My company’s been changing a lot this year, and one of the impacts of this change was I took on a wonderful team of data scientists and engineers in Romania. I’ve been a big fan of Romania, its culture and its language for the past few years, and so when my colleague there suggested it would be good for me to do a meet-and-greet at our three offices this past Spring, I leapt on the opportunity.

The first leg of the trip took me to Cluj-Napoca. My best friend had visited there a few years prior and enjoyed it, but I had not yet been and wasn’t really sure what to expect. I arrived early at the city’s small airport which appeared to be under renovations. A big sign along the tarmac indicated that the work was funded as part of a European Union initiative. Off the plane, I headed straight to the exit to try to find a bus to the city. This was not as easy as I had hoped, as the bus stop is a short walk outside the airport’s charmingly small parking lot.

Cluj is tucked in between the rolling hills of the Carpathian mountains, and as I rode the bus city inwards, I marveled at how the city reminded me of being in the Shenandoah Valley to some extent. Coming into the city, I walked ten minutes from the bus stop along one of those broad, straight communist boulevards until I found my hotel. Gathering my bearings, I decided to stroll to the city center.

While I was there, the Transylvanian International Film Festival was taking place, and the classically european city center was bustling. I walked around and soaked in the mixture of Baroque architecture along with well-preserved Brutalist pieces. I got the sense that Cluj prided itself on being a culture center of Romania, and crowds were gathering around street performers and buskers. Bucharest was once called “Little Paris of the East,” but as I walked around Cluj I couldn’t help but think that the Transylvanian city felt more like France than the capital.

After a visit with my colleagues in our small office in Cluj, I headed off with my coworker to the airport to head over to Bucharest, Romania’s primate city. I had visited Bucharest last year and had already done the touristy thing in the city center, but this time my coworker took me around to some of her favorite places and showed me some of the city’s hidden gems, the highlight an eclair shop with pastries that make my mouth water even now.

As a big fan of Art Deco, Bucharest is really a hidden gem. The city is filled with incredible examples of Art Deco buildings constructed during the city’s golden era. Though many of the buildings are slowly falling into disrepair, it’s easy to see the optimism of the era: not a feeling typically associated with Romania. Bucharest is a city with immense potential, and were I a bit younger, I might have considered spending a few years there.

After Bucharest, we headed to our third and final city, and one I can’t write much about because I simply didn’t have enough time there: Iași. The northeastern city reminded me a bit like Portland. We met a friend of my colleague for dinner in a restaurant that looked like a converted house, parked squarely in the middle of an otherwise residential street, the backyard dining area shaded by a tree canopy. Iași is in a region with great wine and the food was spectacular. Good company and conversation took the place of sightseeing, and it was only on my way out of the city that I was able to spy the visually stunning neo-Gothic Palace of Culture. I have to go back.

With the trip in the books, I was all set to head back to Berlin. But I had one more stop to make, and its one I was glad to have the opportunity for. This trip was taking place during the Eurocup, which was hosted by Germany. Flights that week were ungodly expensive, so I sought a cheaper option and booked a weekend flight from nearby Chișinău, Moldova. Finding a way to get there was not easy, but with my meager Romanian was able to secure a ticket on the early bus to the east. Up at 4 AM, I headed down to the bus station and got on a small but comfortable private coach headed over the border.

The trip took about 3 hours through the beautiful eastern hills, and after a short wait at the border crossing, the Moldovan capital was soon reached. Moldova is Europe’s poorest country, and there are definitely elements of that poverty that you can see as you drive through the countryside. Shepherds tended sheep along the sides of the road and farmers drove tractors that were already ancient when the Soviet Union fell. Even now, the oppressive effects of Europe’s 20th Century are still keenly felt in the places that tourists rarely go.

As we got to the capital, a fellow passenger on the bus helped me navigate getting off, which was a frantic exercise while stopped in the middle of shockingly busy traffic, and I strolled over to my hotel right in the city center. I didn’t know what to expect from Chișinău, but I was super glad I got to spend a little bit of time there. Money goes a long way in the city, and I found it to be young and vibrant and energetic. It’s a photogenic city, one worth a visit, and a deserving city that belongs among its peers in the European Union.

• Airports:
  • BER
  • EWR
  • IAD
  • FRA
  • HEL
  • MUC
  • BRU
  • ORD
  • LHR
  • NCE
  • ZRH
  • AMS
  • LIN
  • MXP
  • CLJ
  • OTP
  • IAS
  • RMO
  • VIE
• Countries:
  • United States
  • Germany
  • Finland
  • Belgium
  • United Kingdom
  • France
  • Monaco
  • Netherlands
  • Italy
  • Romania
  • Moldova
• Cities:
  • Charlottesville
  • Washington, DC
  • Berlin
  • Helsinki
  • Brussels
  • Chicago
  • London
  • Monte Carlo
  • Nice
  • Amsterdam
  • Passau
  • Milan
  • Fairfield, CT
  • Cluj-Napoca
  • Bucharest
  • Iași
  • Chișinău