Halfway down the Danube

Timisoara (1)

Ah, Timisoara.

It's in the very far west of Romania, in the area called "The Banat". The Banat is a perfectly flat plain, like a Balkan Iowa. It was part of Hungary for many centuries, but in 1918 it was divided between Romania and Serbia.

There aren't any natural boundaries on the Banat, so the border was somewhat arbitrary. Thousands of Romanians were left on the Serbian side, and tens of thousands of Serbs, Germans and Hungarians were left on the Romanian side. So Timisoara was one of the more ethnically mixed towns in Romania.

(It still is. Wandering around in the evening, I asked for directions from a random stranger. He answered in German.)

Now, Romania had plenty of ethnically mixed towns. We've mentioned our trips to Brasov, and encounters with the Hungarians and Germans there.

What made Timisoara unusual was that the different groups got along surprisingly well. Ceausescu had a very deliberate policy of setting Romania's ethnicities against each other. I'm not sure how much of this was Romanian nationalism on his part, and how much a very deliberate policy of divide et impera. Whatever the reason, though, it did painful and lasting damage.

But it didn't seem to work so well in Timisoara. The 1989 Revolution started there, and it started because Romanians and others joined in a protest supporting a Hungarian priest. Everyone stood together, and together they were the pebble that started the avalanche.

That's very encouraging, isn't it? What's... somewhat less encouraging, is: one of the things that still seems to unite Timisoarans is that they all look down on the rest of Romania.

"Giurgiu? Calarasi?" said a taxi driver to me. "Oh, holy God. Why would you ever go down there? The people are no good. Very dirty. Very poor.

"If I have to drive to Bucharest, I always go north -- through Sibiu. Never south, through Craiova. The roads are better, and when you stop to eat, you don't worry about what you're eating."

And what was the taxi driver himself? "Oh, Hungarian."

So, you speak Hungarian? "No, very little. My mother is Romanian, so we mostly spoke Romanian at home."

So, you're half Romanian? "No, I'm Hungarian. My mother was half Hungarian, though she spoke Romanian."

So she was half Romanian? "No, she was Romanian."

Well... er... what about Romanians here in Timisoara?

"What about them?"

Are they... um... like Romanians in places like Giurgiu and Calarasi?

"Oh holy God, no. Those people are like Gypsies. We don't have those kinds of people around here."

I winced. But on the other hand, at least they're getting along out there, in Timisoara.

Random note: everyone over the age of 30 in Timisoara seems to understand at least a little Serbian. This is because, in the 1980s, everyone was watching Serbian TV. Romanian TV only broadcast two hours per night, and it was mostly Ceausescu's speeches and the like. TV Belgrade and the other Serbian stations carried movies, music videos, world news, and all sorts of fascinating stuff.

Random note #2: the Opera House in Timisoara was playing "Medea" (the tragedy by Euripides) and "Dancing Queen" (the musical based on the works of the rock band Queen).

Posted by douglas at March 8, 2004 12:47 PM