More from the Census.

The list of Romania’s biggest cities (excluding Bucharest, which is the only city in the country of any real size) has been changed radically by the data released last week.

The 2002 list looked like this:

1. Iasi 321,580
2. Cluj 318,027
3. Timisoara 317,651
4. Constanta 310,526
5. Craiova 302,622
6. Galati 298,584
7. Brasov 283,901
8. Braila 216,929
9. Oradea 206,527
10. Bacau 183,484

Today the top 10 cities outside of the capital are:

1. Cluj 309,136
2. Timisoara 303,708
3. Iasi 263,410
4. Constanta 254,693
5. Craiova 243,765
6. Galati 231,204
7. Brasov 227,961
8. Oradea 183,123
9. Braila 168,389
10. Arad 147,992

Romania now has just two cities outside the capital with populations over 300,000.

The figures (along with the fact that the percentage of Romanians living in the countryside has remained stable at around 48 per cent) also suggest that as many people are emigrating from cities as they are from rural communities.

As you may know (if you have been paying attention), we have been in Sibiu of late, researching a brand new In Your Pocket mini-guide to the city. (We should really now be writing up our notes instead of messing about here, but that’s another story).

Anyway, runaway tigers aside, we liked the place a lot. It is not quite Brasov but it is on the right track, and its central squares are in better shape than any other town we’ve been to in Romania (a result of the place being beautified ahead of it becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2007).

Sibiu's Fortifications

As soon as the guide is written, published and the text and photos are online, you will of course be the first to know.

Meantime, we leave you with a photo of a bench at Sibiu train station, which is, to say the least, in bad shape:

It is not, however, in quite as bad a shape as this one:

We know you are longing to find out what the cover of the new Brasov In Your Pocket mini-guide looks like, so here it is:

The actual guide can be picked up in all the usual places in Brasov (such as Tourist Information).

Now that Brasov is in the bag, we are about to start work on a brand new Romanian In Your Pocket mini-guide: Sibiu, which will – if the wind blows in the right direction – be out by Christmas.

As we mentioned last week, a new issue of Brasov In Your Pocket is in the works. In fact, it is done and dusted and probably rolling off a printing press as we type.

The cover, should anyone be interested, is this autumnal scene of the canal (yes, it is a canal) which runs alongside Aleea Dupa Ziduri:

Brasov In Your Pocket, Autumn 2011

The Foreword, for those of you who will not get to see the print version, kicks off as follows:

Usually, we at In Your Pocket have to take a fair bit of criticism from people (usually locals) who think that we are a bit too harsh on the cities we cover. It is an occupational hazard. Last month, however, we faced a new situation, a real first: we had to take a fair bit of stick from a reader who was angry that we were too kind about Brasov.

Oh yes. The fact that we said it was the best town in Romania to visit was a bit too much for this reader to take, who insisted that Brasov is in fact just as ugly a city as Bucharest.

At the same time, however, we have changed a little the introduction on the Bucharest homepage at the In Your Pocket website.

Partially reproducing an old post from these pages, we now direct our anger (and angst!) at travellers who are disappointed by the fact that Bucharest is not as awful as they had hoped. It now reads:

Bucharest is a vibrant, modern city which – while it has its problems – is increasingly like any other European capital. The young (and the not so young) enjoy going out in its cafes, bars, pubs, restaurants, clubs, discos and live music venues, much as their counterparts do in almost every other city in the developed world.

So it is disconcerting when journalists from liberal newspapers in Western Europe describe Bucharest’s rejuvenated Old Town – the buzzing entertainment area increasingly serving as the heart of Romania’s capital – as ‘all a bit homogenous and uninteresting.’

The presence of designer stores is seen as further evidence of Bucharest’s soullessness.

We have always been stunned by how some travellers (not just to Romania) can be genuinely disappointed to find that people in traditionally poorer countries actually have the same aspirations (and a desire to enjoy the same kind of nightlife) as they do.

