Jacob and Esau or Jonathan and David? European Union accession companions; neighbours with a similar past. A border 608 kilometres long, and hardly a day’s thought. Bulgaria and Romania are as similar as they are different, and despite dreaming upon the same stars each night, they just ain’t feeling the fraternal love. As Silviu Catana from the Romanian embassy in Bulgaria puts it, countries behind the Iron Curtain didn’t have the greatest affection for each other, with daily efforts to outstep the other being the rule. But, he continues, a lot of this is due to the communist mentality and lack of knowledge of the other.
Ion Constantin lives in Bucharest. He has had the opportunity to visit Bulgaria many times, with every new visit revealing to him new and unexpected positive aspects. “Bulgaria is a beautiful country and its people, too” he says. “Generally the Balkan area is very close to my soul, and I’m sorry not to have more time and resources to enjoy the huge historical and cultural fortune of this area.”
Konstantina Vassileva, a student of European studies at Sofia University, has never been to Romania. She agrees with Catana about the lack of learning between the two neighbours. “We are taught that Romanian is part of the Romance group of languages, whereas the Bulgarian is part of the Slavonic ones. We also learn about events from Romanian history that are also part of Bulgarian. Outside of that, pretty much nothing is taught.”
This doesn’t stop her from wanting to travel to Romania, however. She is curious to see what it has to offer – “not in terms of fancy hotels or the standard useless tourist souvenirs”, but to see the natural environment, to meet more Romanian people, “see what they think of us, Bulgarians, how they cope with EU accession...”.
The general opinion for Bulgarians that The Sofia Echo interviewed is that Romanians are kind people, who succeed in taking pleasure in life, producing good music and having revolutions, as Tsvetomir Tsenkov, a Pleven-born architect who has lived in Sofia for about 10 years, put it.
Vassileva, having spent a few weeks in the summer of 2006 at the Fulbright International Summer Institute with students from all over the region, also has a positive opinion of her Romanian counterparts.
For Mimi Boycheva, a stay-at-home mother, it seems that “most Bulgarians don’t have a well-formulated opinion of Romania, which is sad, because Romanians are actually very nice people”.
This could be, again, due to lack of knowledge about the country. The Bulgarians interviewed for this article concurred that they really don’t hear much about Romania, be it in terms of news, business or tourism. In most cases, it just is not a part of common thought.
Svetoslava Dimitrova, marketing manager for a property firm, said: “If the media talks more about Romania, I will listen more (for information) about this country”.
As Vassileva explains it, it is the power of the media that has one of the greatest influences: “The more popular something is, the more popular it becomes. I don’t think I have seen a lot of ads about Romania and the places you can spend your holiday there. If it were better advertised here and the prices were good, I think a lot of Bulgarian tourists would consider the possibility of spending some time there”.
Catana concurs. “Romania is a little expensive for Bulgarians. It’s already expensive for us. That’s why many Romanians came to the (Bulgarian) seaside last summer. … Bulgaria is still an unknown countriy for Romanians, and vice versa. Even though we’re neighbours.”
Vassileva notes that “we mustn’t underestimate the fact that Greece and Turkey are very prominent tourist destinations”, with, as Boycheva says, a well-developed tourist sector: “Their location is better, their sea resorts are more popular not only among Bulgarians, but among other citizens of the EU as well, and in many cases it is inexpensive to go there”. In addition, she points out that a round-trip plane ticket from Sofia to Bucharest is 150 to 200 euro, the same as for a flight to Paris and back.
What Bulgaria and its southern neighbours have in way of shores, Romania has in terms of mountains and wilderness. Catana favours Bustene and Poiana Brosav. Boycheva shares that she has been to one of Romania’s winter resorts and “I have to admit that it is a very beautiful place, it just needs more advertising”. For Tsenkov, it is the unique wooden churches and Maramures that hold the greatest attraction.
With an oft shared political past, it might seem that Bulgaria and Romania should be brothers in arms. Media portrayals of both countries, however, tended to express a better-than-thou attitude, particularly as regards their European Union accession efforts.
About two or three years ago, it was claimed that Bulgaria was ahead in the reform processes, says Vassileva. “But it seems that we became a bit too self-satisfied and while we were resting on our laurels, Romania worked really hard on its improvement. In the last months of 2006, while they were praised for their achievements, Bulgaria was mosty criticised. I think this was a good reminder of the fact that we shouldn’t look down on our neighbouring country but instead try to build positive relations with it.”
Now that they’re in the EU together, there is a general hope for more joint projects in way of regional tourism, which Tsenkov believes will first help the two countries get to know each other better, and then assist in their continued development.
Constantin sees Bulgaria’s and Romania’s success as EU members dependent on their politicians doing their best for a better relationship between the two countries, and with Europe as a whole. “Being a politician in our countries means to be resistant to culture, to have as little good sense as possible, to be resistant to any criticism. With such politicians, we need a hundred years to be the equals of the others in the EU. This is the reason I only believe in personal contacts between normal ‘ordinary’ people from both countries as a solution to improve our relationship.”
The next five years should bring a big change in the relationship between the two countries, Boycheva says, with Romania attracting more foreign investments and Bulgaria attracting more Romanian tourists, a point to which Catana also agrees.
Regional development “is a matter of investments, and how to make investments with good efficiency”, he says.
The current economic situation in Bulgaria and Romania is quite similar, much in part to the fall of communism and the political changes that came after 1989. “The European Union will give us more opportunities to prove what we really are and to get rid of all these prejudices that people have against us – corruption, poverty, bad relationships with minorities,” says Catana. “We are forced to change, whether we like it or not. We’re in touch with the West. And I think that there are things to learn from the West, but I think that the West also has many things to learn from us.”
As Constantin says, “being Balkan is a reason for pride and not a pejorative, which is how it is used by many politicians and political analysts in both countries”.
