A Russian writer, Leontev, whom I read when I was younger, wrote about balkanski dîmok – the Balkan smoke, which has a particular smell.
In late autumn, when you roam across the plains of Budjak or Bessarabia, you see piles of leaves and branches smoking day and night. They smoulder with a bluish wisp that joins the earth with the sky in a lascivious dance resembling the movements of a Turkish belly dancer. The smell is unmistakable and memorable, a mixture of dry leaves, twigs and plants that the peasants burn in their gardens. A great Russian philosopher who once travelled through the area called it balkanski dîmok, Balkan smoke. We were not yet in the Balkans; we were just a gate that the Slavic traveller went through on his way to the Balkans. But the smell was divine.
Later in my life, I spent many months in different Balkan countries. I stayed a whole autumn in Sarajevo, one in Split on the Dalmatian shore, and one in Istanbul, on the shores of the Bosphorus – another Balkan corner. Now I live in Bucharest.
You are walking down the streets of the fascinating city of Sarajevo, you are 50, and suddenly you are hit by a smell. A strong and familiar smell. You don’t know exactly what it is, but it triggers a memory, a powerful reliving of something forgotten. It reminds you of your grandma making roasted peppers when you were a child. Oh, the smell of roasted peppers… it makes you feel like you are born again. It makes the memory so vivid that you can even remember your grandmother’s dry, cracked skin, you can feel her palm on your head.
Bucharest, perhaps the most oriental European capital, is now the place where her child is raised. The Balkans are here – they are within us.
I think that the Balkans within us, within Romania, which we are sometimes ashamed of, are a great heritage – an incredible gift. Should we be ashamed of it? I wonder why. We are Balkan, Eastern European and Central European at the same time. All these legacies make us richer, more diverse, more special because we have this diverse wealth and the traces left by history that should not be erased, but capitalized on.
How I fell in love with Bucharest, that is, the Balkans
I was born and grew up on the edge of Budjak, in Bessarabia, on the outskirts of the Eastern Empire, in a very ethnically and religiously mixed area. I come from the south, and I am in love with the steppes of Budjak and Bărăgan, the mouths of the Danube and the Black Sea. With the small towns there: Cahul, Chilia, Boglar, Vulcănești, Ismail, Cetatea Albă. But I am also in love with Chișinău and Odessa, the cities of my childhood.
When I was little and lived on the banks of the Prut, at the mouth of the Danube, I used to listen to a radio station: This is Bucharest, Romania. In those days, for me, Bucharest was just a radio sound coming from a world very far away, although geographically it was just at a stone’s throw. Back then it was easier to imagine that I would end up in Tashkent or Leningrad, in Moscow or Vladivostok, rather than in Bucharest. Bucharest was just a sound: a pretty damn pleasant sound. Bucharest is part of my childhood’s sounds.
I arrived in Bucharest after a long journey. First it was Chișinău, then Odessa – my model of a true city. Then came Iași, where I studied philosophy. Leaving Chişinău aside, Iași was the most Russian city in Romania. Next came Cluj, which was totally different: much more conservative, much more settled, with fairly canonical rules and an exceptional Hungarian community. There I did my master’s degree and worked at an old synagogue turned into an art centre.
And then came Bucharest. A city I fell in love with. One of the most fascinating cities in which I have lived.
When you move to a new city, the first time you go from the station to the centre remains vividly imprinted in your memory. When you leave a city, the way from the centre to the station is not easy to take; it makes you sad. I remember both ways quite well and, to be honest, I find it very difficult to understand people who have lived all their life in only one city, people whose “home” is only one city. But this is a story for another day.
At different times of the day, Bucharest can be very diverse. The morning Bucharest is alert, nervous, a bit brutal, you have to know how to sneak through the cursing and honking of the drivers, the shoving in the subway or the bus. The midday Bucharest is more detached, more cheerful, more disposed towards irony. The evening Bucharest has several stages: nerves on edge, tiredness, the rush to get home, the lively atmosphere of the taverns where people sit and wait for the night. After dark, the “nocturnal species” of the city go out for a walk.
