Meet the Locals

I hope all is well with you as life in Bucharest has grinded on. Its been a pretty quiet week and thus not much to write. Enjoyed one of those Egyptian Hookha pipes, which was eye opening and a night out. Otherwise its just been teaching and planning interspersed with getting excited about Sophie and Kelvins upcoming visit. So I thought I would take this chance to introduce you to some colourful Romanian characters. Starting with some fantastic facial hair.

This rather swarthy looking gentleman is Vlad Tepes, or to you and me, Vlad the Impaler. Cuddly. He was the King of Wallachia, which is a part of Romania, and is renowned for his guerrilla wars against the Ottomans. As you may have guessed he liked to impale people. Apparently the method is to insert a blunt stake into the arse very slowly until it came out of the mouth, it took hours if not days to die. The Turks once turned up on the battlefield to see 20,000 Turks impaled on ready made stakes. He is quoted as saying "I have killed men and women, old and young, 23,844 (very precise) Turks and Bulgarians without counting those whom we burned alive in their homes". Despite all this, in rural areas he is still seen as a hero defender of the realm. Bram Stoker used Vlad and his castle at Brasov as the inspiration for Dracula. I think the problem stems from his brother, Radu the Handsome, his brothers title was always going to give him an inferiority complex.

In modern times they have settled for this man, Traian Basescu. A former sea captain who has, as far anyone knows, never impaled anyone. He ran on a platform of being anti-Communist despite being a former member of the party himself. He is the only President to have been suspended and has a history of making less than diplomatic remarks. After snatching a recorder from a reporter he forgot to turn it off and was recorded in his car calling the reporter a "stinking gypsy". He also called a doctor who operated on him "the only competent Armenian I have ever met". He has also been caught drink driving. Despite all this and maybe even because of it, he remains a popular figure.


Believe it or not Marius Lacatus used to be a bit of a rogue with the ladies. He was also dubbed "the Beast", I wonder what happened between then and now? He is a former footballer and is worshiped by Steaua fans. He is currently their coach. In his playing days, he was a part of the 1986 European Cup winning Steaua side, he used to enjoy flouting how much bigger he was than the Communist regime. Most famously by growing his hair shortly after a ban on long hair, knowing the regime could do nothing to stop him, such was his popularity. Steaua has a strange political role. Their chairman is Gigi Becali, the Romanian Richard Branson, just imagine Richard Branson was the head of a neo-fascist political party listed as extremist in the EU and in America. He once also commissioned a portrait of himself as Jesus.

Nicolae Ceausescu was the former Communist ruler of Romania. Originally liked in the West as he was prepared to confront the USSR, it all went down hill when he turned out to be a murdering tyrant. Destroying Romania through huge international debt which saw mass food and energy shortages. His demise came when he went out to make a speech, when it became clear the crowd was going to lynch him he jumped into a helicopter and to safety. Or so he thought, the helicopter landed in a small village, they held a trial on TV and executed him. He is a hated figure and barely ever mentioned, but he is the elephant in the corner, his influence still lurks. For example, Bucharest is his project, his destruction of huge parts of Bucharest to try and force them into the Communist flat blocks, is responsible for the strange appearance of the city with all its different architecture on the same street.

There are many famous Romanians who deserve a lot more writing than I can do at this time of night. Try this on for size. Theres Mihai Eminescu, the great Romantic poet, a fine list of composers and inventors. Inventions we can thank Romania for include the fountain pen, the ejector seat, and all sorts of planes. A Romanian brothel owner named "the lady in red" put John Dillinger in jail and how much safer do you feel knowing you can walk the streets knowing John Dillinger isn't going to come around the corner? The Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci was the first women to score all perfect 10s. There is Tennis legend Ilie Nastase (who claims to have slept with over 2,500 women, but hey whose counting?), and of course how much worse would football have been without Hagi, Petrescu, Mutu, Popescu and Dumiterscu? Thats a pretty impressive haul by anyones standards. How do you like them apples Moldova?

Noapte Buna x

Late Addition: Humble apologies, how could I possibly forget the Cheeky Girls? Lembit Opik might try and beat me up.