Lupeni

In her provocative book Café Europa, Slavenka Drakulic explains that Eastern European “people were forced to jump from a village into a city, to make the giant leap from feudalism to communism, without the time or education to develop a civic society and all its values and habits, from the concept of private property to human rights…” (36-37).

This coerced urbanization resulted in country folk bringing the country to the city. In Lupeni, evidences of this history are still seen in the interaction of peasant culture with city life…or heard in the rhythmic clopping of horse-drawn wagons down the main street, carrying all manner of farmer and cargo right alongside the cars. While walking with friends along the main road a couple evenings ago, I heard the customary clopping but soon stopped to watch in astonishment as two beautiful unbridled horses ambled across the street, through a hedge of bushes, across the sidewalk in front of us, and into the adjacent park. What?! Returning down the same street later in the night, I was even more amazed to see the two horses again, apparently satisfied from good grazing and placidly walking in a line down the middle of the road! I stood peering over the bushes along the sidewalk, watching cars veer and slow, but the horses appeared unperturbed even by oncoming headlights. Perhaps they were the more audacious but less reasonable distant cousins of Boxer from Orwell’s Animal Farm. Fortunately, Napoleon was nowhere in sight.