by Rupert Wolfe Murray | 17 Dec, 2019 | Journeys
When I was in Romania last month I discovered time travel. I know this sounds ridiculous — isn’t time travel a futuristic, high-tech impossibility used by the likes of Doctor Who and the crazy professor in Back to the Future?
Well yes, time travel is a popular device for filmmakers to dump their characters in imaginative locations, but for me it’s something much more simple: it’s simply travelling overland rather than flying.
How is this time travel? You might ask, quite reasonably. Let me enlighten you.
First of all, I need to explain why I decided to come back to the UK overland rather than by the cheapest, quickest, and easiest-to-arrange method — plane.
I am inspired by the example of Greta Thunberg who cuts through all the crap my generation produces, all the token gestures, empty promises and half measures that are doing nothing towards reversing our relentless march towards climate catastrophe.
If Greta can cross the Atlantic by sailboat then why can’t I cross the continent by train and bus — and, in the future, when I’ve got the right gear, by bike? If all of us stopped flying and insisted on electric vehicles we could transform Big Oil into Big Renewables.
Romanian Trains are Time Machines
I’ve been travelling in Romania for over 20 years and one of the best things about that beautiful and misunderstood country is its train network. Although it’s quite a run-down system — the Romanians have copied the UK and US model of prioritising road over rail — it is the biggest rail network in Central Europe (I wish they would appreciate this more as rail will, hopefully, displace road and become the transport of the future).
When you get on a Romanian train you have a choice: you can get really stressed about how slow it is, how shoddy the trains are, how unfriendly the staff can be, how you can’t rely on it and, despite all this, how expensive it is (for their uber-low salaries).
Or you can do what I do and imagine you’re stepping into a time machine. When I get a Romanian train I let go of my usual framework of time: I let go of the very structured programme that comes with a flight, or a train in the UK for that matter, and just accept the fact that it will take as long as it takes.
Also, if you’re lucky enough to get on a Romanian sleeper train you really are stepping back in time because some of the wagons were built over 50 years ago — many in East Germany which is a country that no longer exists — and each sleeper wagon has its own butler. Some of the cabins have pre-war wood panelling, a sink, a place to hang your suit and two single beds with cotton sheets and old fashioned blankets.
Despite the shuddering, the scream of the whistle and the noises that old trains make, I always sleep like a log when getting the sleeper train between Romania’s major cities. I sometimes imagine that I’m in the 1940s, grateful for the fact that I’m in a warm bed and not a concentration camp or trench.
So, last month, when I decided to flout convention and come back to the UK overland — starting with a sleeper train to Vienna and then Flixbus to London — I immediately threw away the rigid timetable that comes with a flight. I knew it would take longer, would probably cost more and, until I got to Vienna, I didn’t know how I’d complete the journey. But none of that mattered as I had a week at my disposal.
That, for me, is time travel. It’s simply looking at time differently when travelling.
Learning from Time Travel
There are several things that can be learned from this. First of all, by rejecting the rigid template of airline schedules it’s a much more relaxing experience. As long as I get on the train in time I don’t care how long it takes; I’ve got all the time in the world and I use it to catch up on sleep, read, write and talk to people. It’s wonderful.
Secondly, this approach to time is essential for real independent travel. If you take a year off with a highly detailed schedule you’ll probably have a miserable time; but if you just have some money, a destination and a decent allocation of time you can learn as you go, be flexible, listen to people you meet and, in doing so, discover all sorts of amazing things.
Thirdly, it’s fun to show people that there is an alternative to flying. Because air travel is considered the most efficient way to go, despite its carbon footprint, governments subsidise it and corporations make it easy, cheap and attractive.
But, if you take a different approach to time, all sorts of more environmentally friendly options come up. I plan to get into long-distance cycling next year but what about walking? Why not walk across Europe? It would be a life-changing experience. Or hitching? And what’s the big hurry anyway? Why do we have to get to our destinations as quickly as possible?
The most important thing is that we must stop flying, and using fossil fuels, if we have any chance of reducing greenhouse gases. Again, we have a choice: we can plunge into despair or change the way we travel and live.
