Postscript: Romanian Visitors to New Hampshire

Shirley McDougall and I are happy to report that already we have hosted two visitors from Transylvania at our home near Plymouth, New Hampshire. In July Lucian BOGDAN, my Teaching Assistant in American Studies at UBB-Cluj, made a two-day side trip to Manchester, NH, on his way home from an American Studies conference in Philadelphia. He and I drove the long way home from the airport, stopping in Portsmouth to see the colonial architecture and NH's seaport, then had boiled lobsters for lunch in Kittery, Maine. From Kittery we came north to Campton via the shore of Lake Winnepesaukee, from Alton Bay to Gilford on Route 11. The next day was sunny and warm, so we rode on my 1982 Honda Silver Wing Interstate up through Franconia Notch to Littleton for clam chowder at the Littleton Diner, then over to the Mt. Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, where the famous WWII economic conference was held.

This month we have hosted new FSEGA grad Alexandru MICAN of Bistrița, who has been admitted to the PSU MBA Program as a full time student. Alex was one of my guides (along with his friend Dora FAUR) on our long weekend in Moldavia, back in October of last year. Alex has also seen some White Mountain geography during the past two weeks, and has now moved into his own apartment right next to the PSU campus. Alex has played golf with me three times already, and scored his first par on a hole, just yesterday. Is the game of golf really that easy?

So, all my Romanian friends, please take notice: our invitations were seriously given, and your visits will be welcome.

Goodbye, Romania (not "Goodbye Romanians")

It has been a beautiful drive. Shirl, Klaus and I are safely back in Fellbach. We left Cluj only the day before yesterday, and already our home in Romania seems a thousand miles away. Oh, yeah. It is a thousand miles away. But we’re still in Europe, some 3,500 miles from our American home, so are we really going to leave Europe and fly to New England, or are we just on another Fulbright adventure, and will Klaus be taking us back to our wonderful apartment in our adopted city to see our good Romanian friends as he has faithfully done for the past nine months?

Goodbye, Romania! But not “Goodbye, Romanians.” We will keep in touch. We have Yahoo mail, we have our University work connections, and we have our lives to share.

If you get to New Hampshire, please do not forget that our big old house in Campton has a guest room, and we love showing off our beautiful home state to visitors.

Farewell, Latest Lover!

Though it traces its roots to a Jesuit school founded in 1581, prior to 1919 all teaching at the university we know today as Babeş-Bolyai was either in Hungarian or in Latin. Ninety years ago, with the unification that incorporated Transylvania as a region of Romania following World War I, the new Romanian-language Babeş University was founded in Cluj. About forty years ago, under the Communist government, Babeş-Bolyai University was formed by the merger of Cluj's Hungarian-speaking institution of higher learning with its Romanian-speaking one, and together they formed the amazing multicultural, polylingual university in which I have taught this year.

To celebrate the Nintieth Anniversary of there being a Romanian University in Cluj, Rector Marga today hosted an absolutely glorious musical event at the UBB Auditorium Maximum. The concert lasted almost three hours, and I wept each hour. First, I was moved to tears by the beauty of the music provided by the Transylvanian Symphony Orchestra. Then came a romantic operatic duet performed by a magnificent tenor and soprano from Bucharest. Then, I wept with emotion at having to leave Romania when traditional folk signers came on stage in their regional finery, and sang Romanian tunes.

I will detail the concert in a later post, for it deserves a full report. For now, suffice it to say, 'tis trrrrue. We Scots ha'e but two emotions. Today, mine wa' weepin'."

And, to make perfect the event as a cultural culmination of my Romanian Fulbright adventures, during the standing ovation that followed the finale (Brahms' "Academic Overture," which ends with the famous tune known as "Gaudeamus Igitur"), the world-famous Romanian soprano Florentina Văduva tossed a rose from her bouquet to the audience, and I caught it.

Upon reflection, of course it was I who caught Florentina's rose. If this year has taught me anything, it is that there are no coincidences. She was but Fair Romania, bidding farewell to her latest lover.

Final Fulbright Days

We are facing the final days of our adventure in Romania. Yesterday was the final Friday. The highlight of the day was my dinner at Agape with Prof. Marius Jucan.

Marius Jucan is a Prodecan (vice-dean) of the Faculty of European Studies, and founder and head of the Program in American Studies at UBB. He is also author of a number of scholarly books in both Romanian and English, a member of the original UBB delegation that visited Plymouth back in the early days of our cooperation, a veteran of the Romanian Army under Communism, an ardent advocate of democracy, and a brilliant conversationalist. One of his books in Romanian is entitled Maştile libertatii, America în scritorile lui Thomas Jefferson, which translates roughly as, "The Faces of Liberty, America in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson."

Shirley was not up to joining us, so Marius and I enjoyed one of those rare occasions when two guys of sixty-or-so get to have some wine, eat whatever they want without apologizing for it, and talk about whatever comes to mind. I treasure such occasions.

