Wow what a video-thank you for digging that one out Fur-fucking commies.
The funny thing is that it never gives pause to TPTB
Still not the full video. I saw it somewhere right after it happened — he flopped backwards like a rubber chicken. Have not been able to find it anywhere since.
Oh, oh, show the one with Mussolini!
Romanian Term Limits.
Sic Semper Tyrannis.
… but just not fast enough
iotw is my favorite place for history lessons.
i brushed up on romania yesterday and my takeaway from the video is that this couple believed they were untouchable. guess not!
the fact that she smelled bad is a nice personal remembrance by the soldier.
As a college student, I suffered from stupid-level wanderlust. Backpacked through what was then the Eastern Bloc. Got a 2-day visa for Romania, and one helluva education to go with it. Ceausescu was in power at the time. In Bucharest, one could only stay in “Western” hotels that were approved by the gov’t for tourists. They were pricey, so that the gov’t could extract as much Western currency from the tourists as possible.
My traveling pal and I were hanging out in a busy public park, waiting for darkness, planning to spend the night in our sleeping bags in a thicket of trees and bushes. This was illegal, but we just didn’t have the cash for an approved hotel — only enough money for a train ticket out of Romania the next day. An old man kept hovering near us, and it made me extremely nervous. Eventually he spoke to us, interested in us because we were speaking English. He wanted to practice his English with us — he’d managed to get his paws on a short-wave radio and listened to the BBC every day, trying to learn.
Still wary, we sat on a park bench with him past dusk, learning about life in Romania. Why were so many people fat? Because all they had to eat was bread. Why did so many people have metal teeth that looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie? People with metal teeth were lucky–it meant they’d had at least some rudimentary dental care.
When the man asked us if he could walk us to our Western hotel, and maybe just get the chance to peer inside (these hotels were verboten for the general public), we confessed our plan to sleep in the park, as we were traveling on a shoestring budget. He assured us we would be arrested, then invited us to stay with him, which could have gotten him arrested! He sneaked us into his apartment (lots of stack ’em and pack ’em housing in Bucharest), which was only a short walk from the park. He was a bachelor, and his place looked like the inside of a garage. There were no rugs covering the cement floor. Every little thing he found that “might somehow be useful” was stacked on makeshift shelves that lined every wall. Lights and water to the entire building were shut off at midnight, to encourage residents to get to bed. Our new friend quickly fed us what little he had and proudly showed us his radio, which he considered his only link to freedom.
In the morning, he walked us to the train station. He got on the train with us, and began to cry. “You don’t know how hard this is for me, to watch you go, and I have to stay.” Then he handed me a gift. It was an empty yogurt jar. The night before, when he fed us, I mentioned how pretty the yogurt containers were…little hand-blown, bluish glass that was reused over and over, just like old milk bottles in the US, back in the days when the milkman delivered milk to your doorstep. I hugged this weeping man goodbye and never saw him again, but I still have that yogurt jar on my fireplace mantel, with a yellow ribbon tied around the neck, in his honor. A few years later, on Christmas Day 1989, I said a prayer that he lived long enough to see his freedom.
Wish I could take every stupid Bernie-loving socialist back in time with me, and give them 10 minutes on that park bench, with that sweet soul who so yearned to be free from the fabulousness of collectivism.
Thank you @ Tired Mom for that beautiful remembrance!
I have know a few Romanians I met here who escaped the communist regime. They loved their country and hated the communist bastards who ran it.
That’s is one helluva detail for a Christmas day.
And yes, crazyeighter, Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Same hand gestures as HRC … I wonder where she learned them?
I wish my grandmother, who died in 1968, could have lived to see this. Hungarian by birth, she was from Transylvania, the part of Hungary that was annexed to Romania after the war.
She would have spit on Ceaucescu’s grave.
If there is justice in this world, Obama will face a similar fate.
Coming to America probably sooner than later.
Wow what a video-thank you for digging that one out Fur-fucking commies.
The funny thing is that it never gives pause to TPTB
Still not the full video. I saw it somewhere right after it happened — he flopped backwards like a rubber chicken. Have not been able to find it anywhere since.
Oh, oh, show the one with Mussolini!
Romanian Term Limits.
Sic Semper Tyrannis.
… but just not fast enough
iotw is my favorite place for history lessons.
i brushed up on romania yesterday and my takeaway from the video is that this couple believed they were untouchable. guess not!
the fact that she smelled bad is a nice personal remembrance by the soldier.
As a college student, I suffered from stupid-level wanderlust. Backpacked through what was then the Eastern Bloc. Got a 2-day visa for Romania, and one helluva education to go with it. Ceausescu was in power at the time. In Bucharest, one could only stay in “Western” hotels that were approved by the gov’t for tourists. They were pricey, so that the gov’t could extract as much Western currency from the tourists as possible.
My traveling pal and I were hanging out in a busy public park, waiting for darkness, planning to spend the night in our sleeping bags in a thicket of trees and bushes. This was illegal, but we just didn’t have the cash for an approved hotel — only enough money for a train ticket out of Romania the next day. An old man kept hovering near us, and it made me extremely nervous. Eventually he spoke to us, interested in us because we were speaking English. He wanted to practice his English with us — he’d managed to get his paws on a short-wave radio and listened to the BBC every day, trying to learn.
Still wary, we sat on a park bench with him past dusk, learning about life in Romania. Why were so many people fat? Because all they had to eat was bread. Why did so many people have metal teeth that looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie? People with metal teeth were lucky–it meant they’d had at least some rudimentary dental care.
When the man asked us if he could walk us to our Western hotel, and maybe just get the chance to peer inside (these hotels were verboten for the general public), we confessed our plan to sleep in the park, as we were traveling on a shoestring budget. He assured us we would be arrested, then invited us to stay with him, which could have gotten him arrested! He sneaked us into his apartment (lots of stack ’em and pack ’em housing in Bucharest), which was only a short walk from the park. He was a bachelor, and his place looked like the inside of a garage. There were no rugs covering the cement floor. Every little thing he found that “might somehow be useful” was stacked on makeshift shelves that lined every wall. Lights and water to the entire building were shut off at midnight, to encourage residents to get to bed. Our new friend quickly fed us what little he had and proudly showed us his radio, which he considered his only link to freedom.
In the morning, he walked us to the train station. He got on the train with us, and began to cry. “You don’t know how hard this is for me, to watch you go, and I have to stay.” Then he handed me a gift. It was an empty yogurt jar. The night before, when he fed us, I mentioned how pretty the yogurt containers were…little hand-blown, bluish glass that was reused over and over, just like old milk bottles in the US, back in the days when the milkman delivered milk to your doorstep. I hugged this weeping man goodbye and never saw him again, but I still have that yogurt jar on my fireplace mantel, with a yellow ribbon tied around the neck, in his honor. A few years later, on Christmas Day 1989, I said a prayer that he lived long enough to see his freedom.
Wish I could take every stupid Bernie-loving socialist back in time with me, and give them 10 minutes on that park bench, with that sweet soul who so yearned to be free from the fabulousness of collectivism.
Thank you @ Tired Mom for that beautiful remembrance!
I have know a few Romanians I met here who escaped the communist regime. They loved their country and hated the communist bastards who ran it.
That’s is one helluva detail for a Christmas day.
And yes, crazyeighter, Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Same hand gestures as HRC … I wonder where she learned them?
I wish my grandmother, who died in 1968, could have lived to see this. Hungarian by birth, she was from Transylvania, the part of Hungary that was annexed to Romania after the war.
She would have spit on Ceaucescu’s grave.
If there is justice in this world, Obama will face a similar fate.