For they are missing the point.

The fact that Bucharest is increasingly affluent, increasingly modern and increasingly just like every other European capital is something to be celebrated. Compare Bucharest now with the Bucharest of 20 years ago. Then ask locals – and only locals, for nobody else’s opinion (including ours) is of any relevance – what they prefer: the austerity of then or the abundance of now? The nights when the lights went off at 8pm or the 24-hour city we have today?

We are fairly confident we know the answer.

Fair?

Currently working on the next issue of Brasov In Your Pocket (a fact which will almost certainly not please some of our readers, who appear to think that our life’s work should be devoted to promoting Bucharest, and Bucharest alone), we yesterday decided to check – once and for all – the veracity of the much-spouted claim that during the 1950s, when Brasov was known as Orasul Stalin (Stalin City), some of the trees on the Tâmpa Mountain overlooking the city were replaced with those of darker foliage to spell out the Great Comrade’s name.

Though we have been told of this ‘fact’ by a few people over the years, from friends and relatives in Fagaras to strangers on trains, we still had no idea until yesterday if it was true, or if it was simply an urban myth spun out to dumb, gullible foreigners.

Indeed, we have published the claim for years in Brasov In Your Pocket based only on what we’ve been told. (Having said that, when the Tourist Information Office in Brasov confirmed the story for us last year we did kind of begin to think that it was, in fact, probably true).

Still, some photographic evidence is always nice.

A search on Google revealed, at first, very little. Some fascinating postcards of Brasov in the Orasul Stalin era, but not the Stalin on the Tâmpa money shot we were looking for.

Then we found this:

A fost odata Orasul Stalin... Click for the source (cultura.prinbrasov.ro), and link to the full-sized photo

So yes, it would appear to be for real.

The photo above accompanies this excellent blog post (in Romanian only) which outlines how the renaming of Brasov came about.

In short, the renaming (which took place in October 1950) was ostensibly carried out at the insistence of the city’s CFR (railway) workers, who sent a proposal to the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers’ Party proposing that the city be renamed Stalin in honour of the ‘dear, beloved friend, teacher and liberator of our country.’ Brasov, the CFR workers insisted, deserved the name Stalin because the city’s factories had exceeded their production quotas by ’114 per cent’ in the first half of 1950.

Hogwash. The decision to rename Brasov Stalin was taken in Bucharest, and the CFR proposal was merely window dressing.

Anyway, for our purposes, the most interesting bit is the last part of the second comment, which explains why there are so few photos of this unnatural phenomenon:

Referitor la inscripţia de pe Tâmpa, ea nu are legătură cu momentul schimbării de nume al oraşului, ci este o iniţiativă ulterioară marginală şi marginalizată. Din cauza aceasta s-a evitat reproducerea ei în fotografiile epocii, folosindu-se chiar tehnici de mascare prin retuşare.

In English:

The idea of the inscription on the Tâmpa had no connection with the renaming of the city. It came after and was quickly disowned, to the point that even photographs taken of Brasov at the time avoided including the inscription. Photos were even retouched to exclude it.

The evidence would appear to back up this comment: Stalin is certainly not visible on the Tâmpa in these postcards from the 1950s:

Stalin airbrushed out of history. Oh the irony

Clearly Stalin City, but his name is not on the mountain

Our next question would be: Can anyone tell us exactly when Stalin disappeared from the Tâmpa?

Oh, and while we were looking for Stalin, we found this map of Transylvania from the 1950s. Note that the whole county (region, in fact) was called Stalin, and note the name of the region next door: the Autonomous Hungarian Region.

Map of Transylvania, 1956, Note the Regiunea Autonoma Maghiara (Autonomous Hungarian Region)

(There’s a prize for the first reader who quotes the Romanian constitution…)

And as a last word, it’s worth pointing out that on the other side of the Tâmpa, a horribly kitsch, Hollywood-style Brasov sign now takes pride of place.

Stalin would not have approved