first civilization that was here was the Dacians. Most of the country was occupied by Rome (hence, “Romania” and the language being Latin based). Where it gets complicated and the capacity to upset comes into play is in the history of Transylvania (which I’ll try and cover in my next contextual update). Basically it has been contested by Hungarians and Romanians for centuries, and still is. Historians on both sides produce vast works of research proving that either the Magyars colonized a largely empty region and were welcomed by the people that did live there* or that the Romano-Dacian population of Transylvania were the original and populous inhabitants of the region and that they were occupied and oppressed by the Hungarians. What is clear is that over the course of centuries Transylvania has been ruled by various empires. At the end of the First World War the three provinces of Romania were “unified” (Hungary was on the wrong side in that conflict), and since then (aside from a period in WWII when it was occupied by the Nazis) has remained largely the same country – although some bits ended up in the USSR after WWII. The Communist regime was overthrown in 89 in Eastern Europe’s only bloody revolution (only about 1000 people died, but that’s way more than in all of the other countries’ rush to the West). Ironically given that fact, it was the country that changed least following the revolution, as the members of the communists who had been plotting to overthrow Ceauşescu and take the party reins in order to preserve their power, used the opportunity presented by the popular uprising to take that power instead. Now I’m getting onto shaky grounds, and probably setting myself up for trouble with the authorities so I'll stop.

Here’s a fairly brief and unbiased account from the Lonely Planet - history

Here’s a longer and more comprehensive but much more Romania-centric history http://www.rotravel.com/romania/history/index.php

And one more, from encyclopedia.com:
encyclopedia

(* I have to say that I'm broadly sceptical of this account as it sounds suspiciously like the Zionist contention that Palestine was basically empty until the Jews arrived. A position which I know to be utter bollocks)

Systematisation

Ceaşescu’s regime was notable for a number of reasons, none of them especially positive, but one which distinguished it from most other regimes in Eastern Europe between 45 and 89 was the policy of “Systematisation”. This basically involved uprooting villagers and placing them in purpose built “agro-industrial centres”, basically large concrete apartment blocks built around a central monolithic civic centre. In towns and cities, the old centres were often destroyed to make way for these new civic centres. My own town, for example, has this ridiculous windswept vast concrete plaza in its centre, surrounded by ugly modern concrete blocks. It’s a bit like Coventry except that in least in Coventry they had the excuse that the entire town had bombed into rubble by the Luftwaffe. In Romania they had to artificially create the conditions for rebuilding in the new image (i.e. by knocking all the old towns down.) In Bucharest they destroyed vast swathes of the old town, to international condemnation, to build the “Palace of the People”, Ceaşescu’s greatest folly, which according to my book is now the second biggest building in the world (after the Pentagon).

The purpose of all this destruction and architectural criminality was to (and I quote) “wipe out radically the major differences between towns and villages; to bring the working and living conditions of the working people in the countryside closer to those in the towns”. The apartment buildings were to ensure that “the community fully dominates and controls the individual” and will therefore create Romania’s “new socialist man”. Wading past the communist slogans, I think this means that by forcing people out the communities that generations had created and sustained, systematisation would create new and harmonious super communities where workers and peasants would live cheek by jowl and fully come together for the glory of Romania.

Since 89 of course, many people have been moving back in the opposite direction, out of the towns and back into the countryside, which is among the most fertile in Europe (although not, for the last 50 years or so, among the most productive). I’m struck by the similarities between a policy which deigned to impose “community’ from the top down (when community is something that has always succeeded organically and from the bottom up, as it were), and the desire by another modern-day regime to impose democracy from the top down, when like community, democracy is something which has always come from below. The second biggest and the biggest building in the world are linked by more than just size.

To get back to the travelogue section, there are some towns in Romania that seemingly escaped systematisation – either because they were too isolated or unimportant for the process to have yet begun when it was abandoned. Two towns near here fit into this category – Székelyudvarhely and Gyergyószentmiklós (Odorheiu Secuiesc and Gheorgeni in Romanian), but so remote and poor were they that they’re still not exactly attractive – particularly the latter. Other more important towns seem to have survived by having their new civic centres built outside the old heart. Sighişoara for example retained its gorgeous old medieval heart, as for the most part did Braşov, and I’m led to believe, Sibiu and Cluj also (though I’ve not visited either of those towns yet). This means that these towns have really attractive centres which would melt any tourist’s heart, but also have some incredibly grim and depressing looking suburbs. Braşov in particular seems to be a study in contrasts. It’s a stunning and really interesting Baroque Saxon town, with small streets, a great main square and some very interesting churches, surrounded by some of the most suicidally awful looking apartments, factories and general grimness.

