Romania - Transylvania

Romania - Muntenia

Constanta - Wedding 2006 (Part III)

Inside on the Casino staircase with our good friend and wedding saver, the beautiful Ms. Kammy.


My father and step mother look on to the festivities.
My wife's brother and his wife dance solo.


Inside the wedding room hall for the reception.

Constanta - Wedding 2006 (Part II)

Queue the music....




Mom and me

Probably a little too windy for those candles. Glad our Godparents Pat and Jamie Sheehan were the ones who had to hold them.

Constanta - Wedding 2006 (Part I)

Since we are talking about Constanta, this is as good a time as any to post some of our wedding pictures I guess. Our wedding was held on September 2, 2006 in the port of Tomis in Constanta. The reception was held at the famous waterfront Casino, the symbol of the city.

The bride, Ms. Inutza.




The groom, Mr. Scotisor






Inside the casino up the grand staircase.


Outside at the Constanta lighthouse,
and on the casino balcony where fireworks are traditional at Romanian weddings.

Romania - Constanta

One of my favorite cities in all Romania.

Located on the coast of Dobrogea along the beautiful Black Sea and possessing a laid back Mediterraneann atmosphere; Constanta is a city rich in 19th century art-nouveau architecture, boasts a Greek heritage from the 7th Century BC in the old port of Tomis, is the resting place of the great Augustinian era poet Ovid, and sits adjacent the modern hedonistic golden sands of Mamaia. Constanta has a little bit of everything, including splendid Orthodox cathedrals and in this case, Turkish style Sunni mosques. That I long ago met my wife and was married here many years later only adds to its luster.

The Conducator

In 1971, Nicolae Ceausescu toured North Korea, China and Vietnam with disasterous results. The Cultural Revolution and Kim Il Sung's cult of personality left a lasting impression upon Ceausescu and within days of his arrivial back in Romania, the dictator (conducator) commenced his own grandiose visions of eastern European Neo-Stalinism.

By 1972, Ceauşescu had instituted a process called "systematisation". Promoted as a way to build an ideal socialist society, the program consisted of demolition, resettlement, and the re-construction of Bucharest and much of the countryside. In the capitol, over one fifth of central Bucharest, including dozens of churches and historic buildings were demolished in the 1980s to rebuild the city. The People's House (presently the Romanian parliament, but then know as the House of the People or "Casa Poporului") became the world's second largest administrative building after the Pentagon. Ceauşescu also destroyed hundreds of villages in order to move the peasants into blocks of flats in the cities, as part of his urbanisation and industrialisation programs. Today Bucharest is a bizarre mix of old style Parisian buildings, socialist megoliths, and increasingly American style suburban sprawl spawned by the increasing economic growth and prosperity.

Bucharest under Ceausescu

It's hard to do megalomania justice in a blog post. Most readers have probably heard of Nicolae Ceausescu, former President and Communist Party boss of Romania. Ceausescu ruled the nation with an iron fist and a mischievous foreign policy from 1965 until his execution on December 25, 1989. "The anti-Christ is dead on Christmas," one man was quoted as saying in the New York Times from an article I remember following the Revolution. I can't begin to expound upon the impact of Ceausescu's policies and personality in such a short space. What I will cover is the impact his grand design for a Communist uber-capitol had upon the Bucharest skyline and the city's urban landscape.

"The Paris of the East"

Bucharest was never destined to be the capitol of Romania. Before Romania became a united polity in the 1860's, Romania was divided into three major regions (as noted in a previous post) - Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania. Transylvania was under constant occupation and/or administration by Hungary and the Austro-Hapsburgs. Iasi was the capitol of Moldova and shows more Russian influences than the other regions of the country. At least two other capitols existed for Wallachia, one at Curtea de Arges and the other in Targoviste. When the Ottoman empire pressed forward across the Balkans, the Danube river posed a natural obstacle to Turkish advances just as it had to the previous Roman and Byzantine empires.

The Sublime Port in Istanbul never succeeded in occupying Romania in its entirety, but instead set up a tribute system. Much of Romanian history from the 15th to the 18th centuries consists of attempts to ward off Turkish oppression, just as most of the 19th to 20th centuries consists of efforts to mitigate Russian influence. At any rate, Bucharest was a compromise capitol. For centuries Romania was culturally in a rather unique geo-political position as a Latin speaking, Christian Orthodox people wedged into a vortex between the three dominant empires of the East - the Catholic Austro-Hungarian empire, millions of Orthodox Slavs in the Russian empire, and the Islamic Ottoman empire stretching from Balkan forests to the sands of the Arabian penninsula.

Security has therefore always been a primary concern of the Romanian people, and as such, unlike those great cities clearly within the Hapsburg realm (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest) Romania's immediate proximity to the Ottoman occupied Balkans meant the nation could never afford to build a majestic capitol along the Danube. As Romania gained political independence and national unity under King Carol I after 1866, however, Bucharest began to thrive. The Balkan wars and Russo-Turkish conflicts destroyed much of the city on several occasions, yet by the 1920's growing economic prosperity, the collapse of the Central Powers following WWI, ever modernizing Western infrustructure (the Orient Express ran through Bucharest for example), and a strong French influence lent a certain charm to the city which became known as the "Paris of the East."

Wallachia and Bucharest

To Americans, Wallachia might readily conjure up images of Kansas and Nebraska. It's probably the least beautiful region of Romania in many ways, but it is home to the capitol, Bucharest. Wallachia is bordered to the north by the Carpathian mountains and to south by the Danube river. The Danube defines Romania's border with Serbia and Bulgaria with the exception of a region called Dobrogea, which extends to the Black Sea and into the vast wildreness of the Danube Delta. I'll describe the Delta region and Dobrogea in separate posts, but for now I'll talk a bit about Bucharest.

Romania's Regions

Technically, Romania breaks down into a number of micro-regions including Bucovina, Moldavia, Dobrogea, Muntenia, Oltenea, Banat, Crisina, Transylvania and Maramues. The more casual visitor would probably best be served by breaking the country up into three larger geo-politcal regions - Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania. Each is fairly distinct and I'll try and describe them in greater detail in the posts that follow.

Romania - Geography

I've lived in Bucharest since early 2006, so it seems that a general discussion on Romania affords an ideal way of opening this blog. I first visited the country as a graduate student in the summer of 2001, when I took a course on Romanian language, culture and civilization at Ovidius University in Constanta. I fell in love with the Romania almost immediately, and have laid down deep roots here since that time. I'll briefly try and explain a little bit about Romania in these first few posts. I'll do that by opening with the subject of geography since it's fairly determinative to the development of any civilization. Moreover, because the Romanian landscape is so stunningly beautiful and diverse, it's worth a few posts.