Graham Reid | | 3 min read
Over the Christmas-New Year period 2024-2025 we travelled to Scotland for a family reunion then went to London and finally Bristol where my wife Megan has a niece and her family. As I did when we travelled in the time of Covid for three months (see here), I filed a series of weekly columns for the Listener.
They don't appear to be online at the Listener so I reproduce them here as Postcards From Europe, with some additional travel stories from the trip between them.
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At certain times of the day, the road outside our walled-in ground-floor apartment in Bucharest is like a racetrack: three lanes of position-jostling cars and a bus lane going in the opposite direction which some drivers use also.
You need your wits about you in a city which challenges Auckland for roadworks and people drive like meth-fuelled Parisians, notably in the whirlpool of lanes at the Triumphal Arch.
Many old buildings near here are abandoned or have taken it upon themselves to fall apart, but peppered at intervals are little shops and amenities. Across from us is a strip club and a few doors down the ill-lit Two Bastards Pub.
We’re a short walk from the Belle Epoque and Art Nouveau glamour of the shabby Old Town buildings, many converted into cafes and up-market dining options.
We’re also 10 minutes from the Palace of Parliament edifice, the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon, twice as long as Buckingham Palace and apparently the world’s heaviest building. If the analogies impress, the building – the vision of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu – is an imposing if clumsy mish-mash of architectural styles.
We arrived in Bucharest after 40 hours in airports and planes. Our luggage didn’t. One bag went to Luxembourg, the other somewhere else. It was Friday the 13th.
So the first night in the chilly capital of Romania (three degrees, -2 the following morning) was spent inside the warm, highly illuminated and impressively-stocked Carrefour hypermarket which could comfortably accommodate Auckland’s Lynmall shopping centre in one corner.
We bought socks, underwear, shampoo and such, as well as pickled herring, cheeses and salami for breakfast.
We’ve arrived in Romania at an interesting time: there is the bustling colourful Christmas market in the shadow of Ceausescu’s financially crippling monument and it’s the 35th anniversary of his overthrow.
But also the sudden appearance on the political landscape of the far-right Calin Georgescue who emerged as the leading candidate in the recent run-off for the presidency.
The emotionally cool, dapper and somewhat characterless Georgescue was polling in single digits just weeks ago but on the count pulled 22.9% of the vote.
He doesn’t have a party, called climate change a hoax, denies Covid and doubts anyone walked on the moon. But he advances a Romania for Romanians agenda, wants to withdraw support for Ukraine (with which Romania shares a lengthy border) and is pro-Russia in a country long aligned with the West through NATO and EU membership.
Georgescue is untried as a serious politician but, Trumplike, that may be his appeal. He’s not seen as a politician and may even benefit from a sympathy vote at the next election.
His campaign was largely on Tik-Tok – clips of overly made-up influencers putting on eyeliner while championing Georgescue are bizarre beyond belief – and his success has been attributed to Russian cyber interference on a massive scale.
The Constitutional Court annulled the result but that has created the biggest political crisis since Ceausescu was shot.
Some note the Tik-Tok campaign went to a generation which never knew the dictatorial Communist era (so clearly needs to visit the small but informative Museum of Communism in the Old Town).
Perhaps they only heard the nationalistic sentiments, misinformation about how much refugees were costing and are part of widespread disaffection with the status quo.
As The Economist recently noted, in 2024 incumbent parties didn’t fare well in elections: in the US and UK they were thrown out; in India and South Africa forced into humiliating coalitions.
The question is, can new leaders deliver the deliverables?
Fortunately a van delivered our bags and now we’re in Cluj-Napoca over the Carpathian Mountains in the north west.
Outside it is “2 degrees, feels like -1”. Soon we’ll be in northern Scotland.
Happy Christmas. Enjoy those barbecues.
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Graham Reid paid for his own travel and accommodation but received valuable assistance in Bucharest from Mr Emil Tudorache who took him shopping and managed to reunite him with his luggage.
For other Postcards from Europe go here
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