27 Luni

Shortly after completing our weeklong GLOW and TOBE youth development summer camps, it occurred to me that I had never actually taken a vacation in Romania.  Not a proper one anyway.  Sure, I’ve toured around the country plenty, but usually acting as camp counselor or American tour guide.  With over ten camps completed and eight American visitors (love you guys), I’ve seen thirty-four different cities and villages in Romania.  Although I have seen a lot of the country, at the very least from a train window, there are still a few places that I have yet to go, namely, the Danube Delta, the Danube River, and to the Black Sea coast of Romania.  Unfortunately, with time running out, I won’t be able to cover them all, but I did manage to make a last minute trip to the historic beach village of Vama Veche.

Nestled alongside the border between Romania and Bulgaria, Vama Veche (rough translation, “Old Customs Point”) serves as the last village before you arrive at the checkpoint and enter into Bulgaria.  The village is known for a couple things in addition to its natural beauty.  First, it was a lone bastion of liberal thinking in the times of communist Romania.  No one really seems to know exactly why Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romanian’s once communist dictator, left the village unrepressed but it lives on to this day through the reputation it built during the 70s and 80s as a place for intellectuals to get away.  Second, Vama Veche is known for some of the rather large concerts that take place there twice a year during the summers, attracting upwards of 40,000 people (population 200); don’t ask me where they all go to the bathroom.  Now, as it was then, modern visitors can pitch a tent directly on the beach, rent space to camp in a villager’s yard, stay in a hostel or book a room in one of only a few hotels.  For one reason or another, Vama Veche never saw the commercialization of other Black Sea coastal towns, save a few restaurants, bars and gift shops, and today the residents have ordinances in place to prevent new construction.  As a result, the village is largely unchanged and quite small; you can see from one end to the other and quickly cover it on foot.

As fate would have it, we picked the perfect week to visit.  The weather was excellent with mostly sunny days, comfortable beach temperatures and a great breeze that kept us cool in the hot sun all week.  Students, the mainstay of Vama Veche goers, due to the low cost of accommodation (free), were still taking exams and the hordes of other tourists had yet to descend for the summer.  Still the area designated for the least of illegal tent camping options on the beach was rather packed Friday night through Sunday afternoon.  Although people camp, including us, it’s technically against city ordinances. Having said that, there is a lot that happens in Vama Veche of which I question the legality.  Not to mention that the local police seemed unconcerned as they regularly strolled by the large makeshift beach encampment.

Like other places in Romania, even though it’s off the beaten path, you can still get to and from Vama Veche rather easily.  Having a car would certainly make the trip more convenient, but try getting from one remote part of the U.S. to another without a car or taking a taxi.  It’d be impossible.  We left the bus terminal in Ploiești at 5:30 am and after some minor bus trouble (the driver kept turning the bus on and off while moving at full speed) we arrived two blocks from the beach around noon.  Since I drooled on an unwitting bystander most of the way, the trip for me was over in the blink of an eye.  Anecdotally, something I found interesting during our final approach, even before we crested the hillside and the sea came into view, my Romanian travelling companions became really excited.  Like little school children trapped in the bodies of adults, they giddily peered out the bus window, craning their necks and pointing as the black expanse of water became visible.  This exuberance seemed really strange at first.  Then it occurred to me that they simply hadn’t been to the seaside that often, even in their childhood.  Where as, my mother and I went regularly when I was a kid and as an adult, I lived just off the beaches in San Diego for years.  It was fun to see something that really is amazing, though now commonplace from my perspective, through fresh eyes.

Our days largely consisted of sunning on the beach, walking up and down the beach, talking on the beach, drinking on the beach and sleeping on the beach; dotted by meals of fresh caught and cooked seafood from the water in which we’d just cooled off.  This is as any good vacation should be.  However, we did break up all the relaxing with a couple fun “field trips.”  The first, during one of the later afternoons, following our arrival we thought we’d stroll down the beach to the border just to see what it looks like.  From my experience living on the border of California and Mexico there is a giant fence.  No such thing exists here.  Instead, just before what once was Bulgarian territory but is now Romanian, there are ominous cement bunkers or pillboxes remaining, I imagine from World War II.  Upon closer investigation we discovered what seemed to be a network of underground passages interconnecting them all.  It was a really interesting view into history with no posted explanation (or warning signs) as to their purpose.  So we conjectured that they were built to keep the Allied Forces (or German forces later in the war as Bulgaria switched sides in WWII) from making a beach landing.

For our second field trip, later in the week, the one and only ATM in Vama Veche reportedly ran out of money.  So we decided to walk along the beach to the next village north called Doi Mai (May 2) in an effort to replenish our beer money.  The walk is about five kilometers with the Black Sea on the East and tall, bright orange cliffs on the West defining the thin strand of rocky, isolated and desolate beach.  The hike was a quiet one with the melodic soundtrack of the shallow waves reverberating off the cliff’s face.  The only other humans we saw were nudists going about their business, a not uncommon site here.  As we entered the beachside of Doi Mai our trip was rewarded with more interesting military artifacts; this time an old military base that was slowly being undermined by the erosion of the rock face and collapsing into the sea.  One can easily imagine a time when the land had been 40 meters closer to the water, but after decades of wind and rain all that remains are rusted water pipes jutting straight out which now serve as bird perches.  After finding the ATM we took a quick dip in the serene water of a south-facing cove, where I learned that the Romanian word for jellyfish is meduză.

The trip as a whole was a great closing bookend for my service in Romania.  Coincidentally, the first and last cross country trips I made here were with the same Peace Corps Volunteer and this time we had four host country nationals join us.  The last six months had been quite stressful with studies for the Romanian Language Proficiency Interview, Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) and Graduate Record Examination (GRE), our final Peace Corps conference, Graduate school applications, employment applications and interviews and numerous successful secondary projects on top of day-to-day responsibilities and final government paperwork.  Usually I feel guilty when I kick back to relax, because it seems like there is always something to do (i.e., blogging), but not this time.  I deserved and savored every last sip of Romanian Bergenbier.  Plus, I brought my final count of Romanian villages visited to 36!