This is a photo of 5 Canadian tourists in Romania who I think all came to love that country.

I have loved our visit in Romania much more than I could ever have imagined. As I said before, I never had desire to visit Romania, but here I was and now I know better. The people were great. The country was beautiful. The history was fascinating. The food was excellent. But it has had some wicked problems.

Our guide, Vio told us something that surprised us. He asked us who we thought was the greatest man or woman of the twentieth century.  Then he told us who he thought was the greatest man of the twentieth century.  I paused wondering who he would say.  Before I could come up with an answer he said, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. That seemed like a remarkable choice, but Vio had a good explanation.

Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to its dissolution in 1991. Ideologically, he at first adhered to Marxist-Leninism, the official doctrine of the Soviet Union, but he gradually moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s. He, not Ronald Reagan, as so many Americans believe, was the driving force behind moving The Soviet Union and its satellites, such as Romania, away from Communism and ending the Cold War too.

To Vio however, the reason he admired him so much, and was the greatest man of the twentieth century, was because as a result of him, Vio believed, he was able to speak his mind freely in Romania. Because of Gorbachev, he was free to answer the question I had posed for example about whether Romania was a genuine democracy.  Before the time of Gorbachev, it would have been very dangerous of me to ask such a question, and much more dangerous for him to answer it truthfully, since he lived in Romania, which was part of the Soviet empire. Vio called him “a gentle dictator.” That is what social democracy is too—gentle socialism.

As we were driving down National Highway No. 1 of Romania, which Vio said was the only national highway, he warned us that at times under Original Democracy it would become, the “National Parking Stall.”  Of course, we in the west are very familiar with this concept too. Often freeways become the “no free way.”

Romania is now part of the European Union which means that it must meet some minimal standards of democracy. Like Hungary which is also a member of the EU, Romania has its own currency.  Their own people acknowledge it is not much of a currency.  They openly call it “funny money”. No other country accepts it, but people who travel through it, like people who work on this boat we were travelling,  will accept Romanian money since they can us it when they sail through it. But few others accept it. According to Vio, this is a product of Original Democracy. Cock-eyed in other words.

Since Romania joined the EU, its people must be free to live and work elsewhere. Many of them have taken advantage of that privilege. It used to have 22 million people, now about 5 million of those people now live abroad. They prefer real democracy, or perhaps just better economic benefits than that offered by Original Democracy. Original democracy did not sound very appealing.

But now people can speak their minds. And that is worth a lot.