The Miya-Hee Song!

omania

A brief history and geography (including the real Dracula)

View our photos of Romania Thirteen pages of pictures from our yearly visits. We'll be adding more soon. After you've toured, don't forget to return here! (And maybe send a picture postcard from one of the places you've "visited.")

"The last stage of Communism is surrealism." - Andrei Codrescu, poet, novelist, and Romanian ex-patriate

Present-day Romania is just slightly smaller in area than Great Britain (or about the size of New York and Pennsylvania combined), with a population of about 23 million. Separated from the Balkan Peninsula to the south by the Danube River, Romania shares borders today with Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine, and Moldova. Its southeastern frontier follows the Black Sea. The Romanian people descended from the ancient Romans and the Dacians, an ancient Thracian tribe native to the land now called Romania. The majority of Romania's citizens are ethnic Romanians, but there are also many minorities. Hungarians, Saxons, and Gypsies are the largest ethnic minority groups. Most Romanians follow the Christian Orthodox religion, even through the Communist years when religious practice was outlawed.

Romania in its present form has been in existence only since 1859, but can trace its history to the era around 2000 B.C.E. Over its four thousand years, Romania's geographical location between western Europe and the East has forced its citizens to defend their land through almost continual wars, invasions, occupations, oppressions, and massacres. For more than 50 years following World War II, Romania was ruled by a succession of Communist leaders. From 1965 to 1989, the Romanians were subjected to arguably the worst despotic regime among the Soviet Bloc countries: that of Nicolae Ceausescu who, along with his wife Elena, destroyed historical villages and buildings, confiscated essentially everything of value, and literally stole the food from his own people. The Ceausescus were overthrown during a violent revolution in December 1989, and executed shortly thereafter. Questions still linger about whether the revolution was instigated and orchestrated by forces in Moscow...or by Ceaucescu's own henchmen.

Vlad Dracula -- pronounced Drah-COO-lah -- the historical Dracula, was a Wallachian prince who ruled Romania from 1456 to 1462. He was not a vampire; tales of these mythical creatures have persisted in folklore for centuries, and they were popularized by author Bram Stoker in the late 1800s. By the fifteenth century, the Turks had conquered most of what is now the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe, spreading Byzantine culture throughout the vast Ottoman Empire that it ruled. Vlad Dracula repelled the invading armies by impaling his Turkish enemies on spikes, earning him the sobriquet Vlad Tepes -- pronounced TSEH-pesh -- or Vlad the Impaler. (Perhaps this inspired Stoker to kill his vampires in a similar manner.) Because of their fear of Vlad, the Turks did not press for sovereign control of the region and allowed Romania to function as a suzerainty. This gives some explanation why Romanians speak a Latin-based language to this day -- unlike their Slavic neighbours. It was also Vlad Dracula who founded the city of Bucuresti, now the capital of Romania.

We will be adding travelogues and more photos of our trips, and hope you will stop back to see us. In the meantime, you can see a list of links to web sites related to Romanian history, culture, news, travel and more by clicking here.