Halfway down the Danube

On the road again

Well it looks like no snow tomorrow, so we're off to Galati.

Galati is supposed to be pronounced Gah-lahts, but most people seem to compress it something like Glatts or Glotz. It's a big industrial city at the far eastern corner of Romania, where Romania, Moldava and the Ukraine come together. From Bucharest it's about 160 miles/260 km, but it's all two-lane country roads, so we're probably talking about 3+ hours.

Galati stands on the edge of a couple of really fascinating regions. East and south is the Danube delta, the largest wetland left in Europe. North and east is lower Moldova, which is now the Gagauz Autonomous Region, or Gagauzia. The Gagauz are a strange and unique people: they're Turks who converted to Orthodox Christianity hundreds of years ago.

But as for Galati itself... well, it's another steel town, like Calarasi. However, the Galati steelworks (and the other associated industry, like the shipyards) was too big to walk away from, so the government has been keeping it alive. It's anybody's guess how long that can go on, though.

Oh, that reminds me: on the road to Craiova yesterday, we saw a large aluminim processing plant. (This was in Slatina, a small city about 40 km NW of Craiova.) Well, I don't normally get excited about aluminum plants, but this one was obviously operating at full capacity: smoke coming out of the smokestacks, parking lot full of cars. "World Class Production!" boasted the sign out front, and I was glad to see it. The aluminum plant was a legacy of Communism, but it's survived the transition and seems to be prospering.

Part of this may be because Slatina is a logical location for such a plant. It sits right on the river Olt, which makes moving ore and output cheap and easy, and it's near Pitesti, which can provide natural gas to produce electricity. This is in contrast to the Calarasi steel works, which seemed to have no reason to be where it was.

But also, the whole Craiova region just seemed a lot more prosperous than the area around Calarasi. Even the villages looked better -- more cars, more fresh paint. There's a feeling of more economic activity. So maybe that helped too... a more robust regional economy, more suppliers and service providers, a better local labor pool, and so forth.

Anyhow. On to Galati.

(Oh, and: whenever I'm inclined to complain about the travelling, I think about this guy, who is hitchhiking across Siberia. In January. Mustn't grumble.)(via language hat.)

Posted by douglas at January 22, 2004 10:40 PM | TrackBack