Features
Rejected From Romania, back to Bulgaria, Yugoslavia & Austria
CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY
By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil
President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada
Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum
chandij@sympatico.ca
My wife and I faced a few unexpected challenges during our winter adventure in 1985. However, without knowing that the worst was yet to come, we were generally
During a memorable visit to Austria in 1982, I was fascinated to listen to our good family friends from Austria, Biggi and Wolfgang Fernau, talk about their heritage and the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They told us that they were true Viennese, Biggi with an Austrian and Czechoslovakian blend and Wolf with an Austrian and Hungarian blend. They were proud of their heritage and the history of their country.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a dual monarchy and a constitutional monarchy. It was a great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War. In 1878, Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Novi Pazar. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was not as large as the Ottoman or Turkish Empire (which survived for 623 years) but expanded rapidly in five decades.
Being an imperial power doesn’t impress most people the way it used to during the colonial past. All empire building in history stemmed from human greed for power, often ending with unjustifiable death, shameful disruptions and human right violations. All empires have a life span. The length of the Austro-Hungarian Empire rule was particularly short. It existed for only 51 years when the empire was dissolved after its defeat during the First World War. Nevertheless, it was amazing that a young empire, within a short period of time, had controlled an area of 621,538 km2.
It was a multinational state and one of Europe’s major powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, and the third-most populous (after Russia and the German Empires). The Austro-Hungarian Empire built up the fourth largest machine building industry in the world, after the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Although my wife was not overly motivated about an expanded tour, I was keen to visit many parts of this past empire, before we went to Vienna to meet our Austrian friends. “We are already in the middle of that former empire, so why not explore the key cities of it?” I asked my wife with an aim of convincing her by showing the following map. “The dotted lines show the balance we need to cover by train”, I made it appear easy to achieve.
We then planned to continue our travel by train with stops in Bucharest in Romania, Budapest in Hungary, Bratislava and Prague in Czechoslovakia and then end up in Vienna in Austria for a longer visit. As we had already visited some key parts of the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia), we decided to explore Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria next.
BULGARIA
Bulgaria is a small country situated in the east of the Balkans. Its diverse terrain encompasses the Black Sea coastline, a mountainous interior and rivers, including the Danube. A cultural melting pot with Greek, Slavic, Ottoman, and Persian influences, it has a rich heritage of traditional dances, music, costumes and crafts. In 1946, Bulgaria came under the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and became a socialist state. The country faced a demographic crisis with its population shrinking from nine million in 1985 to roughly 6.5 million in 2022.
The history of the capital city Sofia, dates to the 5th century BC. 1.2 million or 13% of Bulgaria’s population in 1985, lived in Sofia. When we reached Sofia around 2:00 am, we were very tired and needed a full night sleep before any more tours. Unfortunately, all of the smaller hotels were full and the only available room in the city was at Novotel Europa, which was too expensive for us.
The taxi driver who drove us to find an affordable hotel wasted our time by taking us around the city without finding one. When we realized that he was simply going round to keep his meter ticking, we insisted that he returns us to the railway station. He did so but overcharged us. We managed to get a few hours sleep in the heated but crowded rest room of the main railway station until armed guards arrived around 6:00 am to chase away all the those resting there, including the both of us.
We decided to stay around the station until the information counter opened and had the worst possible meal at the only nearby restaurant open at that time. Our standing breakfast at a high table included dry bread, salty gherkins, sliced sausages and black coffee. Their menu had no other choices. Finally, when the information counter was opened by a rude woman, we managed to book a room in a nearby hotel who charged us much more than the agreed rate. We felt that Bulgaria was certainly not ready for tourism in 1985.
Later I did a city taxi tour of Sofia with a guide and on foot. My wife did not join me as she preferred to catch up on her sleep. I was shown some TV towers, which the guide claimed to be the tallest in Europe. He also took me to museums, monuments, the national assembly and a Turkish fort. At the end of the tour, I was taken to St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral which is an impressive landmark in Sofia. The church was built as a memorial to the 200,000 Russian soldiers who died in the Russo-Turkish Liberation War (1877-1878).
When our train to Bucharest left around 10:00 pm, we decided that we would never return to Sofia again. That decision was short lived. As usual, the compartments were freezing cold and we were asked by the guard to pay US $4 extra for a warmer compartment which we did. Around 5:00 am we reached Rousse, a medium size Bulgarian city close to the border of Romania.
The Romanian custom officials were rude, rough and loud. They took our passports and tickets and ordered us to get out of the train. When we asked the reason for their aggressive behaviour in spite us of having valid visas for Romania issued by their embassy in London, they did the unthinkable. They threw our bags off the train and when we got off to pick up the bags, the train left without us.
We were left shivering on the platform for 30 minutes in -25 °C temperature. After that we were allowed to enter a heated rest room, where they returned our passports and tickets after announcing that we were not allowed to enter Romania. They refused to give any reasons.