I learned something very useful from my robbers and thieves. A city is like a coat. It has its own style and cut. Sometimes elegant, sometimes rough. It wants to catch your eye with what is visible on the surface. You usually fall prey to this way of knowing it. You look at its fabric and cut, its shapes and colours, and you think you know it. But you cannot see its secrets, and it is precisely those secrets that make it interesting. The true face of the city is not the one that is revealed to you, but the one that is hidden from you. That is why you must pickpocket it like a pickpocket does. This is what I do. I pickpocket Bucharest like my hero thieves. And Bucharest has a lot of hidden pockets – it is always surprising.
If Iași, where I spent six years, is remarkably gentle and warm, and Cluj, where I spent ten years, is distant and conservative, Bucharest is a mixture of everything. I know that such kind of labelling is mere simplification, a lie in essence, because things are much more nuanced and complex. But we are always tempted to simplify. In the case of Bucharest, what I find very interesting is that its “negative features” are also its greatest assets. All the “flaws” of the city have a special charm.
Unlike the cities of Transylvania and Moldova, Bucharest is oriental. It is one of the most oriental cities in Europe. It is the Orient of Europe. Considered from the colonial Austro–Hungarian perspective, oriental elements take on a negative connotation. In reality, things are more complicated. Interestingly, even for someone coming from Russia or Chișinău, Bucharest still seems oriental, but its orientalism no longer has a negative connotation.
The Russians have a saying: The Orient is a subtle matter. For me, Bucharest is attractive precisely because of this subtle eclecticism and oriental air of the inner coast of Europe. It is an oriental city located in a deeply European geographical area, albeit Byzantine, over which layers of various empires have settled: Turks, Greeks, Jews, Russians, Hungarians and, last but not least, Roma. Among all these, there are many Romanians. The mixture, the cultural layers and the identity breaks are visible in every corner: in architecture, in food, in behaviour, in music, in everything that moves. It is as if the people, though no longer having the memory of this history, bear the direct imprint of the city’s past and eclecticism.
Remember: Bucharest has not yet turned into a “tourist city” that wants to seduce you at all cost. Bucharest wants to be discovered slowly, leisurely, despite the typical rush of a metropolis. Here you are an explorer, not a tourist: the city reveals itself to you gradually. Bucharest doesn’t sell you a false image as tourist cities do, because they live off of it. It reveals its real, unvarnished face.
Here it is easy to communicate. You just sit down and to talk to people. It is easy to negotiate, easy to swear, easy to help, easy to get robbed, easy to be protected, easy to be hated or loved. Here everything is smooth, nothing has angular, rigid shapes. I like this. Because I’m always in for a surprise and I have to renegotiate my ideas, my achievements and my disappointments. Bucharest keeps you alive and kicking.
Bucharest doesn’t lie to you: it doesn’t pretend to be what it isn’t. Bucharest can rob you, can suck your energies. Yet it can also give you a lot of energy if you know how to take advantage of it and you have an inquisitive nature. Any relationship must be maintained. The city wants it – it’s all about you wanting it too. Bucharest makes me keep my mind clear. I love its subtle irony without excessive gravity and seriousness, as I learned it from the Russians. I like the exchange of lines that I can hear only here, be they aggressive sometimes. I don’t really like aggressive mockery, but that may be my problem. I haven’t tuned into a typical Bucharest inhabitant yet, my home is in the making here, but as long as I’m here I love to explore the city and its people. Maybe one day it will become “my home” forever. Because I love it and it’s already my child’s home.
For me, Bucharest meant the gateway to the Balkans and an infinite love for them.
About people and boats. A story from Split, Croatia
Last year I spent some time in “exile” in Split, Croatia. I discovered some notes while waiting for a football championship grand final.
Every day I take at least one walk along the harbour and the many jetties spread along the coast of Split. It is about an hour’s walk. I start from the left side, where big ships loaded with tourists and their cars dock. At precise hours, a ferry loaded with cars and people comes or leaves. It’s always busy here. Huge cruise ships bring motley crowds. It’s common mass tourism. It involves more wealth than it does in Greece.
