One Night in Romania

This is the stuff, the Chowk should be made of - the real people with real experiences to share. I think chowk staff should also start categorizing articles by categories such as travelogues etc. because as the database will grow it will be hard to keep track of the subjects.

Malik - very good. very well penned. Hope to see more penmanship from you soon. I think this american sponsored anti-Muslim hatred will go a long way. Unfortunately hate is always a two way street. I think two years is enough time for americans to understand why rest of the world hates them - and this despite the fact that their opponents are terrorists who kill indisciminately.

I think the more elite pakistanis are strip-searched and publically humilaited world-wide, the better it is for peace and prosperity in Pakistan. We have a situation where a small elite group of pakistanis has sub-contracted the running of the country to mullahs and military. This elite group, based on its loot of the country (`rent from Mullah and Military``) is busy going to Harvard, living in London, backpacking in Europe. Meanwhile the military and mullahs have transformed the country into a kind of suicide-bomber nation state, threatening its neighbors and minorities.

There is a relationship between your community and yourself. My advice to you is to seek to change your country. And until that happens, I for one, hope you are strip searched and every national border and airport.

soundmeister #10 - ``whinning`` was not the purpose in my mind when i sat down to write this article. I simply wanted to share one of my experiences as a traveller. However, I would say that dynamics of being harassed on San Francisco airport are quite different from the dynamics you face on a remote east european border crossing.

tahmed32 #17 - after all the battles we have had on chowk, it was nice to read your positive comments :)

Zain Malik

Absorbing account. Seems you were a gypsy in the political sense of the word in Romania..

Temporal # 2 – Currently I am in New York City. I am expecting to be in Toronto in late April. I would sure like to get together with you, and few other chowkies. Lets touch base later.

Echoboom # 5 – thanks for your caution words. Having worked in the information security arena for a while, I am quite aware of the pits and falls of sharing email addresses. I have shared my email address in the hopes to get to know a few Pakistani globe-trotters who would share tips and tales from their excursions.

Sobia # 11 - siiighhhhh.... Please make a mention of my article in your personal diary :) Once you do that, i would consider that ``I have arrived``

Well written article - clear narrative and the good build up of suspense. And certainly a terrifying adventure. Reminds me of the Romanian pen pal I had in college - I lost her address, and she kept writing anyway for quite some time inquiring about why I was not responding, but never bothering to put her return address on the envelope. Seems like they dont think too hard in Romania.

Zain:

hope you forgive this digression:)

Proud Muslim`s Tarana

You Should write a personal letter of thanks/curses to Mr Bush

interesting -- you should send your travel piece to a newspaper -- i think some of them would gladly publish it -- try some pakistani newspapers zain

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Uff! Baal baal bach gaye!

This piece reminds me of Ijaz Gul`s mountaineering travails.
Good account.........held the interest and was not boring.

Good luck to you Zain, on your future adventures!

I appreciate those who liked my account of travel in Romania. No, I do not have any bitter feelings and would love to go there again. However, next time I will get a prior visa, just to be on the safe side.

A few of the readers have asked me through email if it is risky for Pakistanis to go backpacking given the current tense climate. I would say that generally crossing borders in western Europe is far safer than eastern Europe. Old soviet era laws and bureaucracy still lingers in much of Eastern Europe, which can cause nuisance in addition to bribe money. Also, if like me you are planning to leave the big cities aside and visit the smaller towns in east European countries, you can face the added discomfort of suspicious glances. They are not used to seeing non-white backpackers in their midst.

East European countries do not have a well-planned infrastructure for backpackers. It took me several visits to the Ministry of Tourism in Bulgaria to get a local map – and even that was in Cyrillic alphabet.

Having said this, I find a higher sense of adventure in figuring out your way in the less known towns of eastern Europe, than in the well trodden cities of western Europe.

Zain Malik

wow Zain !!

Well written. Very absorbing. Your description was so powerful I felt as if it was happening right in front of me. I even felt cold shudders sitting on my computer table while reading your description of the ``siberian cold`` and the ``howling winds`` :)

Did you visit all those countries on the same trip? How long was the trip?

Zain,

While at a human level, I do appreciate the trouble you went through, I suppose you need to count yourself among the lucky ones. All the Romanians did to you was refuse entry into their country. You were not tortured, or jailed or even subjected to the third degree. At the most, treat this experience as a valuable lesson never to fukk around with immigration policies of foreign countries.

You are an American citizen, surely you know better. The one time I travelled (from India, pre 9/11) to your great country, the immigration goon at SF international airport wanted to see my list of appointments, the invitation to a seminar I was attending, a hotel reservation slip. The fact that I had just got off a 30-hour journey mattered little to him. I was irritated, sure, but in the end it`s HIS country, so I calmly told him my appointment list was in my checked in baggage somewhere, then showed him a copy of the seminar brochure and invited him to call up the event organiser to confirm whether I was welcome there. I must say that seemed to convince him and I had no more problems. The bottomline is that YOU alone are responsible for what happened to you that night. Stop cribbing about it, it has nothing to do with being Pakistani or Muslim or whatever other baggage you lug around. Grow up and stop whining, is my sincere advice.

Very well-written, Zain...i couldn`t stop reading. What a horrible ordeal to go through, and that too all alone! Keep writing for Chowk, you have a flair for it :)

I was wondering where I had read another such story recently. Well, it was Narayana Murthy, CEO of Infosys talking about his experience in Bulgaria many years ago.

(www.dailypioneer.com, March 14, Agenda)

``...N R Narayana Murthy: Yes, I was a very committed socialist. There was, of course, the age factor. It is said that if you aren`t a Leftist in your youth, you have no heart, but if you remain a Leftist after 30, you have no head! I grew up in an environment where Jawaharlal Nehru and his socialist ideas dominated the public discourse. Nationalisation was seen as a solution, setting up industries in the public sector was the economic mantra. In college, I used to strongly espouse the socialist cause. I was quite active in promoting Left-wing ideas.

CM: What happened then? How come you changed your views so completely?

NRN: Things were changing all around anyway and my ideas too got modified over time. But it was my brush with the socialist system that came as a revelation. I was shocked and shaken out of my fascination with socialism. I reasoned to myself `If socialism means this, I would rather not be a socialist.`

CM: What was the experience?

NRN: Well, I was hitch-hiking from London to Mumbai when I was still a student. We would move in buses, trains, cars, whatever came our way. Travelling by train through Yugoslavia, we crossed into Bulgaria. At a town called Nis, I encountered difficulty getting money exchanged. A girl who was travelling in the same compartment with another man, got talking to me about this. Gradually, we started talking about various things. Suddenly, when we reached Sofia, I was yanked out of the compartment by the police. It appears that the girl`s companion had not liked her talking to me although it was completely innocent conversation.

I was bundled into a detention centre, my passport and money taken away. They threw me onto a cold, stone floor and I wasn`t given anything to eat. Three days passed that way. They didn`t tell me why I was being held, what was the crime I had committed. I suppose they thought I had lots of dollars - which I didn`t. Then, just when I had lost all hope and felt terribly depressed about spending the rest of my life in jail, they came to my cell and said I was free to go. `You are from India, which is a friendly country, so we are letting you off,` I was curtly told.

Naturally, I was overjoyed at being free again, but the experience shattered me. Is this what socialism means, I wondered. I think that was the day my illusions were broken and I have never looked back...``