The naysayers claim that saving the planet is complicated. It’s not. All we need to do is stop using fossil fuels (and stop eating animals — but that’s another story).
We can despair at the lack of action that governments take or start making changes in our own lives. We can all become examples for those around us, and watch the ripple effect.
by Rupert Wolfe Murray | 11 Dec, 2019 | Journeys
I was cycling down the hill so fast I thought I might fly, like those kids in ET – Steven Spielberg’s classic film – when the alien enables the kids to fly their bikes through the night sky. It’s incredible what speed you can reach when going downhill on a good bike, even without pedalling.
Everything at that moment was perfect: the speed was exhilarating and the bike was handling it well (Bromptons are great at speed). The combination of cool autumn air and sharp sunlight marked a point of perfection in Romania’s calendar when the weather is just right – as if it’s recovering from the crushing heat of summer and preparing for the relentless cold of a long winter.
I was also in a beautiful spot. Surrounding my downhill piste was a thick pine forest that has not yet been pillaged by the Austrian timber companies (every Romanian knows that it’s the Austrians, and their “timber conservation” charities, such as Schweighofer Privatstiftung, who are de-foresting Romania).
And then I nearly died.
The road I was cycling on was the main route between Iasi and Botosani, two cities in north east Romania. I knew the drivers were annoyed, as they are all over the country, for their governments failure to build more than a few token miles of motorway – and in this part of the land there are not even the patches of motorway you find in Transylvania. My impression is that the drivers get their revenge on the system by driving as fast as they can, particularly those people who own the big German cars which are so powerful, and comfortable inside, that driving at high speed doesn’t feel dangerous at all.
There was a column of big cars heading my way, accelerating hard out of the village below and taking advantage of the forest cover ahead to make up for lost time. Suddenly a big BMW sharked out of the column, dropped a gear and put his foot to the floor; the car surged past those ahead and within seconds he was ahead of the pack and ready to get back in lane.
The fact there was a lone cyclist – i.e. me – on the other side of the road, directly in the path of the hurtling BMW, didn’t seem to have registered with the driver when he made his millisecond calculations about the risks of overtaking.
I’ve been cycling on Romania’s roads for over 20 years and it’s been a remarkably safe experience – even though many Romanians have told me “You’re crazy to cycle on our roads because our drivers are all insane,” (a comment which says more about how Romanians regard each other than the actual safety of the road. The fact is that no driver wants to run down a cyclist; not only on humanitarian grounds but the legal punishment for killing someone on the road are severe). In general, I’m very grateful for Romanian drivers for giving me space and letting me live.
But different rules apply to drivers of powerful cars that overtake in remote country locations: when they see an opportunity to overtake, they don’t seem to see cyclists; we become invisible. There is another insidious effect at work here, unique to countries like Romania where a macho driving culture prevails – it’s common to overtake and force oncoming drivers to pull over, slow down or just get out of the way. Truck drivers are prone to this kind of bullying behaviour, as well as beefy businessmen in their black muscle-cars.
In my case, it was all over in milliseconds. I wasn’t particularly aware of the imminent danger to my life but my subconscious (my Guardian Angel) was: I swerved towards my side of the road and the BMW rocketed past. When your life is on the line and the danger is imminent, instinct can kick in and save you. This has happened to me several times (here’s a story, in podcast format, of when I was attacked by three big dogs in Tibet).
I was still moving at what felt like high speed – maybe 30 km/h – and soon enough I was in the village that nestled at the foot of the forest: Copălău, location of a military base and an annual Garlic Festival. The column of big cars was long gone and I doubt that the BMW driver even registered the incident. I pulled over and it was only at this point that fear caught up with me; I had just had a near-death experience!
Enter the film crew
If the incident had been filmed it would have made the most incredible piece of TV footage. Imagine how delighted a TV news editor would be to get high-resolution footage of a road accident; not only would they play it on the news for days – even in slow motion – but they could have sold it abroad and whipped up moral outrage about reckless drivers, bad roads and the dangers that apparently surround us. It would have fed seamlessly into the media’s insatiable hunger for death, depravity and horror – a grotesque form of reality that is surprisingly addictive.
