One Night in Romania

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Zain:

first a warm welcome!... and hope you will continue to share and regale us with your travel experiences...whenever i get a chance...rather less and less of lately i try to get away and back pack...if you are still in TO we should get together someday and exchange notes...

...presently others will comment on what a liability being a muslim or pakistani is these days...i`d rather not indulge in that discussion for now...

rgds,

t

Zain-Malik:
A good matter-of-fact reportage.

It is precisely that you are a proud muslim that most of us muslims would like to know more about your travels.

What else is ``adventurous?`` In some stupid minds it is anything that has nothing to do with being muslim.

just say your piece and move on. Inter-acting on a personal level thru e-mails or what not I would strongly discourage. In fact may I suggest not to flaunt around your addresses and numbers. Those aware of inter-net protocol stongly advise never ever to divulge such info. unless it is for business purposes.

It also shields you from those lonely ones who can`t find friends in ``real`` life.

I hope you would pay attention. You are a proud muslim and I care.

Very unusual destination for backpacking! Why Romania of all places? You sure had an adventure and a story to tell..
My feeling is that if you had offered the bulgarian immigration guy some money he might have called a cab for you..

Welcome agin as ...Zain_malik :)

Excellent travel story! Thanks for sharing this with us.

I surely could not be the first backpacker that ever entered Romania! I wondered if perhaps being the first “Pakistani” backpacker entering Romania was the REAL issue here.

No, You were definitely not the first Pakistani backpacker in Rumania--many have done it before you. [I was fortunate to do Eastern Europe in 1992--not too long after the iron curtain was lifted.
I went through a similar harrowing experience, but mine was at the Rumanian-Hungarian border--Hungarians threw me back to Rumania; middle of the night I had to hitch a ride on a truck to sneak in Hungary. I have written about it in my travelogue, `Khusk wa tur mulk wa loag.`]

C.

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...``

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 :)

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.

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?

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

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!

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

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

Zain:

hope you forgive this digression:)

Proud Muslim`s Tarana