Title: ³Bucharest Up Until the Mid of Our Century as It Used to Be and Never Will Again´ Author: Adrian Cioroianu How to cite this article: Cioroianu, Adrian. 2000. ȃBucharest Up Until the Mid of Our Century as It Used to Be and Never Will Again.Ȅ Martor 5: 11-26. Published by: Editura MARTOR (MARTOR Publishing House), £ȱo©ȱ¦ (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant) URL: http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/martor-5-2000/ Martor (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Journal) is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1996, with a focus on cultural and visual anthropology, ethnology, museum studies and the dialogue among these disciplines. Martor Journal is published by the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Interdisciplinary and international in scope, it provides a rich content at the highest academic and editorial standards for academic and non-academic readership. 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(The truth actually lied elsewh ere, and from my readings. Proportions preserved, I was now J can tell it: at th e clo se of my stay in a sort of Tarzan, knowin g how to read, yet un- Bucharest I had had two pints of beer and three able to speah·, th e lan guage of th e to wn. I kn ew rancid meat balls (mititei) in a small bar by th e from my readings that the Romanian Liberal University building, on the lzvor Bridge, and Party had been born in one of th e houses on then I had rushed to th e railway station. That is Enei Street, around 1875. I knew that Tudor the true story of my heada che.) Vladimirescu, the revolutionist of th e early nin e- On ce settled in Bucharest, with a student's re- teenth ce ntury, had se ttled hi s camp at Co- sid ence visa, I was now fa ced with a city gone mad troceni , wh ich at that time was on the outskirts with the passion of tran sformation s. In fact, it was of th e city, in March 1821. I also knew a few not th e city that had gon e mad, but a petty frown- things about the hopeless, yet chivalri c, struggle ing fellow I once or twi ce saw on Splaiul lndepen- of th e firefighters on Dealul Spirii against the while he was giving direction s on what th e Turks who invaded th e cit-y in September 1848. new created Museum of the Communist Party His- However, I would have had a hard tim e in trying t01y shoLJd look like. Th ey started rai sing it on the to say whi ch was where. left bank of the Dirnbovita river, and th e building For years on end , Bu charest had meant to still awa its completion , although in the meantime me th e North Station, which I knew only as a it became the Radio House. That fellow was, ob- stop on my way to oth er diverse destinations. viously, Ni colae To my wond er, I only After my first actual sta y in Bucharest, wh en l ran into processions on Saturdays. applied for th e University toward s th e end of th e That is probably on e of the reason s wh y the suc- '80 s, I took th e way home with a splitting cessors of th e above-m entioned lead er hastened to headache. l even wond ered why, around 1761 , declare, in the afterm ath of December 1989, that th e Ban 1 of Olteni a ca me to Bucharest, leaving Saturday should be a holiday. Thus it should have som ebod y else in Craio va to rul e over his coun- become less likely for the citizen of Bucharest to ty. Ba ck home, und er th e utterly patriarchal vin e run unawares into th e chi ef of the state. Marlor, V - 2000, Bucharest in conununjst times: resistance, normality, survival 12 Adrian Cioroianu The centre that is not central must have been clearer during the Paleolithic age than they are today). Main occupations in- What strikes one who takes a look at the map cluded hunting, fi shing and breeding and, pro- of contemporary Romania is its total asymmetry: bably, given the surrounding forests and the the ca pital, that is to say the political, cultural abundant vegetation, bee-keeping too, as was the and economic center of the co untry is way too case everywhere along the left bank of the removed from the geographical center of the na- Danube. Time passing by, crafts and commerce tional territory. Of course, the notion of the ca- became, as we shall see, prominent, since pital as center is a pure convention; few are the Bucharest was situated on one of the trading states whose capitals lie at the very heart of the roads that connected the Ottoman Empire to the national territory. However, Bucharest seems to Western world, passing through and be thrust in Southern Romania, to the effect that other Transylva nian citi es. The contemporary its vicinity to the 45° North latitude parallel2 (i. e. Romanian attempt to foreground the co untry as half way between the Equator and the North one stop along the wondrous trajectory of East- Pole) is a mere surrogate. The distance between ern oil towards the Western car-reservoires has, the capital and the north-westernmost and north- as one can easily see, a consid erable tradition. eastern most cities of Romania is, in a straight Historians have also di scovered traces of line, longe r than that between Bucharest and habitation in the Dacian period, during the last Sophia (the capital of Bulgaria) or the frontiers ce nturies B.C. The sites of of Greece and Turkey. However, one should Novaci or Crasani etc. are still there in the ar- note that Bucharest is un-centered only with re- chaeologists' academic reports and in the night- gard to contemporary Romania; centuries ago, it mares of high-school students who prepare their was relatively central to the region of medieval graduation exams. Wallachia. A noteworthy detail are the treasures disco- Those who claim that Bucharest is a 'Balkan vered this century on the site of the city: in city' disregard these elements of topometrics. 1931, at Fundeni, urns copied after Greek origi- During my university years I wa s in friendly nals were dug up; in 1938, nea r Herastrau, jew- polemics with a fellow student from Cluj, and, in ellery and silver coins from the 2 11 d century B.C. an attempt to put an end to a di scussion that left copied after Greek tetradrachmas were found; him no honourable means to take the upper the same holds true for subsequ ent di scoveries hand, he told me, I know your sort, you South- of treasures in Colentina, Bragadiru or erners! My first intention was to argue that I was Leordeni - all copies of Greek coins from the 4th a Bucharest man only as a student, that my or 3rc1 centuries B.C. or of Roman coins. Those hometown was Craiova, but then I realised that who marvel today at the wealth of Exchange Of- his rebuff covered that area as well. fi ces on the boulevards of Bucharest will under- stand now that their ancestors were as cosmo- politan as they are in point of financial passion; Waters, coins and oak-trees one could even argue that the fake dollars to be Let us leave meta-hist01y behind and come found on today's market are themselves part of back to history as such: according to available some kind of tradition. data, contemporary Bucharest and its surround- The Bucharest area was also inhabited in the ings have been inhabited from times immemo- first centuries A.D., even iJ evid ence of impor- rial. That should come as no surprise, since the tant habitats is not attested; as was the case with place has always been drenched by two water- the whole Romanian territory, Bucharest proto- co urses, Dimbovita and Colentina (although they inhabitants pulled through after the centuries of Bucharest Up Until the Mid of Our Century 13 migration, enriching their genetic endowment davia and even Transylvania. It is not likely that yet preserving ascendance thanks to their Latin their relation is co incidental, but it is indeed origin. Cohabitation with th e Slavs res ulted in likely that all are generated by a founding Bucur several Slavic etymons, for instance the name of whom many recognized as their ancestor.