Well, guess what: the whole thing was filmed! I was on camera for most of my downhill run – not on some roadside camera or dashcam on one of the German cars, but on a high-quality lens on a filmmaker’s drone that was flying just ahead of me.
Why the hell, you may me wondering, was a filmmaker flying a drone in front of me as I tore down a country road in north east Romania? A fair question.
The answer is that I’ve been helping make a documentary film about the changes that took place over the last 30 years, since the Romanian revolution. The narrative follows what I did in 1990 (observing the aftermath of the revolution in Bucharest, helping a kids’ home in a Botosani village and working with the Roma minority) up to the present day. I’ve been in Romania on-and-off for most of the last 30 years, working on some really interesting stuff like Roma and child rights, journalism, regional development, helping Romania into the EU and, most recently, as an evaluator for EU projects. I also produced a couple of documentary films, including one about what people were talking about just After the Revolution.
Our new film is being produced by Mihai Dragolea and he’s using some of the footage that was shot by my old friend Laurentiu Calciu, whom I’ve known since 1986 when I first came to Romania; it was he who shot the After the Revolution material as well as my work in the kids home and with the Roma minority. He’s a great documentary filmmaker, but far too modest for his own good. You can see his showreel here.
I tried talking to the two filmmakers about my near-miss but they didn’t really take it in, as they had been so focussed on driving the car in front of me and operating the drone. This was totally fine by me as the last thing I wanted was to make a big deal out of it. The fear that I had felt after the incident soon left, as if part of that convoy of speeding cars.
A couple of hours later the filmmakers were driving down to Bucharest and I had decided to get out of the car at Targu Frumos and hop on the train to Iasi, the former capital of the ancient kingdom of Moldova – a city I wanted to discover. The incident with the BMW in the forest was being filed in my head as a non-traumatic memory.
by Rupert Wolfe Murray | 4 Dec, 2019 | Journeys
Since I first came to Romania in 1986, it’s been clear to me that Romanians don’t understand the full potential of the tourism business.
Over the 17 years I lived in Romania I’ve had countless conversations with people who own pensions, hotels and restaurants; village and city mayors and even a minister of tourism. All these people reacted in the same way to my advice on the tourism business: they get defensive and offer rationalisations about the unchanging nature of tourism.
I’ve never met anyone in Romanian tourism who is interested in my perspective – an individual traveller who wants to tour by bicycle, hitchhike, camp and stay in hostels, or with ordinary families in traditional houses that haven’t been homogenised with mass produced paint and furnishings.
It’s clear that the type of “individual” tourism that I do simply does not register with people in Romania’s tourism sector. They tend to see the business as in terms of “mass tourism”: huge resorts like Mamaia and Poiana Brasov.
Mass tourism certainly does exist in Romania and it’s done rather well. I’ve just been soaking in a sulphur pool in Calimanesti and love the old-Communist-era vibe to the place. A large number of low-income Romanians, such as pensioners, as well as the sick, get free tickets to these spas and that really is excellent. In my country (UK) I don’t think anyone gets a free holiday and, as a result, those who need one most – the poor, elderly and sick – don’t get them.
The missing opportunity
Tourism is one of the biggest business sectors in the world, accounting for about 10% of global GDP. The UN’s World Tourism Organization says “the business volume of tourism equals or even surpasses that of oil exports, food products or automobiles…This growth goes hand in hand with an increasing diversification…”
By not understanding the industry, and focusing exclusively on mass tourism, Romania is missing out on this huge business opportunity. By dismissing the sort of individual tourism I love – staying in traditional houses in the Moldavian countryside for example – thousands of potential micro-business ideas are dismissed by “experts” and never get off the ground. Imagine if every village had at least one traditional guest house and one campsite – all of which could be promoted on Google Maps and other free online services.
But people who own houses in beautiful locations are told they must tear it down and build a modern hotel if they want tourists – because we all (apparently) want standard modern buildings, cable TV, air conditioning and a bar. But from the business point of view why invest in a huge new building when all you need to do is tidy up the spare room and share the meals that you’re already making? We want to eat sarmale, ciorba, fresh veg from the market and tea from the garden; not frozen food and fizzy drinks from Kaufland.
