Trials and Tribulations in Suceava

While S visited her family back in the States, I went for another research trip to a county archive, this time in Suceava, located in the Bukovina region and close to the Ukrainian border. Bukovina is a beautiful land of rolling hills, and famous for its painted monasteries. While I had seen part of the Bukovinian countryside before, I had never visited Suceava or the painted monasteries, and looked forward to experiencing a new aspect of Romania's rich cultural legacy. My main purpose for the trip, however, was research. Towards the end of the second world war, as the Romanian army retreated from the Soviet front it gathered a large amount of archival material, and deposited it at Suceava, the first city the army encountered upon entering Romanian territory. Much of this material has not been investigated, and I hoped to achieve a minor coup in exploring the archive for a week.



Ah, so much for expectations.



Suceava is over eight hours from Bucharest by train, and after weighing the possibilities, it made more sense to buy a $100 round-trip plane ticket on TAROM, with a one hour flight each way, rather than a $60 for a one-way eight hour train ride. Making a decision about lodging was a bit more difficult. Suceava doesn't have many options: there are several hostels, and a couple of expensive boutique hotels, but really only one place that suited my needs; a cheap communist high-rise built in the 1970s called Hotel Bukovina. On their website, they advertised an apartment suite with fridge, double bed, sofa, arm chair, cable TV, and wireless highspeed internet, all for a ridiculously cheap price. So I booked five nights there, and departed on Sunday, May 7.



Even before leaving Bucharest, the trip started off poorly. I prefer my cabbies to be of the taciturn variety, but the one who took me to the airport (Otopeni, thank God, and not Baneasa) happened to belong to the gregarious sort. As we chatted, he asked where I was from. "Oh, the United States! A great country! It is a shame, though." A shame? This immediately triggered all sorts of alarms. At best, he would be referring to the colossal mess that was the Bush presidency, but somehow I thought not. Seeing no way out of it, I asked what he meant. "Your country, it is run by the Jews! Just like they try to run our country!" Oh dear God. My worst fears were confirmed. I hate this conversation, and yet it seems to happen at least once every time I visit Romania (which, considering how brief two of those trips were, is rather pathetic). I tried to shut this one down as quickly as possible, by flatly stating it wasn't true and he didn't know what he was talking about, and further more, that the Obama administration's stance on settlements on the West Bank does not exactly endear us to the current Israeli government. Nope. Didn't work. "But Bush is a Jew. All American presidents take their orders from Israel! They try to rule the world in secret!" Sigh. . .trying to divert the conversation, I asked what he thought of Bush. "A stupid man. Now he is a Senator, yes?" (Apparently he got this "fact" from the same tabloids where he reads about world affairs.)



I can't tell you how exhausted I am from dealing with this kind of xenophobic &*$!



I arrived in Suceava without further incident. The city's airport is a pretty small-scale affair. Only two airlines run flights there, and I think it only sees about four arrivals a day. A driver picked me up by baggage claim and took me to the hotel. I sensed something was wrong, though, when the driver asked me where the other three people were. Um, what other three people? He seemed convinced that my reservation was for four people, as did the receptionist when I checked in. When I got to the room on the third floor, I could see why. Basically, it was two bedrooms with a full bathroom and a half-bath within a suite. One of the bedrooms had a tv and fridge. Neither of the them had the afore-mentioned sofa, and the arm chair looked to have been made around the same time as the hotel--it sat very low to the ground and at an uncomfortable angle. In fact, the decor of the room had obviously not been updated to postcommunist sensibilities, as was obvious from the advertisements printed by the Ceausescu-era national tourism board.



The biggest frustrations, however, were the lack of heavy curtains on the windows and wireless internet, which I learned only worked in the lobby and on the first floor, which was booked. Which meant that when I wanted to Skype with S or my parents, I had to do so in the lobby (where, by the way, they refused to turn on the lights once it was dark). That only three of the cable channels came through was just a secondary annoyance. So much for my great deal!



As Monday was a national holiday the archives were closed, so I spent the day exploring Suceava. Once upon a time, Suceava was an important urban hub, a trading spot for Romanians, Poles, and Ukrainians, a medieval princely court, and a site of both Orthodox and Jewish learning. From 1388 to 1565, it was the capital of the principality of Moldavia (before the capital was transferred to Iasi); it lost a second chance for glory when the Duchy of Bukovina, as it was dubbed--although no-one with the equivalent title of duke had ever reigned there, and considering its past the title was something of a demotion--became part of the Austrian Empire, and the Habsburgs declared the capital of province to be Cernauti, and not Suceava. During the war, most of the city was destroyed although the churches within the city received little damage. Thus, in a relatively small space one can see medieval churches encircled by shabby communist block buildings. Still, the main square showed some signs of revitalization. An enormous wooden egg painted in the traditional folk tradition--the largest Easter Egg in the world as its sign proudly declares--dominates the northern section of the square, as does a large bronze monument dedicated to Romania's fallen aviators during World War II. A nearby sign demonstrated the distance in kilometers to various European cities (Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg) with the punchline: "European Union--0 kilometers." Another, nicer part of town is the area surrounding the 18th-century town hall, complete with a nice park, a few museums, and 19th-century Catholic church, all of which have obviously benefited from renovations.

