Postcards from Behind the Iron Curtain

This memoir follows our adventures in Nicolae Ceauşescu's communist Romania, where I was an IREX Fellow during the 1974-1975 academic year, studying the survival of Byzantine culture there after the fall of Constantinople. Elana brought her diary; I brought my Nikon camera and 30 rolls of film. She was 28; I was 27. We were both Princeton graduate students. Our preconceived notion, born of wishful thinking, was that Bucharest would be a worthy Eastern European version of Paris and that rural Romania would be an idyllic, pre-industrial version of the French countryside. Whether those notions were true or not (they were not), we were bent on making that our everyday reality. Sure, our apartment was bugged, and our daily activities reported to the Securitate by informers, who were likely among our best friends. But we chose to remain naïve. Join us, innocents behind the Iron Curtain, as we dodge Romani horse-drawn carts on Transylvanian byways, stand in endless lines to buy stale bread and chunks of sinewy beef, struggle to prepare gourmet meals on a hot plate in our bathroom, and, up north, sleep in a monastic cell, dine with the mother superior, and crash an Orthodox wedding. Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime, the most repressive in the Eastern Bloc, was sputtering; all of Bucharest seemed as if painted in shades of gray, and the streets were usually empty. But close friendships flourished behind shuttered windows, with a pillow tossed over the telephone and water taps running. Our cognac-fueled soirees were intense and serious. One friend claimed that the difference between the West and East was the difference between living the "superficial life" and living the "essential life"

This memoir follows our adventures in Nicolae Ceauşescu's communist Romania, where I was an IREX Fellow during the 1974-1975 academic year, studying the survival of Byzantine culture there after the fall of Constantinople. Elana brought her diary; I brought my Nikon camera and 30 rolls of film. She was 28; I was 27. We were both Princeton graduate students. Our preconceived notion, born of wishful thinking, was that Bucharest would be a worthy Eastern European version of Paris and that rural Romania would be an idyllic, pre-industrial version of the French countryside. Whether those notions were true or not (they were not), we were bent on making that our everyday reality. Sure, our apartment was bugged, and our daily activities reported to the Securitate by informers, who were likely among our best friends. But we chose to remain naïve. Join us, innocents behind the Iron Curtain, as we dodge Romani horse-drawn carts on Transylvanian byways, stand in endless lines to buy stale bread and chunks of sinewy beef, struggle to prepare gourmet meals on a hot plate in our bathroom, and, up north, sleep in a monastic cell, dine with the mother superior, and crash an Orthodox wedding. Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime, the most repressive in the Eastern Bloc, was sputtering; all of Bucharest seemed as if painted in shades of gray, and the streets were usually empty. But close friendships flourished behind shuttered windows, with a pillow tossed over the telephone and water taps running. Our cognac-fueled soirees were intense and serious. One friend claimed that the difference between the West and East was the difference between living the "superficial life" and living the "essential life"

Gary Vikan was director of the Walters Art Museum from 1994 to 2013; from 1985 to 1994 he was the museum's chief curator. Before coming to Baltimore, Gary was senior associate at Harvard's Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. A native of Minnesota, he received his PhD from Princeton University. Gary serves on the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts of the Salzburg Global Seminar. Has been has been an advisor to the Getty Leadership Institute, Princeton University's Department of Art and Archaeology, and the Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University. Gary was appointed by President Clinton in 1999 to his Cultural Property Advisory Committee and was knighted by the French Minister of Culture in the Order of Arts and Letters in 2002. He is currently the president of the Committee for Cultural Policy and president of the Literary Society of Washington, DC. In retirement, Gary writes, lectures, and teaches. His recent books include From the Holy Land to Graceland (2012), Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director (2016), The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death (2020), and My Father Took Pictures (2021).