A long area follows, facing the sea, part of the old centre. I see various small ships for short cruises around the islands or along the coast. They are for ordinary tourists, who come here for a few days, to visit Split and take a one-day walk on the islands, part of a guided tour. The ships are full of families with children, youngsters and many elderly people.
Split is expensive for young people who come from not so rich families. The Scandinavians dominate. The Brits make the background noise: they speak louder than everyone else. At night they are unstoppable: they scream so loud they scare even the drunken Russians.
Next comes a small, secluded cove where expensive, though not very large, yachts are moored. There are fewer people here, even on the pontoon. On the yachts you usually see one or two couples – most of them about 50 or 60 years old – drinking, partying in silence or doing some work. Judging by their yacht, the way they dress, move or speak, they are upper middle class. Their yacht is very expensive, even if it’s rented, their clothes are all branded and they talk as if they gave PowerPoint presentations even when they crack jokes. Their daughters look like models posing for fashion magazines. You won’t see children here. And, yes, they have bodies shaped after the social Neo-Darwinist pattern: the boss of office proletarians must be superior in everything. A superior salary is earned by a superior mind in a superior body. They are the new standard in their world. It is interesting that even when they come here, they tend to wear corporate-style uniforms slightly adapted to vacation days. In the evening, when they get tipsy, they leave their superiority complex and uniform aside and become ordinary people, but the corporate style makes them boring even when they are drunk. That’s the sad part.
Next comes the weirdest part. The area where the most luxurious yachts are moored. I’m talking about yachts à la Abramovici. They really look like huge jewels. Very impressive. Each more spectacular than the next. There are but a few and new ones come every day. Obviously, this “exotic” stopover is too cheap for them. They probably navigate in waters as deep as their owners’ money-stuffed pockets. On their way to “paradise”. Their owners are among the privileged 1% of the world. But this is not their story. What strikes you here is the lack of crew and passengers. All ships are crowded, even those not so luxurious, but here you don’t see anybody. In 30 days, I didn’t see a soul. Only once I saw a man from the staff wiping something down there. Otherwise, the yacht was deserted. Where were the people? Such a navigating machine needs servants, cooks, sailors, technicians, etc. It can carry an army of millionaires. Where are they? Are they really invisible? I’ve heard of the ghost ship myth, but here the ship is visible and only the crew members are ghosts. They are invisible. I must admit that I haven’t been able to penetrate the mystery of the invisible luxury class members. Perhaps they only show themselves to the chosen ones.
Now comes the last cove, that of the proletarian fishermen. You can only see them very early in the morning, when they go out to sea, or when they come back with fish. Their boats are so small and dilapidated that you wonder how brave they must be to go out to sea every day. Most boats look like slightly larger bathtubs. Compared to the huge yachts I’ve just mentioned, they are like walnut halves next to a whale. These fishermen bear the brunt: they have a very hard, exhausting and risky job. They are the ones who feed the bulk of the residents and tourists in the area. Their pockets, however, seem to be almost empty. You can tell this by how they look, what they drink, and most of all, what boats they have. The market is rougher than the sea with them. In Aldulescu’s words, “Physical work, work in general can save you from many things, but not from poverty.” It is a pleasure to talk, eat and drink with these people. They are visible and have time for you.
This is what I saw day by day, for a whole month, while I walked on that part of the port. On the way home, I kept thinking about the mystery of the “invisible people living in the lap of luxury”. About those huge, but empty floating jewels. About the contrast between opulence and the conspicuous absence of their staff, of their people. And about the fishermen and their ramshackle boats. And suddenly I remembered the image of some refugees on an invisible boat. A bunch of desperate mothers, children, old and young people on the verge of drowning, adrift in a boat. An invisible boat. With very visible and worried people, who would have needed a bigger boat. And the boat they needed was moored somewhere in a “civilised” port without people. People and boats. Visible and invisible.
Turkey and our Balkan intimacy
I discovered Turkey only later. Much later. In my personal imagery there was a medieval Turkey – one that I knew about from chronicles and history lessons, all my knowledge about it being passed through the filter of the Russian imperial education and its utopian nostalgia for a lost Byzantinism that needed to be recovered.