A month later, when we returned to England, I wrote a detailed letter to the Romanian Embassy in London, asking for an explanation, a refund of visa fees and an apology. They never bothered to reply. Up until today, I am unaware of their reasons for such unwelcoming conduct at their border. That was the worse experience I ever had in travelling to nearly 100 countries.
After staying at the border train station for another four hours, we were finally escorted to a train going from Rousse back to Sofia. After returning to a city that we did not want to visit again, around 6:00 pm we had another standing meal at the railway station restaurant, of the same limited menu (dry bread, salty gherkins, sliced sausages and black coffee).
That was our worst day ever!
We managed to get a room at a nearby hotel around 10:00 pm and hoped for a good night’s sleep. In the early hours of the morning, there was a power failure and the hotel generator did not start. We kept warm by sitting around the wood fireplace in the hotel lobby.
We gratefully took the first morning train from Sofia to Belgrade. We were still thinking of what happened to us at the Romanian border. We were shocked, saddened and it felt like a lingering nightmare. In our compartment we managed to have a conversation with two Turkish brothers travelling to Austria in search of work.
They spoke a few English words and we spoke a few German words. They were not surprised about the rude behaviour of the Romanian custom officers. They said probably Romania is having a serious energy crisis due to the bad weather and therefore not allowing foreigners to enter their country.
Later during the train ride, we shared our lunch with the two brothers. They shared a snack – a crispy flat bread and some fermented turnip juice with us. That was spicy, and we liked it. Afterwards, we played some gin rummy with them. I taught them this card game and they became very good at it. As the train came closer to Belgrade we exchanged our addresses. They also gave us a gift, a small key tag from Turkey. We had nothing of significance to give, but when we gave them our pack of cards they thanked us sincerely and left.
Soon after reaching Belgrade after sunset, we hurried to the information counter. For once we had good luck. The lady working there was friendly, cheerful, helpful and even spoke a little English. We confirmed our seats for the next train ride and had a quick dinner. We also went to the central post office and managed to call our friends in Austria to tell them our arrival time in Vienna. The evening train was warmer than we expected, another bonus.
Ivan, a young Yugoslavian of Slovenian ethnic background was in our compartment; we became quite friendly. He was travelling to Zagreb to commence his compulsory, military service. He showed us a photograph of his beautiful, teenage girlfriend he was leaving in his village. We suspected that he was anxious, as he continuously drank a large quantity of Rakia, a popular locally-made fruit spirit. Yugoslavians, particularly Slovenians, are classified as heavy drinkers and statistics showed that they drink an average of 12 litres of pure alcohol per year. They were also, notably, the seventh biggest beer consumers in the world. Ivan offered us drinks and we just had one to keep him company.
Every time Ivan poured a new drink, he shouted “Na zdravje!” (Cheers!). As Ivan became more drunk his cheers became louder and happier. Finally in his drunkenness, Ivan lay down to sleep. He snored loudly and overslept. When the train stopped in Zagreb, we had a hard time to wake him up. Ivan thanked and hugged us to say goodbye before rushing to the platform.
A moment later we realized that he had forgotten to take one of his bags. I rushed with the bag to the platform and shouted, “Ivan!”. I could not find him and the train was starting to move. I had to run fast to get into the moving train. Fortunately, we saw him through a train window as the train moved away from the station. When he saw us, he waved back at us and yelled something in his language. An older Slovenian gentleman in the compartment told us, while laughing, “He said ‘goodbye, my good friends!’”. We hoped that he had heard our shouts, “Your other bag is left on the platform!”
Around 5:00 am we crossed over the Yugoslavia-Austria border. The Austrian officials were very professional and polite. We could not help but compare and contrast the Austrian welcome with our recent experiences, elsewhere. We passed a small border town in Austria, Spielfeld, and three hours later we reached a larger city, Graz.
I suggested to my wife that after a couple of days in Vienna, we do some day trips from Vienna to Budapest, Bratislava and Prague. She put her foot down and said firmly, “Chandi, I will never visit a socialist country again!” I tactfully postponed the negotiation for another day when we were not exhausted. I was still keen to experience most of the key cities of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The train took two and half hours to travel from Graz to Vienna. While enjoying the breath-takingly beautiful Austrian winter scene, I summarized our travels during the previous three weeks in my travel journal. We were in the middle of our winter travel adventure. My calculations indicated that we had travelled for over 240 hours including 12 nights in trains to cover 12 countries.
It was time for a well-earned rest in one of our favourite cities in the world. When we reached Vienna around 9:30 am, our friends Biggi and Wolf, and a few of their friends were at the station to give us a hero’s welcome.
Will continue in next week’s article: “Austria-Hungary-Czechoslovakia-Liechtenstein”