Trip report: Summer school in Romanian language, culture and
civilisation, Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara, Romania
(23 August - 10 September 1999)
This report has been based largely around the questions which
people have been asking me since my return.
Travel to and from Timisoara
I flew out with Austrian Airlines via Vienna to Timisoara International
Airport (an extremely small building with only 2 departure and arrival
gates and the bumpiest runway I have ever landed on), and returned with
TAROM (Romanian national airline) to Düsseldorf, then KLM UK to
Stansted. TAROM surprised me by being punctual and providing reasonable
food, but this is not an airline for tall people - the rows of seats
were so tightly packed that when the person in front reclined their
chair they were virtually lying in my lap!
Accommodation
We were accommodated in twin bedrooms in the Hotel Central, the name
being extremely appropriate. My room-mate turned out to be Spanish,
which was great as I could also practise my Spanish, but it did lead to
a bit of a language confusion in my brain at times! The hotel was quite
old but there was no cause for complaint: the bed was comfortable, we
had an en-suite bathroom with hot water all day, and a TV in the room
with Cartoon Network - who could ask for more? All meals were included -
and lunch and dinner were always monstrous three-course affairs. The
food was generally pretty good (except for vegetarians who got cheese or
boiled vegetables most of the time). The staff in the hotel were also
extremely friendly and always encouraged us to practise our Romanian
with them.
Romanian people
We all formed an extremely favourable impression of the Romanian people,
both those involved in running the course and those we met elsewhere.
Everybody involved with the course showed constant concern for us in all
respects, and the English language students from the faculty, who joined
us on our cultural activities as unofficial guides and translators,
could not have been friendlier. The same was true of their friends from
outside the faculty and even people who came to talk to us just because
we were foreign and who were in no way threatening or tiresome as people
like that are in so many other countries. Full marks to the nation as a
whole for being friendly and welcoming!
How many people were on the summer school and what was their profile?
There were between 30 and 40 people participating in the summer school,
the majority of whom were students, mostly studying Romanian or Romance
languages at their home institutes, although some were preparing for an
academic year in Bucharest and one was about to embark on a degree in
veterinary medecine in Bucharest. There were however a few of us who
were a bit older than the average student, and then a handful of people
who were in their late forties or older. Their motives for doing the
course ranged from wanting to be able to speak with Romanian friends to
looking for somewhere pleasant to live well on a British pension. There
were around 8 Germans, 5 British people and 4 Japanese, then one or two
people from most other countries in Europe: Spain, Italy, Austria, The
Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Poland, the Czech Republic,
Bulgaria, Moldova, Turkey and Israel. By and large everyone was friendly
and we all got along well.
Timisoara
Timisoara is the fourth biggest city in Romania, variously known as "the
city of parks", "little Vienna" and the "window on the West". This gives
an impression of how green the town is, with its sequence of parks
adjacent to the river, and also hints at the grand Baroque architecture
which is a legacy of the Austro-Hungarian empire which finally turned
this area over to Romania in 1918. It also tells you something about the
mentality of the people, whom are not just extremely friendly and
welcoming but also open-minded and knowledgeable of the world beyond
their country's borders.
Timisoara was the starting place of the 1989 Revolution, which lead to
the end of communism in Romania with the execution of Nicolae and Elena
Ceausescu. That it began here is perhaps not surprising given its
relative isolation from other large Romanian cities and its proximity to
the Yugoslavian and Hungarian borders. Timisoara is a town of great
ethnic diversity and tolerance, where Romanians constitute the majority
of the population, but ethnic Hungarians also make up a sizeable
proportion, as do German and Serbian people. There are Hungarian and
German schools, and mass is said in Romanian, Hungarian and German in
many churches. There is also a Serbian cathedral where mass is said in
Serbian.
The course - language
The language aspect of the course consisted of classes from 9am until
1pm every day including Saturdays! There were 3 levels of course:
beginner, intermediate and advanced, the latter being for native
speakers (the Moldovan girls) and those who are virtually fluent. The
beginners level was divided into 2 classes: those who knew a little
Romanian (my class) and the absolute beginners. There were only 7 people
in our class, which was a good size and meant that we all had to
particpate fully in the class.
Our teacher was excellent - extremely friendly and expressive. She
conducted the classes entirely in Romanian, and we ploughed through
grammar at a seriously alarming rate, as well as covering a different
area of vocabulary in every class. There was a strong emphasis on
getting us to speak, with classes beginning with oral questions about
what we had done the previous day.
I spent the first two or three days being completely confused by the
orthographical change brought in in 1994 (my Romanian dates from 1992)
whereby the Latin â has been reinstated to replace the more Slavic
î which was introduced under Communism. Hence words such as
pâine (bread) and câine (dog) have reverted to this more
"correct" spelling from the spellings which I had learned previously
(cîine and pîine).