The Romanians raised in the Russian Empire have a knowledge gap when it comes to the oriental sense that reaches us via the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. This oriental gap is also specific to the area beyond the mountains, the Romanians raised in the Habsburg Empire.
Nevertheless, there is a big difference from the two above-mentioned oriental gaps. Whereas the Habsburgs prepare you to hate the Orient and the Slavs cover it up with a positive element, this part of the world presents it as sophisticated and subtle; here the Orient it is positivized, not negativized as in the Habsburg Empire, especially since it is also obscured by Byzantinism – Byzantium as a model, be it perverted.
In this sense, the Orient is seen not as something bad in itself, but as something “obscured” by a sophisticated and subtle, yet different and dangerous form of culture: the historical Oriental “cunning”.
When I first arrived in Bucharest, I was shocked by the orientalism of this city. I had only encountered orientalism in the Caucasus, Middle Asia and Central Asia.
In my familiar area – Chișinău, Odessa, Chernivtsi, Kiev – there is neither Orient nor Balkans. All this complicated bazaar is non-existent, although my Budjak is close to Orientalism – we lived with Christianised Turks for hundreds of years. Slavism erased this layer, but certain atavistic elements have remained and they come back when you least expect them.
In Bucharest, however, Orientalism is striking for anyone who comes from beyond the mountains or the Prut. The difference is huge. It hits you hard.
That is why I often say that Bucharest is probably the most oriental city in the EU. But this is a good thing. I was brought up to be fascinated by the Orient and to appreciate it even though I fear it as a “sly” force of history that I cannot control.
My Bessarabian friends and I often laugh at the Bucharest-style “orientalism”. The “I’ll be back in a minute” phrase pulls you out of the Western order, where it means something completely different. I discovered Turkey after my oriental experience in southern Romania. I met Istanbul after Bucharest.
I discovered Turkey after my oriental experience in southern Romania. I met Istanbul after Bucharest.
When I first arrived in Istanbul after my Bucharest experience, I realised something: “Little Paris” is an elitist invention based on an old model of self-colonization. No, Bucharest is not “Little Paris”, it is “Little Istanbul”. In Istanbul I had a strong sense of familiarity – from the smell in the air to how people behaved. Everything was so intimate.
In Istanbul I had a strong sense of familiarity – from the smell in the air to how people behaved. Everything was so intimate.
Turkey is probably the country we feel closest to us. It gives us the feeling of “being at home” outside our traditional space. Except for the language, the culture and the religion, a Romanian coming from southern Romania, Bucharest in particular, feels more at home in Istanbul than in Chișinău.
Sometimes we don’t realize the huge role played by the Turks in our history and historical development. Istanbul had a more important role in our political, social and identity evolution than Paris or Berlin. Even our state is more of a Turkish or Ottoman “product”; the Turks certainly played a key role in this. There are historians who can explain this quite well, albeit in whispers.
The fact that we, “historical upstarts”, want to erase and forget this trying and make up “civilized” genealogies is stupid and harms us. It is better to settle for what we have, especially since our Ottoman legacy is rather complex and by no means “inferior”.
I remember how it was when I first moved to a small Turkish Muslim town. It was autumn – my God, it smelled like at my grandma’s – roasted peppers, dumata, paprika. The oil from the fried gözleme. It was exactly like home.
And when the muezzin in the mosque started to pray, it sounded exactly like the mass in the churches of Bucharest – the oriental lament. At home, across the Prut, they sing in the Slavic polyphonic style, but in Bucharest, in the Eastern churches, you don’t know whether you hear a priest or a muezzin. It’s like at home.
I was thinking about this while pondering over the tragedy that the Turks are going through. Maybe suffering brings us closer – to stand in solidarity, to help each other in the things that matter.
I love Turkey and Istanbul is by far the most important European city at the moment. This is how I feel, although many sleeping monsters wake up there as well.
It is a pity that we know each other less and less and the connections between us are disappearing. Our Orientalism is a great heritage that we owe mostly to the Turks. Why give it up? In exchange for what?
