Romanian capital Bucharest serves as Cold War reminder

Bucharest’s unique architecture serves as a reminder of Romania’s diversity, with Baroque and Byzantine influences. During the latter part of the 20th century, shedding Soviet dominance gave many cities — including Bucharest — a feeling of hope after the Cold War.

Bucharest, with more than 2 million people, is one of eastern Europe's main trading and tech centers. After arriving at Bucharest’s airport 30 miles north of the city, eight members of the Nevada National Guard and me, a retired guardsman and journalist who has reported on military events and soldiers since the early 1980s, packed into our two rental cars for the 40-minute trip to the hotel.

Along the way, we saw combination of new meeting old. The old buildings with their majestic gables whisk people back to another time while those Iron Curtain edifices still reflect a dark time in the lives of millions of Romanians. Graffiti spray painted on many facades — even in the downtown area near many of the city’s newest hotels — calls out for numerous glances and comments. Even the signs advertising western businesses such as McDonald’s, KFC and Benihana have sprung up, something that would’ve never occurred before the Cold War’s end.

Although Bucharest has been tabbed as another Paris because of its eye-catching architecture, I couldn’t help but notice the dirty walls and dilapidated conditions of scores of businesses and apartments that lined the busy, main four-lane highway into the city.

Up until the fall of the Iron Curtain in late 1989 and before the hurried trial and execution of the country’s last communist leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife, Romania wallowed like a hog in a mud pen with a ruthless government exercising control of its people. The Ceausescus absconded with millions of dollars and exercised total control.

Almost 16 years after the removal of the Iron Curtain, the former Warsaw Pact countries began joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Romania and many of its neighbors in eastern Europe embraced NATO as a deterrence to any aggression displayed by Russia – like they now see in Ukraine.

Having traveled to many corners of the world as a former Nevada Army National Guard journalist and then to Afghanistan twice as a civilian journalist, I accepted an invitation to pay my way and accompany a small group of Nevada military personnel led by Maj. Gen Ondra Berry, the state’s adjutant general. For several days we visited soldiers from the Silver State’s 137th Military Police Co., who are augmenting security operations at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, a section comingled with the international airport that’s used by the United States and NATO troops near the Black Sea resort city of Constanta.

Berry and eight of us left Las Vegas on a Sunday morning and arrived in Bucharest late Monday afternoon before leaving the following morning.

The general’s party worked on a tight schedule to talk to soldiers and see their operations at the garrison. Already, I briefly learned of many soldiers’ stories and that’s all within the traveling party. Having spent a majority of my military career in the Nevada Guard, I still have a strong sense of camaraderie with those on the trip.

Although Berry’s party spent less than a week in country, I have received approval to remain at the MK Air Base for two more days before taking the train to Bucharest, a three-hour ride through the countryside. With a day to prepare, I’ll begin another odyssey home which includes a long 11-hour flight from Munich to San Francisco.

That’s only a small inconvenience in reporting from the closest NATO base to Ukraine.

Steve Ranson is a military journalist for the Nevada News Group and editor emeritus of the Lahontan Valley News. During the past four decades, he also followed the Nevada Guard to a number of states for their training and also to Afghanistan, Central and South America and South Korea.