About campsites: whenever I’ve suggested to village mayors, or rural householders, that they should organise a campsite they always think of reasons why it wouldn’t work. The most common rebuttal is that “nobody would come,” and if I say “I would,” they laugh dismissively. Then they say they’d need to build a “bloc sanitar” which is basically a toilet and washroom. I say they don’t need to build anything as travellers like me are used to “wild camping” — when you just put your tent up in a forest or somewhere out of sight — and having a designated location would be great.
Very few Romanian villages have campsites and those which exist are massive, noisy, smoky, crowded and horrible. The campsites could be set up in a simple field by a family that is willing to share their toilet and offer water and catering services. If nobody came then there would be no losses but if the site was registered on Google Maps and other (free) online services I think they’d get plenty of visitors. Thousands of bums like me are criss-crossing their beautiful land every summer.
Introducing the hostel
The other business opportunity that is appearing in Romania is the hostel – almost a century after they were common in west European cities. A hostel is an apartment (or house) with bunk beds in the rooms, shared bathrooms and an open kitchen. The cost is usually around 10 Euro a night, security is good (I’ve never heard about a robbery in a hostel) and I actually prefer hostels to hotels as the chances of meeting people are much higher.
The west European hostels I’ve stayed in tend to be massive, and sometimes very stylish, but many of the Romanian ones are in single apartments – which is fine. Every town and city in the land should have at least one as they are a useful low-cost option for visitors (as is Airbnb, but that’s a different kettle of fish I’m not going to discuss here).
I’ve stayed in two hostels in Bucharest, one of which (Midlands Hostel) has a great atmosphere and is very central; and one of which behaved towards me with an arrogance I found surprising (Umbrella Hostel). The other guests were foreign “backpackers” who like to party at night and sleep during the day – which was ideal for me as I would get up early and use the empty kitchen as my temporary writing office.
In Iasi I stayed in Andrei Hostel which is just behind the hospital on Copou, and is what we Brits call “Cheap and cheerful”. The guests were Romanian villagers coming to town for some nasty medical operation and Arab students using it as a temporary base before they rented a flat. We all got on fine and what I liked best was the owners had an “honesty box” for your registration form and 50 RON-a-night fee. What a great way to save money on personnel costs!
My hope is that Romanians can stop thinking of the tourism business as requiring millions of Euros, backed up by major strategic investments in infrastructure, and realise that there are many people who would love to stay in a traditional village house, or camp in a forest meadow, and take the opportunity that we in the west lost many generations ago – to get closer to nature.
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What do you think? I’d be really grateful if you added a comment below — even negative comments are inspiring as we can debate the issue.
by Rupert Wolfe Murray | 26 Nov, 2019 | Journeys
It’s easy to feel despair about global warming. The IPCC tells us we have less than 12 years to cut CO2 in half — or face devastating consequences. But wherever you look people are driving more, consuming more and those who say we must change our ways are often ridiculed and marginalised.
I doubt Romania’s new government will take these warnings seriously. Why should they when countries like Sweden, which trumpet their green credentials are, according to Greta Thunberg, hypocrites for ignoring aviation, shipping and the carbon-cost of manufacturing in Asia.
It might seem better in countries like mine, the UK, where the government passed a Climate Change Act in 2008 and, ever since, has been able to “claim the moral high-ground globally on this fast-emerging global issue.” But they haven’t stood up to Big Oil (in fact they subsidise the oil industry with billions of pounds a year) or started on the most important task of all: educating the public about the need for “unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society.”
Instead of changing attitudes about climate change, Boris Johnson’s government is arresting people for challenging their hypocrisy and lack of action. Over 1,300 people were arrested at the recent “October Rebellion” protest in London – and the media portrayed the climate protesters as the problem, for blocking traffic, which enabled them to “shoot the messenger” and avoid discussing the real issue.
I know how hard it is to change. I found it really difficult to give up my car and go around by bike, bus and train – and to stop eating meat (which is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases). It has taken me years to make these modest changes.
When I look at Romanians driving along in their expensive cars I wonder “how can I convince them to switch to electric?” How dare I say that everything he’s been working towards, and saving up for, is wrong? How can I counter his view that electric cars are just as toxic as his one, if he’s read articles like this: Are electric cars actually worse for the environment?
