1990: A springtime of hope. V for peace. Bucharest near Revolution Square, boy in front of a bullet hole riddled Dacia.
In 1990 Bucharest was very much under construction as part of Ceaușescu’s program of Systematization (Sistematizarea). in the 1980s an area of 8 square kilometres of the historic centre of Bucharest was levelled. At the time of death of Ceaușescu many buildings were still under construction.
In Timișoara on 15 December 1989 the people openly protested the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu after the government tried to evict Pastor László Tőkés. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the abolishment of the Brezhnev Doctrine by Mikhail Gorbachev Ceaușescu became more and more isolated. Empowered by the protests in Timișoara the revolution smouldered. On 21 December Ceaușescu addressed the nation on television from the balcony of the Central Committee building in Bucharest. The crowd started to chant "Ti-mi-șoa-ra! Ti-mi-șoa-ra!”. 22 December Ceaușescu and his wife fled the city by helicopter. During their escape they were arrested by local police. On 25 December Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu are found guilty of genocide in Timișoara and they were promptly executed.
A few months later in the springtime of 1990 I travelled to Rumania and visited Arad, Timișoara, Bucharest, Târgu Mureș, Sighișoara, and several smaller towns and villages in Transylvania, Crișana and the historical region Banat.
Between 1987 and 1992 I travelled to Eastern Europe as often as money allowed. During my first journeys to Bulgaria, Czecho-Slovakia and Romania the iron curtain was very much still in place. When I travelled to Romania for the first time Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena had been executed only a few months before. On 17 December 1989 93 demonstrators were killed in Timișoara by military forces, police, and the Securitate. On 25 December the dictator was dead. The Revoluția Român only lasted 9 days.
In Bucharest the scars of Romanian Systematization were obvious. The program started in 1974 and reached the capital city in the 1980s. Historic neighbourhoods were simply wiped out. The House of the Republic was built. When Ceaușescu was killed the project in the capital was not yet finished. In the skeletons of half finished apartment blocks Roma families had moved in, living under a roof but without walls, water or electricity. I was 20 years old and traveling without money for hotels. I had to rely on strangers to sleep.
Over the years I took countless trains far into Southern and Eastern Europe, mostly with an Interrail ticket which was available for anybody between the age of 18 and 26. Destinations were: Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
Greek Shepard. Photo taken on my first ‘far away’ holiday without parents at 17.
The trains were great. You could open a window and stick your head out of the window until you became tired of the wind. These photographs were made during one journey to Slovenia somewhere in the 1990s and a couple of years after Slovenia became independent (1991).
