A letter from Romania

Rebecca and I are in Romania for the next few months. I will write occasional letters about our experiences in this wonderful country. Rebecca will do the same on rebeccamuses.com.

In 2020, Covid took

On Friday, March 20, 2020, Rebecca and I got word from the American State Department and the Romanian Fulbright Commission that we and the 18 other Fulbright recipients in Romania needed to leave the country. Neither could guarantee getting us out if we chose to stay. We felt safe in our new home in Timișoara and worried that traveling back to America would put us at greater risk of contracting COVID. If you remember those days, no one really knew how long COVID would stick around or how widely it would spread. Stay or go, we toggled back and forth all weekend.

On Monday, March 23, I got up about 4 am thinking we needed to get out. Rebecca followed two hours later with the same thought. She called the State Department airline Hotline and an hour later our tickets home were booked, leaving Timișoara for Bucharest later that afternoon. Early Tuesday, March 24, we would begin our journey home. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Bucharest Airport, the only hotel still open in Bucharest. As we left the hotel early Tuesday morning, the manager said the hotel was closing that morning. 36 hours later, after stops in Amsterdam, an overnight in Atlanta, and Kansas City, we were back in Clarinda, Iowa, after 33 days in Romania for me and 21 for Rebecca.

In 2021, Covid gave back

There is so much beauty in Romania to see and experience. And in the spring of 2020 we had only gotten started before we had to leave. I finished up teaching my two University of West courses on American Politics online and Rebecca continued her self-study of the Romanian language. We vowed we would go back, somehow. Then we got word that the Fulbright Program was waiving for the 2019-2020 COVID-cohort the two year waiting period to apply for another grant. Did we want to give it another go? I thought I still had some teaching juice in me and Rebecca’s has a passion for the Romanian language. And we both realized we have only so many travel years left. So in the summer of 2020 I cranked out another 30 page Fulbright application and in January 2021 we found out we were going back to Romania and to Timișoara and, as it would turn out, the same apartment, where I now sit writing this blog.

Covid had taken Romania away and now it was giving Romania back to us. And not just Romania, but Mihai*.

Mihai

America’s Fulbright Program was created by the late Arkansas Senator William Fulbright**and is now 75 years old. Each year the Fulbright Scholar program places around 800 American citizens in 135 countries. And brings another 800 from other countries to the USA. Fulbright scholars teach and do research. But their major responsibility is to connect with the people of the country they reside in. Beyond the details of the individual awards, the various Fulbright programs are cultural exchanges, with the major purpose the deepening of America’s understanding of the world and the world’s understanding of America. Not just America and the world, but Paul, Rebecca and Mihai.

Last night we decided to walk down to Timișoara’s Victory Square (Piața Victoriei) to enjoy a glass of wine and beer at an outdoor cafe. In 1989 the Romanian revolution began in Timișoara and it was in Victory Square that this western Romanian city was declared the first Romanian city free of communism. There were tables outside a nice looking restaurant and so we caught the eye of a waiter and asked if we could sit down. Mihai said, “of course,” and Rebecca ordered a glass of wine and me a beer. When he brought our drinks and because Mihai seemed open and there were no other customers we began to ask questions, mostly about his life.

Mihai was born in 1988 in Timișoara. He told us his parents had been in Victory Square in December 1989. He pointed to bullet holes in the buildings across from Lloyds and said his parents could easily have been among dozens killed in the Timișoara demonstrations against the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The revolution would quickly spread across Romania and the army and police would kill 1100 across the country before Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day 1989.

“What do your parents think of Romania today,” we asked. “They are disappointed, so much corruption,” Mihai said. “They don’t want to go back to Ceaușescu but they just want a better government, a government that will give them a better life.”

And then we asked what did he think. “I’m going to Florida for seven months where I will be working at a resort outside Orlando, Florida.” Mihai started applying for this Florida job four years ago and finally got a Skype interview with the president of the resort.

“What impressed him about you,” we asked. He pointed to his formal wait-staff suit, acknowledged his excellent English, and declared “I am a hard worker.” He then said “The USA is the greatest country in the world.”

We finished our drinks and said good-bye to our new friend promising to come back before he left for America. On our walk back to our Romanian home, we talked about how sad it is for Romania to lose a young person like Mihai, even for a little while. And how excited his was to go to our country.

And how lucky we are to be back in Romania.

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*Mihai is not his real name.

**Senator Fulbright was a complicated man and leaves a complicated legacy. I will say more about this legacy in a future blog.