Music and people. What tender rock is played on the Dalmatian Coast…
I am on Bosanska, up the street from the synagogue, at the top corner of Diocletian’s Palace in Split. In front I see a small square, a Catholic church and a small park. On the left, a gallery. Behind, a small mosque. On the right, a narrow street with famous taverns. Music is coming from all sides. I won’t say anything about the English who howl regularly at 4 a.m. sharp.
In the park at the end of the square, local bands play two or three times a week. Second-class provincial mainstream rock. But it’s genuine. No worse than our first-class rock. I can hear music from the art gallery, which has a tavern where the “elite” gathers: artists pretending to be rich, corporatists pretending to be educated, etc. You know what it is like, every fashionable city has them. The music is good, it doesn’t bother you, it stops at 12 p.m. precisely. Civilisation...
The street with many taverns does not disturb me. I am protected by walls, so all I hear is muffled noises. But at night I go out to see the “fauna”. In about five taverns, a kind of hipsters from around the world gather together. The Scandinavians prevail, for obvious financial reasons. They are like “mini-Control”. Between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., the very narrow street is blocked. The atmosphere is invigorating. Most people are about 30, some are 50 and mimic adolescence. Inside the palace, some singers are always singing syrupy folk music. Their audience is over 50+, meditative and sentimental. They sit politely on the steps like at school, resigned to their fate.
For me, the most interesting thing is the music from the lower part of the city, four minutes away from me, on the seashore. Here there is a stage where they sing “for the rest”. All kinds of music: folk, choral, pop and rock. The pop pieces remind me of Jugoton (a TV station that plays pop & rock from the Yugoslav period): a mixture of Soviet disco, German pop, where the kitsch must be brought to the fore, and Balkan influences with oriental elements. Great, like in spa resorts. I love it…
For all that, the rock bands are the best. The singers are seniors who only play covers versions. Four old, long-haired instrumentalists dressed like old-school rockers (leather, cowboy boots and headscarves), moving like the stars of the 70s. The two slightly younger female vocalists’ voices are hoarse from alcohol and tobacco, but they know how to sing and their bodies look OK in the dim light. And they also move nicely.
They sing cover after cover. The show is a bit sad, but the covers are good, sometimes better than the original. In this place, the singers seem better than the original band: they spare you the VIP aura. They don’t lie to you. And their show is free. The climax. The song ends. People stop dancing and applaud sincerely. Two 6 or 7-year-old children approach the stage and shout, “Mommy, you were good, bravo!” The rocker mom comes closer, kisses them and goes back on stage: ‘Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun of yours?’ What a sweet moment… Oh, Jugoton…
The smell of Sarajevo
One autumn I stayed in Sarajevo. I went out and felt a unique, unforgettable smell from my childhood. Roasted peppers with tomatoes and garlic. In autumn, it smells likes this everywhere in the Balkans. I was born in a different part of the Balkans, in Budjak, but the smell was the same.
In the Budjak area, autumns are very beautiful, the fields and the vine leaves turning copper. The nights are colder, but you can still sleep in the “polog” (swathe) in the yard, if you cover yourself with a thicker “iorgan” (quilt).
On such nights, the sky is very clear. The moon and the stars shine so brightly that you can cross any road or path without a lantern. You don’t even know if the nights are white or the days are dark. The clearest sign that autumn has arrived in the region is neither the changing colours of the landscapes, nor the sun, redder and bigger, nor the cool, moonlit nights and the bright stars on the dark sky, but the smell that envelops all the villages and hamlets in the region. Once you have discovered it, you will never forget.
It is the aroma of grape bunches and vine leaves crushed together, which is sweet at first and in sweet-sour after a few days, announcing that the “tulburel” (young wine) has started to “boil” and that the “must” (freshly crushed grape juice) is already “boiling”. Soon, in people’s cellars, the “must” will ferment and turn into fresh wine, the joy of the peasant, the merchant and the drunkard. This is the “good news” for those people. People full of life, who change their faces and clothes in autumn. Only the sectarians, puritans who disliked alcohol – this scourge and mortal sin, as they called it – would not share it. But the smell, that smell, we all loved, year after year and generation after generation. To understand its charm, the whole process, which is much more complicated, must be explained. It starts with picking the fruit, when your hands become so sticky and black from the dust that settles hard to the skin, that you feel as if you were wearing rubber gloves. It goes on with the fermenting, the pressing, and the washing of the barrels and ends with the sheltering of the filled barrels in the cold cellars.