Hamburgers give me hope
It’s hard to find signs of hope in Romania, where car-driving and meat-eating are central to their modern culture, and the whole green issue seems to be of marginal importance (pretty much like in the UK).
But I’m an optimist and, after many years of living in Botosani and Bucharest, I see signs of hope where many Romanians see only despair. And recently I found hope in a very unusual place: the website of METRO, the wholesale supplier to shops and the catering industry all over the country.
I would never have looked at METRO’s website had the editor of Romania’s main weather channel (Meteo.ro) not emailed it to me – by mistake. His autocorrect function inserted it.
I was amazed to find that METRO was promoting a vegetable-based burger to an industry that is well known globally to be highly resistant to change – the waste and pollution that restaurants and hotels emit is biblical in its proportions.
METRO’s description of their veggie burger is well written, convincing and on the front page of their website. Here’s an extract:
“Beyond Meat® is as succulent and delicious as beef … and its production uses 99% less water and 93% less farming land,” [than the production of beef]. “This means 90% less greenhouse gases are produced and 46% less energy consumed.”
These are some of the facts that radical vegans use to convince others to join them. But the problem with vegans is that many are so passionate in their beliefs, so purist in their faith, that it repels people who don’t want to give up meat, fish and dairy. The carnivores become defensive, it becomes what the Americans call a “culture war,” and the whole issue is thus marginalised (and politicised, often casting us into the left wing of politics, whereas these issues are “beyond politics” to quote Extinction Rebellion).
But when a major food supplier can pick up the key points – non-meat farming emits far fewer greenhouse gases – without mentioning veganism or being political – it’s a really encouraging sign that things can change.
Apart from those in the catering industry, think how many people in other parts of the economy will have read that veggie-burger text by METRO and, in doing, have become more informed about one part of the problem (our methane-emitting-agricultural-system).
Although most people are aware that global warming is a big problem, very few know what they can do about it and the tendency is to just shrug and carry on as normal. Now, thousands of people in the heart of Romania’s economy have been provided with a better way.
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A Romanian language version of this article was published on that country’s main weather site. I’ll be writing a series of articles for that site as they have a unique target audience — people checking the weather — that is refreshingly non-political.
by Rupert Wolfe Murray | 20 Nov, 2019 | Opinions
Dear Boris,
Did you know that you’re facing what may be the biggest political opportunity of our generation – to turn the world green.
A majority of the Great British public realise that global warming is a problem and you could appeal to a large slice of the electorate if you came up with green policies that were more than hot air.
I have never voted Conservative, but I would do if you urgently acted on the IPCC’s warning to cut carbon emissions in half within 12 years. Even the Trump-loving Fox News reported accurately on the warning, showing that there is PR value in this story even on the right.
The real prize here is to seize the moral high ground by standing up to the fossil fuel industry. Imagine the political value of a Conservative Party that stood up to Big Oil rather than help them pollute the planet; apart from anything else it would be true to the original Conservative values of supporting individuals, families and small businesses. You’d be unbeatable.
It’s not only the Tories who are useless at environmental policy – Labour and the Lib Dems are equally guilty of talking-up green policies when in opposition and discreetly avoiding Big Oil when in office. I realise it’s hard to confront these lobbies – not only are they deeply embedded in government and the media, but most of us are addicted to their products and giving up our comforts and conveniences (like cars) is incredibly difficult. But things can start changing when a national leader says “Enough! We have to accept there is a problem, take responsibility and change our ways.”
Go Beyond Politics
I know your lot don’t like Extinction Rebellion but are you aware that they’re non-aligned politically? I love their ethos that climate change is bigger than any one political party. The whole movement marches under the banner of “Beyond Politics” – and what that means is that any political party, or any opportunistic Prime Minister for that matter, could simply scoop up the ideas and make them his/her own. The great religions of the world used to do this when swallowing up the indigenous religions – they would adopt some of their practices (like the harvest festival) and gather up their followers while they’re at it.
And the demands of Extinction Rebellion are remarkably simple: tell the truth; aim for carbon zero by 2025; and organise a “big tent” to create environmental policy.
