{"id":5159,"date":"2008-08-10T12:52:26","date_gmt":"2008-08-10T17:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=5159"},"modified":"2025-02-27T15:28:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T21:28:02","slug":"romania-without-the-danube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2008\/08\/10\/romania-without-the-danube\/","title":{"rendered":"Romania without the Danube"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reminiscences 2024<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ovid statue<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/a>At some point short of the Black Sea, we transferred to a bus to get to Constanta, the oldest city in Romania, a port on the Black Sea.\u00a0 The city has paid homage to Ovid, who apparently was exiled here; to Trajan, who conquered the area; to Neptune (beaches); and to Mammon, \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>with gambling casinos.\u00a0 God gets his\/her due with Orthodox Cathedrals (Romanian speaking), a great Synagogue from the early 20th century, and a mosque from the same period.\u00a0 While there seems to be a channel from the Danube to the Black Sea, most cruises, including Tauck’s, do not use it.\u00a0 Even so, the city \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>boasts a lighthouse that dates from 1300, built by Genoese sailors. A town hall turned Museum of Archeology houses many other Roman ruins.<\/p>\n

It was about 150 miles from Constanta to Bucharest, where we would spend the rest of our tour.\u00a0 Before being conquered by Trajan, the Dacians had hegemony for several hundred years.\u00a0 While \"\"<\/a>keeping the ties with Rome (Romania and a romance language), Romania was part of the pinball politics of the Balkans, emerging as a country in 1878 at the Treaty of Berlin, where it was midwifed from the Ottoman Empire.\u00a0 Choosing (naturally) a German prince as king, it was a kingdom until after World War II, when it joined the Nazis and was overrun by the Soviet Union.\u00a0 It’s not anomalous that one of the top places recommended in Trip Advisor \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>is the parliament building, a product of the Ceausescu regime; known as the Palace of the Parliament, it is touted as the 3rd biggest administrative building and the heaviest building in the world.\u00a0 I have no idea who weighed it.\u00a0 Ceausescu peaked in 1968 when he spoke up in favor of the Czechs who sought out of the Soviet bloc, and hit bottom in 1989 when he was overthrown \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>and executed as Romania threw off the Communist yoke.\u00a0 The city itself has some charming areas, including a museum with 250 “typical Romanian” buildings, including wooden churches typical of Timisoara and Baia Mare that made me consider strongly visiting northern Romania \"\"<\/a> sometime.<\/p>\n

The castles in Sinaia and Brasov\u00a0 \u00a0merited a visit as\"\"<\/a> well. Sinaia, centered around a 17th century monastery named for Mount Sinai, became the site of the Castle built for King Carol I, a German prince named king of Romania.\u00a0 Of course, the wealthy followed suit, joining him in the less \"\"<\/a>steamy uplands. Vlad the impaler (better known as Dracula) also built a castle in Bucharest in 1459 that is being excavated.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One nice feature of these “ex post facto” blogs is that I know that I did take advantage of a trip to northern Romania, where I not only saw the original wooden churches in situ, but also got to Lvov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reminiscences 2024 At some point short of the Black Sea, we transferred to a bus to get to Constanta, the oldest city in Romania, a port on the Black Sea.\u00a0 The city has paid homage to Ovid, who apparently was exiled here; to Trajan, who conquered the area; to Neptune (beaches); and to Mammon, with … Continue reading “Romania without the Danube”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budapest-to-the-black-sea-2008"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5159"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8397,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5159\/revisions\/8397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}