One day in the second week we were whisked out of our class and marched
off to the local radio station, where we were interviewed in a live
broadcast on local radio. It turned out that the radio station thought
that they were getting the intermediate class, but went ahead with
interviewing us anyway. The whole experience was quite excruciating, as
we stumbled along in extremely faltering Romanian!
After three weeks I was pleased to discover that I really had learned a
lot both in terms of understanding what was said to me and in being able
to hold basic conversations. The proof of this? Being able to negotiate
a good price for the (non-metered) taxi journey back to Timisoara
airport the day I left.
The course - culture and civilisation
After lunch, we had a cultural activity every day. These were generally
conducted in Romanian, but faculty staff and students were generally
available to give a summary in English where necessary. In this aspect
of the summer school as well as in the language courses, the faculty
showed a remarkably thorough level of organisation which impressed us
all. The highlights of the cultural programme follow:
A walking tour of Timisoara (introduction to the town)
This took in the historic centre of the town, with explanations of the
historical context of some monuments, but inevitably with particular
emphasis on the 1989 revolution. The tour took us to Piata Sf. Maria,
the site of a 19th century monument beside the Reformed Church where the
Revolution is considered to have begun. When the Hungarian Father
Lászlo Tökés spoke out publicly against Ceausescu's
regime from this church where mass was said in Hungarian, the Reformed
Church of Romania decided to remove him from his post. A crowd of people
assembled to protest against his arrest, and as this was a main tram
stop the crowd continued to grow and then moved on to demonstrate in the
central Piata Victoriei. Two days later, on the 17th of December, tanks
were brought out in response and began firing on the crowd. By the 19th,
the army in Timisoara had gone over to the side of the demonstrators and
the uprising had spread to the rest of the country, culminating in the
execution of the Ceausescus on the 24th of December. Throughout
Timisoara there are many monuments and plaques remembering those who
died in the revolution, and those who are classified as "disparut",
whose bodies were never found.
Video session: introduction to Romania and Timisoara
The maker of these documentary videos, Victor Popa, has been nominated
for an Oscar for best documentary among other international awards. He
was supposed to come in person to present the videos, but was unable to
attend.
Trip to the artist Constantin Catargiu's workshop
Here we saw some young artists at work, using traditional methods first
to make engravings and then to make prints using the engravings.
Visit to the Timisoreana beer factory
Well, in fact we did this one twice! I thought we were going to get a
tour of the factory, the first time we went. It turned out that we were
only going to their beer garden with draught beer made on-site, at a
cost of 4500 lei (18p) a half litre! Perhaps there was a cultural
aspect, as they played Romanian folk music and in the middle of the
garden there were some people dancing...
Iconography museum of the (Orthodox) Metropolitan Cathedral of
Timisoara
After having had classes until 9am all week including Saturday we felt
that this tour at 9.30am on the Sunday could have been organised a
little later on. However, the museum turned out to be very interesting,
with an excellent tour guide who explained the importance of many of the
paintings and books on display, as well as explaining the significance
of what was depicted.
Timiseni monastery and Timis river bank
A pleasant Sunday afternoon excursion to this tranquil monastery and
then on to the river bank to sample some Romanian tuica and some
Romanian wines, recommended by staff from the faculty. We got eaten
alive by mosquitoes at the river bank, and my room-mate got bitten by a
spider.
"Visit to the house of a great bibliophile"
This was an afternoon spent in the house of the retired Professor Dr
Vasile Târa, who had not only an incredible collection of rare
books, but also many other collections of things. Entering his house,
you find yourself in a long corridor with display cabinets on either
side, exhibiting different things (postcards, books, maps, costume
dolls, etc) from all over the world. He assured us that there was
something from everyone's country on display, and asked us to find the
place where our country was represented - and once we had done that we
had to tell him (in Romanian) which article we liked best from our
country. My memory is that the UK was represented by a 1950s postcard of
Parliament Square in London with a red bus and little other traffic.
Also in this corridor was an article from around 1935 by a Romanian,
proposing a joint European state. Obviously a premonition of the
opportunities that TRACS would offer at the turn of the century!
Prof Dr Vasile Târa had rare books from all over the world -
everything from enormous ornate old bibles to microscopic books with
poetry in them, in such small type that you could hardly read them - but
he also had portraits of Romanian writers, collections of caricatures -
and some national Romanian dress which he persuaded one of my fellow
students to put on, before getting his photo taken with her wearing it.
She was more than a little shocked to discover that this photo was
printed in the local press the next day!
Visit to the Petre Stoica Romano-German Cultural Foundation,
Jimbolia
This visit to Jimbolia on the Yugoslavian border was a bit lost on those
of us that neither spoke fluent Romanian nor knew anything much about
Goethe (I did recall something about a spate of suicides among young
German men wearing yellow waistcoats, though why I knew about this I
couldn't remember).
