Not to the manor born

It’s an unassuming approach to the border crossing between Hungry and Romania. This is our first hard border since Calais, even though on paper both countries are Schengen and as such this ought to be a soft border. It’s easy peasy if you enter via air or sea, but on land they still have this foreboding inspection facility, so what the hell, it’s business as usual.

You just know you’re going to get the full Monty inspection of all the official forms and papers you have and especially close scrutiny of your face against the picture in your passport. No smile, no welcome into their country like we’ve become accustomed to. They weren’t happy with our proof of insurance, but they didn’t stop us either. I guess old Soviet-satellite habits die hard. I took a beat before I dropped Escape Velocity into gear just to quiet the heart down. [As of January 2025 this is now a soft border.]

We noticed immediately that these were not going to be the Hungarian roads we were used to, but poorly maintained in comparison.

By afternoon we rolled into Bulgarus, which for 150 years was my paternal ancestors’ home town.

I think It’s safe to say I am not to the manor born.

Just finding Bulgarus was a major goal. Generation after generation of my ancestors were recorded in the parish records, and finally we’re here.

A lot of the German families began leaving the area in the early 1900s, both for economic reasons, and because Hungary threatened to force cultural assimilation and military service. Recruiters from the United States enlisted workers for the steel mills in the Midwest. That’s how my grandfather and most of his family ended up in and around Pittsburgh.

Many of the Donauschwaben families remained but World War I and World War II took a toll on any goodwill Romania may have felt toward Germans.

By the 1970’s Nickolas Ceausescu’s nationalist threat of “Romania for Romanians” put paid to what was left of any ethnic Germans. The German government paid Ceausescu 60,000 marks per person to buy their freedom from this communist nation. Ceausescu’s cult of personality soon lost its charm and in a popular uprising he and his wife were arrested by the military while trying to escape in a helicopter. Their personality ended with a firing squad.

I haven’t unpacked what it all means but it’s evident squatters have taken over and stripped many of the abandoned buildings. We watched a Roma woman fetch water from the graveyard tap and carry it back to the derelict house she was apparently living in. On her way past the van she stuck out her hand for money.

Like their roads Romanian graveyards have been left to their own devices.

The overgrowth made hunting for specific names on old worn tombstones exhausting in the oven of Romanian summer heat.

Marce in her happy place
The church was locked up but we are reasonably sure my grand father was baptized in this church

I’m sure Bulgarus was a much more pleasant town in the early 1900’s but poor ground is poor ground and ethnic tension is ethnic tension.

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One Response to Not to the manor born

  1. Pim T.

    Life under Ceaucescu wasn’t great for Rumanians either. We just saw a movie The New Year That Never Came by director Bogdan Mureșanu about the final days of the Ceaucescu rule. It is filmed in a way that makes it a good movie to watch whilst not mincing the problems. Recommended! Cheers, Pim

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