Romanian Adventure  

I have just come back from a wonderful holiday in Romania  - the town of Cluj-Napoca , in the province of Transylvania to be precise - visiting my friend Dana - isn't she lovely!

Romania is famous for many things in Romania. Some of these things are also famous elsewhere:

• Brilliant, mercurial, 1970s tennis-playing lothario Ilie Nastase.
• World-beating "perfect 10" 1970s gymnast Nadia Comaneci.
• The "Maradona of the Carpathians", 1990s footballing genius Gheorghe Hagi.
• Esteemed and excellent, modern-yet-accessible sculptor Constantin Brancuşi.
• Henri Coanda, who invented, built and flew (very briefly) the worlds first jet aeroplane. In 1910!!!!!!!!!
• Wolves , bears, lynx, wildcats and European bison are all indigenous and totally brilliant!!
• The very rare European Mink - catch one if you can and make a pair of gloves out of it!
• Hamsters - there are 3 varieties. Some hamsters are edible; but, WARNING: MAY CONTAIN NUTS.
• Dormice  - 4 varieties, generally asleep. They're cute, but it's best not to kiss them as they have been known to carry rabies.
• ............ microbiology Godfather Victor Babes, inventor of rabies vaccine.
• The Cheeky Girls - they come from Cluj, where I was staying, but I didn't see them. Unless they weren't wearing the clothes that they normally wear and I didn't recognise them.
• Also born in Cluj¹ (and just as cheeky in his own way) was the late, great chamber music violinist, conductor, educator and broadcaster Sándor Végh (CBE). His work with the Hungarian Quartet and the Végh Quartet is said by some critics to contain the most profound interpretations of the world's most profound string quartets (those of Beethoven and Bartok).
• Daddy of Dadaism, Tristan Tzara.
• And, yes, ok, Count Dracula  - who wasn't a vampire at all, he just impaled people (Turks mainly, but also people who disagreed with him) on spikes. And he wasn't even called Dracula - that was his dad's name. National hero or sodomy-fixated psychopath - you decide.
• "British" "comedian" "Avid Merrion" claims to be from Transylvania. Believe me, nobody in Transylvania looks or sounds anything like him. And they'd deport him to Moldavia if they ever heard his act.
• Michael Howard, until very recently the leader of the British Conservative party, is famous for being of Romanian ancestry. Read this interesting article to see how Romanians, Transylvanians, Hungarians, Jews and Dracula enthusiasts all try to claim him as their own!
• Enough Romanians already.

1) Cluj was under Hungarian rule back then and known as Kolozsvár; the Germans called it Klausenburg, and it was Claudiopolis to the Romans; Ceacescu added -Napoca in 1974 to make it sound more Romanian. Surely by now it's the Gypsies' turn to call it something to their liking.

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