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Saturday 20th of April 2024, 08:21 CET |
| "Save Vama Veche" starts discussion about future of village |
August 21, 2003
Associated Press
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Written by Alison Mutler
Posted by HW on April 20, 2024
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Peace
Naked men and women sun themselves or play backgammon as peaceful, silvery waves lap at the Black Sea beach.
But the peace is deceptive: Vama Veche has become the setting for a bitter summer dispute.
An influx of post-communist money, entrepreneurs and tourists -- along with noisy jet skis, blaring pop music and flashy hotels -- has irked students and aging hippies at the beach resort.
"Save Vama Veche"
As a result, the purists and longtime visitors have launched an international "Save Vama Veche" campaign to try and preserve their nudist paradise from what they see as uncontrolled tourist development.
So far, the hippies seem to have the upper hand raising opposition to Romania's new capitalists who would see Vama Veche become a moneymaking resort region: This past weekend a concert featuring jazz, classical and rock music that was organized by the hippies to call attention to their fight drew a crowd of 10,000 people.
Oasis of freedom in 1960s
Vama Veche, just a few minutes walk from the border with Bulgaria, became famous in the 1960s as an oasis of freedom far from the prying eyes of what was then a communist state.
"Poets and writers came here and cohabited with the fishermen," said writer Andrei Oisteanu, who has been coming here since 1967. "It became a big colony of intellectual nudists that upset the communists."
Intellectuals
Under the communists, writers and intellectuals dozed or sunbathed naked, and discussed philosophy on the sandy beach, sitting under reed umbrellas. Some stayed in tents on the beach, or rented rooms from peasants in the tiny village next to the beach.
Apart from occasional police controls, Vama Veche was a small oasis of tolerance, they say.
"They harassed you from time to time checking your identity papers because it was near the border, but mostly they left you alone," said one die-hard resort-goer Simona Kessler.
End of communism
Kessler and others welcomed the end of communism in 1989. They were less welcoming about what it meant for their surf paradise.
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Weekend tourists began flocking to Vama Veche, which was free from the throbbing discos, mass tourism and high-rise hotels built elsewhere under Nicolae Ceausescu, the communist dictator.
Strategic location
Vama Veche's location -- a strategic border point constantly under observation -- saved it from that kind of desecration. Buildings would have blocked the gaze of police keeping people in and out of the country.
Ceausescu's overthrow meant an end to the ban on construction. Now, hotels, motels and discos are cropping up across previously pristine stretches, many exploiting an absence of laws regulating development.
"Wild capitalism"
Oisteanu calls the transformation of the area "wild capitalism."
"There are now 30 pubs on the beach, and this has started to destroy the atmosphere of freedom and tranquility," he says.
Entrepreneurs
The entrepreneurs and the newcomer tourists to Vama Veche say they are a bit baffled by the "Save Vama Veche" campaign.
"This place was an abandoned village, and we have raised the standards here," said Iuliu Neamt, 33, who invested $168,000 in a hotel and a disco modeled on an Inca Temple.
"Save Vama Veche from what?" said Petre Soporean, 45, who hails from the city of Cluj and started coming 15 years ago for annual stays in a peasant's cottage. "It is better than it was before."
At beach bars like "At the Hospital" teenagers dominate and tequila and other nontraditional drinks are the rage. Tables have signs above designating them as different "wards" -- gynecology, pediatrics and so on. The hoards of tourists have driven up prices.
Some purists say that is too much.
"No style"
"Change is normal," said Bogdan Preda, who has coming to Vama Veche for more than 10 years. "But everything has been built without logic, taste and style-- it's too chaotic.
"I'm never going to come here again." |
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