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The article itself follows after the first
horizontal line. To understand my position I post first a Reply from Dorel
Jurcovan:
I could see the article only after it was
printed and I couldn't make any remarks on it before. I thank
very much to the author of the article, it contains a large part of
the ideas of the initiative. I must however make some remarks.
At the start of the initiative I had a high support from the City
Hall, County Governor and County Council. Except that, I met
less enthusiastic people, but I do not think at all this is bad.
In Portland people greet you warmly in shops, on the street, in an
elevator, they ask you how you are, they smile to you, even if you are
a total stranger; cars freeze in traffic if you are on the sidewalk
and head to the curb. How much time would take us to be like
that? I do not know, I agree with the less enthusiastic that
this is a heavy task, but at a certain moment we have to start.
I am not an unconditional admirer of US, there are here things that
could be done better. My attraction to Portland is first of all for
its civilization and human values that I met here; on the other side
these values I also met as prevailing attitudes in other parts of the
globe, in Norway (my other spiritual country), Sweden, some parts of
Germany or France, even in some of our villages in Maramures.
But again, we have to start somewhere, and I think Portland is an
excellent choice. My passion for Benjamin Franklin is true, he
is my very good friends that I met already in my adolescence. I
think publishing books in Romania about him could change the life of
many young people, as Franklin's Autobiography changed mine.
"The Rose is the symbol of two cities,
Portland and Timisoara. Why cannot it be turned into a bridge between
the two cities. A change to develop
business, attract investments and have a better life!", could be the words
of a flowers lover or of a businessman that understood that positive
attitude can create business. Both descriptions could fit the
Timisoara citizen Dorel Jurcovan. Knowing both the American and
Romanian business environment, the man wants at all costs to bridge
Timisoara with Portland. Even if he only succeeded to do it until
now through an Internet site, entitled "Cities of Roses".
The attraction for Uncle Sam
"The American Dream" started for Dorel Jurcovan in the '90s, when he
was Deputy Director for the branch in Timisoara of an American NGO.
He is a fiery admirer of the values from the county of Uncle Sam.
You can see it in the enthusiasm he speaks about the attitude of the
people there, in the excepts from Benjamin Franklin, his beloved author,
that cover the walls of his office. Even if he worked for a while
for a company with headquarters in Minneapolis, he never thought to
leave Timisoara forever. His first visit to Portland was eight
years ago, when he visited his daughter that studied there. Dorel
Jurcovan was quickly seduced by the city on Columbia river. The
years passed, his daughter became Assistant Attorney General for the
neighboring state, Washington, and Dorel Jurcovan became more and more
convinced that Timisoara and Portland could have a bonding.
Letter to the Mayor
"What do we lack to be like Portland? We have a Park of Roses
and our city is named the City of Roses. We proved to have free
spirit since we started the Anticommunist Revolution. We have
highly qualified specialists in all fields of activity: engineers,
individuals of culture and public administration. And, still, we
are not like Portland, even if we would like to", explains our
concitizen his thoughts at the start of his last visit this spring to
Portland. As part of his trip preparations, he knocked often at
the doors of city and county institutions to convince them of the
advantages of a bridge between cities. "Some of them were open,
others had negative reactions. I received reaction that a
cooperation with USA is hard to achieve, we have other priorities, the
costs of transport are very high." Finally his luggage included a
letter signed by Mayor Gheorghe Ciuhandru to the Mayor of Portland Tom
Potter. In the letter the Mayor of Timisoara makes a short
presentation of the city and states his wish to explore "potential
benefits of reciprocal opportunities of learning, trade and cultural
exchanges that a closer relationships could offer".
On-line bridge
Once in the States, Dorel Jurcovan started to build a network of
people interested in his ambitious project, from the members of the
Romanian community, numbering 35,000, to the managers of International
Affairs from the City Hall. "At the beginning they were reserved,
since they just started a Sister City relationship with the city of
Iassi. I dropped the idea of Timisoara becoming a Sister City to
Portland, and I stressed the fact that both Timisoara and Portland are
Cities of Roses", explains our concitizen. Dorel Jurcovan created
a site,
www.geocities.com-citiesofroses, where he explains in detail why the
two cities can create a bonding in the name of the rose. "It is
important to learn from them to better sell the image of the city, how
to show that Timisoara is a safe place for investors", believes Dorel
Jurcovan. Because he is convinced that he cannot manage such a
complex initiative on his own, he is looking for other allies as
enthusiastic as he is.
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