A Traveler In The Foreign Service: A Guys Road Trip To Transylvania

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-03-2013 @ 10:54AM

Vlady said...

A failed attempt with epic proportions!

I accidentally stumbled on this article, well, I had to read it…I finished it confused and dazed.
First of all, why post an out of date story about a 7 years ago travel, in a changing country? I mean, 7 years…
I was born and living in Romania (Oradea), and if you can believe it, I am not a gipsy. So, I was wondering.., where did you saw the “gipsy ramshackle settlements” between Budapest and Oradea?;
You drive on a road “with homes built seemingly right on the road with no setback”. Now this is typical for you American folks, you simply cannot understand or ignore that in this part of Europe villages stood on these places and roads for hundreds or thousands of years. I am a huge admirer of the American nation and spirit, thus I don’t want to be misunderstood, but many of houses that you have passed by in that villages, overcomes at age your entire history…can this be an explanation for the “setback” missing from the villages?
“The roadside villages en route to Oradea defined unremitting rural poverty” were you in Romania or still in Hungary?…pretty unclear (there is just 1 village between Romanian border and Oradea);
“recently as the 1960's, there were more ethnic Hungarians than Romanians in Oradea”.
From where did you get your data? Oradea and outskirts had always romanian speakers majority. “But on this day, I didn't hear any Hungarian speakers.”…let me speechless…can it be that, Hungarian is forbidden?…just joking…
“a gypsy gave me the finger after I took a photo of him hollering at his recalcitrant son.”…again, with the gypsies
Useless to argue further with your story lines, Cluj-Napoca with the American cheeks kissing girls, or Sibiu the city without a night life (??). Is it the girl in the night kiosk which is working to buy a computer the image of the average romanian, or the villagers in the horse dawn carts, or maybe the gypsies that accompanied you throughout your journey?
My answer is: none of that…but, if you want to know the real Romania, you have to do it for your self, I will guarantee you only one thing, after a few days here, article like this will seem superficial and ridiculous…

2-03-2013 @ 12:07PM

Dave Seminara said...

Ok, Vlady, I'll bite. Let's start with the claim that I made a factual error in writing that Oradea was majority Hungarian speakers up into the 1960's .Here is the census data for you from Wikipedia:

1912 census 64,169 36.4% 5.6% 91%
1930 census 82,687 28.8% 27.1% 51.5%
1948 census 82,282 −0.4% 32.8% 63.8%
1956 census 98,950 20.2% 35.9% 59%
1966 census 122,534 23.8% 46% 51.3%
1977 census 170,531 39.1% 53.9% 44%
1992 census 222,741 30.6% 64.7% 33.3%
2002 census 206,614 −7.2% 70.3% 27.5%
2011 census 183,123 −11.3% 72.6% 24.5%

So as you can see, as of the 1966 census, Oradea was 51.3% Hungarian.

Regarding your other complaints. This is a snapshot-in-time story about two guys taking a long weekend road trip. These are observations of what I saw and my friend Ian can vouch for all of it. Poverty, gypsy settlements, prostitutes, homes with no setbacks- we saw all of it on both sides of the border.

2-03-2013 @ 12:08PM

David Seminara said...

Sorry, the census table didn't paste properly but the last column above shows the % of ethnic Hungarians in Oradea in each year.

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