You recently said that Margaret Thatcher was the first British PM to raise this issue. I also remember her prediction that we’d have to “tighten our belts” before anything would get better. The only other political leader I can think of who promised suffering rather than plenty was Winston Churchill. Maybe this is your chance to join them in the Conservative pantheon?
If you were to take up the challenge of telling the truth regarding global warming, you could bluntly tell the electorate that we must end our addiction to fossil fuels. Such an approach would cause uproar among the Great British Driving Public but when you take something away it’s always replaced by something else – in this case electric vehicles, bikes and better public transport. It would also result in an economic boom in all parts of the economy where fossil fuel needs to be replaced: Britain could become a world leader in this transition and then share its experience with the world.
An assault on Big Oil could go a long way to reducing our carbon footprint, perhaps making the 2025 target feasible. The £2.4 billion your government has allocated to international oil drilling projects would be handy if invested in things like real bike lanes (rather than random colours on disconnected pavements). According to Mary Creagh, the MP for Wakefield, most of this money goes to poor countries, “potentially locking them into decades of dependency on oil and gas.”
The bizarre thing about your government is its pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 alongside an industrial policy that states, in this press release, “Oil and gas strategy will promote billions worth of new investment.” Isn’t that what non-political people call hypocrisy? Surely, if that 80% target means anything you should, at the very least, tell the public that it’s a real problem and we need to start thinking about making big changes – starting with keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Changing attitudes is the first step in changing habits and, eventually, the world.
As regards the “big tent” demand, I know it might sound outlandish to some of your party members (images of bickering Afghan tribesmen may come to mind) but it’s quite a handy technique for managing divisive issues like this. The proper term for this is actually “citizens assembly” and it’s been used very effectively in Ireland and many other places.
Also, you have a former colleague who advocated for citizens assembly very convincingly in the recent Tory Party election: Rory Stewart. Couldn’t you bring him back into the fold?
Am I a traitor to the cause?
I was one of those unwashed protesters who camped out in central London last month, as I believe that we must change our ways before destroying our life support systems. There will be plenty of Extinction Rebellion supporters who will read this letter and consider me a traitor for asking you to take up their precious cause.
But I would quote back to them their own slogan of beyond politics and also point out that the Conservative Party was founded on the ethos of “conserving” the traditional lifestyle that was being threatened by the industrial revolution. Also, this issue will never become mainstream if all parties don’t adopt the key demands.
The most depressing thing about this whole issue is the way government departments, and large companies, make green policies that are nothing more than good intentions, grand statements and token gestures. Even the holier-than-thou Scandinavians are at it: Did you see what Greta Thunberg said on Instagram when she was offered the Nordic Council’s environmental award: “The Nordic countries have a great reputation around the world when it comes to climate and environmental issues. There is no lack of bragging about this. There is no lack of beautiful words. But when it comes to our actual emissions, and our ecological footprint per capita – if we include our consumption, our imports as well as aviation and shipping – then it’s a whole other story.”
The world needs a political leader who can show genuine leadership on this issue; a leader who has the courage to tell the public, and Big Oil, that we need to change our ways immediately.
Many people ask what can a small nation like ours do about such a massive global problem? The answer is that over the last few centuries we’ve provided the world with economic models – from colonialism to Thatcherism – and who better to persuade a confused and sceptical world that we need to make an about-turn before going over the precipice.
The good news is that going green is easier than one would have thought. I know this as I recently got rid of my car – it was really hard to do but going around by bike is much more fun and I’m saving up for one of those electric jobs. I also went vegan which was a lot easier than I had imagined it would be; they say that cutting out meat and dairy is the most powerful thing an individual can do to reduce greenhouse gases (the mountains of animal waste emit massive amounts of methane, which a far stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide).
I’m posting you this letter from Romania, where I’m doing a couple of wee jobs for the EU. I’ve decided to follow Greta’s example and not fly home. I asked my Facebook friends what the best way to get home overland would be and got back some useful comments, as well as one which reminded me of Norman Tebbit MP: “get on your bike.”
All the best
Rupert Wolfe Murray