Clearly, these small gestures are meant for tourist consumption. Suceava is the logical jumping-point for any excursions to the surrounding painted monasteries, as well as trips to Ukraine. Within Suceava itself one can find tucked within a beautiful wooded park an open-air village museum as well as the remains of the princely court, which are less well-preserved than Bran Castle but yet somehow far more impressive--perhaps because of the massive dried-out moat one crosses to get to it. All of which brings to mind two things. First, history is fickle. Had things gone another way, had Iasi not been declared the new capital of Moldavia in 1565, or if the Habsburgs had not chosen Cernatui as the regional seat of Bukovina, Suceava would be a much larger and more affluent city, rather than the sleepy industrialized backwater it is today.
Second, it reinforces the lost opportunity I see everywhere in the country, except for parts of Transylvania, to capitalize on the euros and dollars Western tourists would eagerly spend seeing the beautiful Romanian countryside and cities. A lack of capital is not, I would suggest, the issue: I could easily see partnerships forming between Western investors and local entrepreneurs. Rather, I see a lack of entrepreneurs, and the necessary acumen and wherewithal to see through such a project. I should say that this also extends to the hospitality industry in this region, as with one exception all the restaurants I visited ranged in service from mediocre to utterly infuriating; the hotel staff I dealt with were not exactly professional either.



Anyway, on Tuesday I began working in the archives. I found the staff there to be friendly and helpful, and luckily for me they keep all of their documents on-site rather than at an external depository, so I could receive my requested folders the very next day, or even the same day if the order was placed early enough. Unfortunately, however, and this was a huge disappointment, it was clear that one of the previous directors of the archive had either consciously failed to catalogue much of the material deposited by the Romanian army, or only catalogued those folders not pertaining to the Holocaust, as I found virtually nothing listed in the inventories to the collections which appeared useful. After working there for three days I did find some important material through guess-work and intuition, but not nearly as much as I had hoped.



Since I knew by the time the archives closed on Thursday that I had found pretty much everything of relevance to my topic, I decided to take Friday, my last day in Suceava, off and tour the painted monasteries. I went to a travel agency and made a reservation for an eight-hour tour, and then happily spent the rest of Thursday afternoon walking about the town, taking pictures of some churches I hadn't visited yet, and went to two museums: the history museum and the natural history museum. The history museum had more of a nationalist bent to its narrative than I care for, and its section on World War II was particularly disappointing, first concentrating on Romania's anti-Soviet campaign (when it was allied with Nazi Germany) and then awkwardly skipping to when Romania switched sides, where the museum's exhibit abruptly ended. It did have an impressive collection of prehistorical items, and a cool life-sized diorama of the crowning of Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great) as king of a (briefly) united Romania. The Natural History museum had your usual collection of stuffed animals and fossils; what sets it apart from others I have visited in Romania is the collection of live tropical birds in the basement (along with, randomly, guinea pigs, chinchillas, and a very freaked-out looking North American squirrel).

After the museums, I decided to visit one last church, this one actually a functioning monastery. As I walked down the hill towards the church, I wound up coming alongside an elderly Romanian woman, who gamely asked me if I was going to see the church. After I said yes, we exchanged a few blithe comments about the weather, and then came the question: "Are you Romanian? Your accent is funny--I don't think you're Romanian. Are you French?" When I responded that I was American, she then asked if my family came from Romania. "You're not Romanian? But you are Orthodox, yes?" No. As there is no word for Quaker in Romanian, and I didn't feel like explaining it anyways, I merely replied that I was Protestant.

You'd think I told her I was spawned by the Devil. "WHAT?! Protestant?! No, no, Protestants are bad, evil! No, it is no good to be Protestant. Only the Orthodox are good!" I was truly taken aback; all I could do was assure her that I was in fact a good person and it didn't matter what my religion was. Then she said something that truly surprised me. "We can baptize you! Yes, we can baptize you in the Orthodox manner, and then you will be okay." I gracefully--and quickly--declined her offer, and sped off down the road. Peasant suspicions die hard in this part of the world.

On Friday morning I awoke bleary-eyed but excited, anxious to finally seeing the glorious painted monasteries of the Bukovinian countryside. An hour before my tour was supposed to start, however, the sky darkened, and quickly a heavy thunderstorm flung itself against the city, drenching everything. Since I had neither an umbrella nor a jacket (or even a long-sleeved shirt), and what is interesting about the monasteries is their brightly painted exteriors, I came to the sad conclusion that going on the tour would be a waste of time. I would only spend the day cold, soaked, and miserable, and with the poor lighting conditions none of the photos I might take would turn out well.

After cancelling the tour, however, I realized that I now needed to find some way to spend the rest of my time, as check-out was at eleven am, and my flight was not set to depart until 10PM. Walking around the city wasn't an option because of the rain. I asked the front desk if there was any way for me to just stay in my room until it was time to leave. Considering they only had about 50% occupancy, and I had given them solid business for five straight nights staying in their most expensive room, I couldn't imagine that would be an issue. How silly of me. No, I was told, if I wanted to stay in a room until my flight, I would have to pay. Finally, I negotiated to stay in a cheaper room, moved my stuff, and proceeded to spend a long day reading, watching a couple of movies from the internet, and wishing I were back in Bucharest.

And then I was at the airport, checked in, and ready to fly. But wait! You didn't think it would end that easily, did you? The flight was late. By an hour and a half. Which may seem routine to someone accustomed to the American air industry, but when you think of what a small-scale operation domestic flights operated by Tarom are, well, it becomes more emblematic, or rather symptomatic, of the general infrastructural problems at the heart of this country. When I did arrive in Bucharest, it was after midnight, and thus the pick of taxis available ranged from the flagrantly illegal moonlighters to the legal but dodgy third-shift cabbies. Taking the lesser of two evils, I soon was heading down the highway in the direction of the apartment, when, just before we got to Piata Victoriei (minutes from our apartment), we came literally as close as one can possibly come to being in an accident without actually experiencing one. To be fair, it was the other driver's fault, not the cabbie's, but it is just one more reason why I hate taking taxis here. But at least after a long and somewhat frustrating week, I finally could sleep in a comfortable bed, and get ready for S to return!