In addition to this unmistakable aroma, here you could also enjoy a smell specific to the season: the autumn smoke. In this season, when you cross the fields of Budjak or Bessarabia, you see piles of leaves and branches smoking day and night. They smoulder with a bluish wisp that joins the earth and the sky in a lascivious belly dance of an odalisque. This smell is unique and memorable, a mixture of dry leaves, twigs and plants that the peasants burn in their gardens. A great Russian philosopher who once travelled through the area called it balkanski dîmok, Balkan smoke. We were not yet in the Balkans, we were just a gate that the Slavic traveller went through on his way to the Balkans. But the smell was divine.
The bell – its current medieval sound: Sarajevo – Timișoara
In Sarajevo I discovered the sound. The imam’s prayer reminded me of the soft oriental liturgies in Bucharest. The moment the prayer began, I felt at home among Muslims, as I had among the Romanian Eastern Orthodox Christians. It was the same in Timișoara: the dialogue of the Catholic and the Serbian Orthodox bells makes me believe that here is another part of the Balkans.
In Timișoara I have the privilege of staying behind the Catholic Cathedral in Union Square. I know, it’s a big step from the flea market – the ocsko in Mehala neighbourhood –, but we’re adapting.
The story is different now: every day I am “disturbed” by the sounds of the bells. I haven’t experienced this in a long time. They ring so often. I really like their sound: in the morning, at noon – the famous Catholic bells ringing at noon – and in the evening. Our Orthodox brothers don’t ring the bells rhythmically every day. I was brought up “sterile”, with a different kind of sound, vocal, instrumental – I’m not used to bell sounds, although I can still hear the Orthodox ones.
But it is a sound that somehow comes from ancient times, the kind that wants to convey a meaning, to make a point. No one knows what exactly, but it carries with it the aura of a long forgotten archaic sense.
The petty bourgeoisie and the middle class enjoy the sun on the terraces in Unirii Square, hipsters and artists hang out in the cultural area, and suddenly at 12 o’clock, ding-dong!, a crystalline sound conquers the square. A clear sound of multiple bells with different tonalities, harmonized and rhythmic, radically changes the soundscape. Any new-rhythm techno DJ is taken aback: how do they make it, how do they produce it? It is from another world, very different from the sounds of our contemporary material world. There is a historicity of the sound, which is closely related to the matter, objects and beings that produce it.
The countryside produces a certain type of sounds that are much closer to nature: rustling, bellowing, bleating, barking. All these sounds are nice and have their own smell – they are smelly sounds.
The industrial age comes with its own sounds: the siren, the locomotive, the factory, the plant sounding mechanical and metallic.
The industrial age comes with its own sounds: the siren, the locomotive, the factory, the plant sounding mechanical and metallic.
The radio and the television have their sounds, beyond those they reproduce. Before the remote control appeared, the channel was changed with a sound familiar to my generation, just as the sound of a cassette tape being “swallowed” by a tape recorder is a leitmotif of my generation: we would use a pencil or pen to fix what could still be fixed.
The new digital technology has no sound – it can only reproduce a sound, simulacra of sounds. Tapping a number to launch a call can no longer make the dial-phone sound, but it can reproduce it.
The immateriality of sound through reproduction greatly changes our type of emotion and perception. Is this good? Is this bad? I have no idea. I have always advocated for the coexistence of all sounds, all practices. In other words, we should produce new sounds without giving up the old ones.
In this sense, the ringing of bells has exactly this function of “historicizing” the sound. It is the sound that generations and generations have heard for hundreds of years. It is about the only thing that connects us not only to our great-great-grandparents, but also to each other. It is a public sound that we all recognize. It is the sound that makes us contemporary with each other, in solidarity with each other without realizing it – but it works beyond our awareness.
This is what I call the power of matter, the design of matter, which is often more formative than non-material power. Forgive me, I work on infrastructure and its social, cultural and political functions. And I don’t joke about sound and smell.