Petre Stoica is a well-known Romanian poet ("the voice of a generation",
we were told), who has within his house an exhibition of Goethe's life,
with letters, postcards, photos of his family, etc. There were a number
of other collections (not related to Goethe) on display, such as old
satin pictures from different countries around Europe, the Scottish one
inevitably featuring someone wearing a kilt. He also has a personal
library bursting with poetry from all over the world and many books with
dedications to him from various dignitaries from around the world. There
is also a room with displays of old currency and war medals - amazing to
find another private museum in someone's house! Finally we saw his own
personal room with all his literary awards on display, and the Romanian
people among us were extremely emotional about the thrill and honour of
being in this nationally revered poet's house. Unfortunately, for us the
great significance of is visit was largely lost.
After this visit, we were taken to the Jimbolia museum, full of
artefacts of traditional rural life, and paintings by a local artist,
Stefan Jaeger. After quite a heavy day we lightened up with an excellent
meal laid on for us at a restaurant there in Jimbolia.
Evening of typical folk dance from the Banat region
Unfortunately I missed this event, as I was ill.
Romanian musical instruments
A member of the Faculty of Music came to teach us all a Romanian
folksong (recorded on video by the omnipresent video operator, and
painful viewing afterwards!) and then showed us 2 suitcases full of
typical Romanian wind instruments, from the most basic (single hollow
tube) to the Romanian bagpipes! Demonstrations were given and the
instruments handed round for anyone who wanted to try them out.
Ethnography museum of Timisoara
Another folk museum similar in content to the Jimbolia museum but more
extensive. This museum includes typical costume and mock-ups of
(old-style) bedrooms and kitchens for Romanian, Hungarian, German and
Serbian inhabitants of the Banat region. It also had some death masks on
display - from what I understood, when people die there is a sort of
wake for them which includes some dancing wearing these masks to ward
off the evil spirits.
The grand excursion to Transylvania
This was a three-day trip, nearing the end of the course and so all
commentary on the places we visited was given in Romanian. Accommodation
was provided in the student residences in Brasov, which was fine apart
from the cockroaches in the room and the absence of hot water the first
morning that we were there.
On the way to Brasov, we stopped off at Ulpia Triana Sarmizegetusa, the
Roman capital of the province of Dacia (now Romania). The Roman remains
are extensive and include the forum and the amphitheatre. We then
stopped off at a 11th or 12th century church at Densus, our enduring
memory being of the pair of skeletons lying side by side in graves
uncovered by recent excavation work. Our main visit of the day was
Sighisoara, a beautifully preserved medieval town which is the
birthplace of Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), on whom Dracula is
(loosely) based.
On the second day we visited the medieval centre of Brasov and the
famous "black church" (Biserica Neagra), which has been reconstructed to
replace the original church which was destroyed by fire, hence the name.
This is the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul. We also
visited the ethnography museum, where we saw a loom in action. We then
visited Bran Castle, otherwise known as "Dracula's castle", although
Vlad Tepes never in fact lived there. Very impressive but not at all
spooky! Finally, we visited Romania's top ski resort, Poiana Brasov (but
didn't go skiing).
On the final day of the excursion we visited a beautiful monastery at
Sâmbata in the shadow of Mount Moldoveanu, Romania's highest
mountain, in the spectacular Fagaras mountains. We then headed to
another medieval town, Sibiu, which most of us thought was not as nice
as either Sighisoara or Brasov (maybe Medieval Town Fatigue had set in
by then) and where we got the worst meal of the whole three weeks.
Translation workshop
On the penultimate day of the course, our afternoon task was to
translate proverbs and quotations from Romanian into our own native
languages. Although these were graded according to the level of our
class, I found myself translating quotations by writers such as
Shakespeare, Goethe and Cervantes from Romanian into English. Much to my
surprise, once we found out the vocabulary which we didn't know, the
text did not present as much of a problem as we had expected. Again, a
sense of some kind of achievement!
End of course feast
The course had opened with a large buffet lunch and sparkling wine laid
on for us on the first day, and on the last day we were treated to an
even greater extravaganza - a five course meal with wine and vodka, that
lasted a good three hours!
Final comments
I was very impressed by everything, particularly with the way that every
last detail had been organised - especially given my expectations based
on my experience of university organisation around Europe!
From the language perspective, I was really pleased with the progress I
made, with a good foundation in grammar and workbooks which we could
take home to continue working on them. While you wouldn't expect to
become fluent in just 3 weeks, I was satisfied with the progress that I
did make.
From the culture/civilisation perspective, things also could not have
been better organised and I saw many more aspects of the country than I
thought I would.
All in all, a very successful and interesting trip.