So, systematisation. - A bad thing. I could have said it in five words, clearly, but as ever, I chose to do so in many more. The next time a management consultant comes to your workplace and challenges you to systematise your workplace (and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the word gets reinvented and thrust into service for this purpose), bear in mind that thus far in history systematisation has been a method of oppression and an abject failure. Then tell them where to stick it.

The Csango Valley

The Csango valley lies between Csikszereda and Moldavia in the Carpathians. A 20 km drive east of here leads you over a pass and into this mysterious place. It is mysterious because it is fairly isolated and because the people are somehow different from those around them. They speak a kind of combination Hungarian and Romanian with a whole bunch of their own words thrown in. They have different traditional costumes and dances from the Szekely and the Moldavians who they lie between. Hungarians say they are Hungarians who have been Roamnised by Romanian domination, while Romanians say they are Romanians Magyarised by Hungarian domination. They themselves will just say “we are Csango”. Thez have names like “Peter son of Peter son of the Peter with the one ear son of the tall Peter”.

When we set off for the beach we took a route that led us through this fascinating valley. As we climbed out of Ciskszereda,the skies were darkening and as we descnded into the valley it had begun to rain. And what rain. It poured down. Rain like that I don't remember ever seeing outside the tropics. As we got further down into the valley, passing through towns that had once, 1000 years ago formed the border between Hungary and Romania (or what passed for those countries anyway), passing old and quite beautiful barracks and military offices, the rain kept falling. We were headed for Comanesti, the Moldavian town where the valley ends, so that we could turn south and go towards the coast, where hopefully this insane rain was not an issue. In one village a group of Csango had gathered to watch a river rise with the torrents of water flowing down the stream that had become a major river. In a valley like this one, with steep sides and many stream and tributaries flowing into the valley floor, rain of this intensity was a particular problem. They stood there in their ponchos, still drenched and soaked to the skin, watching the bridge which we crossed getting closer and closer to the surface of the muddy and branch strewn water. We kept onwards.

We went through a town whose main street was under water, making guesses as to how and where the water was at it’s shallowest. We weren’t the only car heading this way, so we knew it was possible, but as with all roads here there is a constant danger of potholes – and a deep one could have spelt the end of our trip. So we crawled at a reasonable pace (for fear of stalling) through the impromptu river, and eventually cleared it and went on our way.

A few kilometres later, we came to a second street underwater. Except at this one there were a line of stopped cars – including landrovers and other vehicles purportedly able to cope with anything. I don’t know if you have ever seen or heard of a Daewoo Tico, but it is not one of those vehicles. We’re basically talking about a Korean-Romanian Fiat Punto, only slightly smaller. So we stopped, and watched the river (formerly a street) rise. The guy in the landrover turned around and came to us and told us that this road was closed for as long as the rain lasted (which seemd like it meant for a few weeks at least) and that we ought to turn around now and get out of the valley before tne bridge we had previously passed got washed out and we were condemned to spend our intendedbeach holiday soaked to the skin in the Csango valley. We turned and drove like the clappers back through the nearly washed out street that we had previously come through, and our hearts beating to the bridge, at which the villagers were frantically doing somethingh sandbags which appeared to be diverting the water over the road and away from the bridge in some effort to save it I presume. However, we (and this is the important bit) made it. 140 kms after setting off we were right back where we started from in Csikszereda.

The next day after we had finally made it to the beach, we heard (through the miracle of mobile phone technology) that the valley had been totally closed, and that a 7m high level of water had been reported in Comanesti, the town we had never reached. That seemed a tad high, but I guess it was possible, given the level of rain we had encountered up to that point. We merely had to concern oursleves with how deep we were able to get into the Black Sea before the “Salvamar” people angrily whistled us for being out too far. (This was at basicaly chest high level.). The Black Sea coast and its gorgeous beaches will have to wait for a future update, as I am now off to bed.