At Graduation with Marius Jucan
Today I stopped by Marius' office and gave him three books on American History that my brother Walter was kind enough to send me for use in my course. Two were autographed copies of the paperback editions. I know that Marius will read them. He is that kind of a man. But I don't know if he will agree with Wally on all that they contain, for Marius definitely thinks for himself.

Walking back to Piaţa Mihai Viteazul at close-to-midnight, Marius and I encountered two young men standing and talking on the sidewalk. It was PETEAN Flaviu and BENCHEA Radu, two of my beloved graduates for the Englishline at FSEGA. I introduced them to Professor Jucan, then learned they were waiting for the bus to take Radu to Budapest where he would catch a flight to Fort Lauderdale to work for the summer. There are no coincidences, only a very small world. Have fun, Radu, and while you are there, look up my son Brian in Miami Beach!

Visit Went Well - Packing Proceeds

Visit went well

Trent Boggess flew to Budapest yesterday after three cordial days of meetings (and social mealtimes) here in Cluj. The teaching team for our Joint PSU-UBB International MBA is gelling, with the next step to come at the end of the month, when Roxana Wright will return to spend a week here to provide training in online course delivery of our specific MBA curriculum. A renewed Agreement of Cooperation between UBB and PSU was signed Wednesday by Rector Andrei Marga, and is now being hand-carried back to Plymouth's president Dr. Sara Jayne Steen, who was unable to make the trip at this busy time of year. After the signing, we were invited to join the Rector at a reception for the Vietnamese Ambassador to Romania over lunch at the Pyramids, UBB's nicest restaurant. (Trent has a story to tell about that event, so I'll say no more about it at this juncture.) On Thursday morning, I presented a talk on the ACBSP's Baldrige-based approach to quality management and continuous improvement in higher education to the UBB Quality Assurance Council, headed by Vice Rector Andrei Marcuş. Then, I took Trent back to the Faculty of Economics, where he bid farewell to our colleagues and to our program partner, Prodeacon Dr. Mihaela Luţaş.

Packing proceeds

After a delightful home-cooked meal with his parents last Sunday, Lucian Bogdan, my volunteer teaching assistant in AE&B this term, and I went to Carrefour at Polus Center (a large shopping mall), where I acquired the biggest piece of hand-luggage I could find. It is a hard-surfaced check-in sized roller-case. It is now full to the sit-on-to-close level with my winterwear and formal suits, souvenir hand-woven wool blankets and Romanian flag (gifts from the Econ-Englishline Seniors), five "Romania" T-Shirts in bright yellow, which I had here for the kids but forgot to give them, my J&M dress shoes, protected on their Rochester Shoe Trees, of course, and everything else I didn't think I'd need before coming home. That monstrous bag is now in the trunk of Klaus. Probably, it will cost me extra on my flight home late next week.

So, today...

It is Friday, and I have stayed in the apartment, ostensibly to work on candidate reviews for The Fulbright Commission of Romania. But I have had trouble staying awake today. A day without meetings? Unheard of! "Rest, old man, while you have the chance," my body keeps telling me.

Tonight Shirl and I will dine with Prodeacon Marius Jucan of the Faculty of European Studies, and head of the American Studies Program. We will be brainstorming further avenues of cooperation between our universities.

The end may be in sight for the Fulbright Year in Romania, but as Mort Sahl used to say, "The future lies ahead."

The Senior Song

Fellow nostalgists ('tis a term just coined) will enjoy my musical gift to the UBB Class of 2009. Click on the link to hear it sung by the Amherst College Glee Club.

The Senior Song
by Jimmy Hamilton, Amherst College, Class of 1906

Strangers once, we came to dwell together,
Born of a mother, wise and true.
Now we're bound by ties that cannot sever,
All our whole life through.
Gather closer, hand to hand.
The time draws near when we must part.
Still the love of college days will linger,
Ever in each heart.

Chorus:

So raise the rosy goblet high,
The senior chalice, and belie,
The tongues that slander and defile,
For we have yet a little while,
To linger, youth, and you, and I
In college days.

We have climbed together up the pathway,
On to the goal where life doth wait.
Where in bright, and beck'ning fields of promise,
Lieth fame or fate.
Born among these dear old halls,
Friendships that can never die.
Strength to keep us faithful and devoted,
To our purpose high.

Chorus

Trent Returns

[Note: the post of June 3, 2009, "At the Danube Delta" has been amplified, in case you would like to read more about our weekend in the Southeast.]

Our last full week in Romania begins today, Whitsunday, which is a new national holiday in Romania, but an examination day nevertheless for some of our Faculty of Economics (FSEGA) students.

For me, the day will be accented by a speech at the Aula Magna at UBB's downtown campus given by Nobel Prize nominee Leszek Balcerowicz, the Polish economist famous for inventing "shock therapy" as a way of converting former Communist Bloc economies into free market economies.

Following that event, I will go to the airport to meet Dr. Trent Boggess, chairman of the Business Department at Plymouth State University, who will be arriving for his second visit to our International MBA Program partner school, UBB's FSEGA.

This evening, Shirl and I hope to take Trent to an early dinner, then to his hotel to give him a chance to rest before a busy week of company visits and faculty meetings here in Cluj.