Cluj napoca Travel guide

In the mid-1970's, Cluj merged with neighbouring Napoca, becoming Romania's second largest city with a population of around 335,000. The production of chemicals, consumer goods ranging from refrigerators to cigarettes, leather, and metallurgy are major local industries. Agriculture employs about 30 percent of Cluj County folk.

Babes-Bolyai University, the Ion Andrescu Institute of Fine Arts, and other schools engage over 28,000 students in the city. Cluj-Napoca also features cultural institutions like the National Romanian Theater and the Banffi Palace art museum.

Local tourist attractions include the Gothic church of St. Mihail, and what is considered to be Romania's finest Botanical Garden. Lovers of the great outdoors may also want to visit this city, as Cluj-Napoca makes a fine gateway to the Western Carpathian Mountains.

FOOD & DRINK: Although there are some regional differences between the provinces, there is a definite national culinary tradition. Dishes include ciorba de perisoare (soup with meatballs), ciorba tanancasca (meat with vegetables), lamb bors, giblet soup and a variety of fish soups. The Romanians excel in full-bodied soups, some of the best being cream of mushroom, chicken, 'ping pong' (or meatball soup with cream), beef vegetable and bean soup. Sour cream or eggs are often added to soups. Mamaliga (a staple of mashed cornmeal) is served in many ways. Other national specialities include tocana (pork, beef or mutton stew seasoned with onions and served with mamaliga), ghiveci (over 20 vegetables cooked in oil and served cold), Moldavian parjoale (flat meat patties, highly spiced and served with garnishes), sarmale (pork balls in cabbage leaves), mititei (a variety of highly-seasoned charcoal-grilled meat) and patricieni (charcoal-grilled sausages similar to Frankfurters). Fish dishes include nisetru la gratar (grilled Black Sea sturgeon), raci (crayfish) and scrumbii la gratar (grilled herring). Desserts include placinte cu poale in briu (rolled cheese pies), Moldavian cozonac (brioche) and pasca (a sweet cheesecake). Pancakes, served with jam, and donuts, topped with sour cream or jam, are also popular desserts. Breakfasts almost always include eggs, either soft-boiled, hard-boiled, fried or scrambled. Omelettes, filled with either cheese, ham or mushrooms, are also frequently served. Vegetarians may have difficulties, as most local specialities are meat-based. Although there are inexpensive self-service snack bars, table service is the norm. Drink: A traditional drink with entrées is tzuica (plum brandy) which varies in strength, dryness and smell according to locality. Tzuica de Bihor is the strongest and generally known as palinca. Romanian wines have won international prizes and include pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay from the Murfatlar vineyards. Grasa and feteasa from Moldavia's Cotnari vineyards are also recommended. Many Romanian wines are taken with soda water and hot wine is also popular. Romanian beers are excellent. Romanian sparkling wines, or methode champagnoise, are very good and superb value. Gluhwein (mulled wine) is another popular Romanian drink. There are no licensing hours, but the legal age for drinking in a bar is 18.

SOCIAL CONVENTIONS: Romanians are very Latin in their behaviour. Handshaking is the most common form of greeting, but it is customary for men to kiss a woman's hand when being introduced. Visitors should follow normal European courtesies on social occasions. Dress tends to be rather conservative but casual wear is suitable. Beachwear should not be worn away from the beach or poolside. Smoking is prohibited on public transport, in cinemas and theatres. Many Romanians are smokers and gifts of Western cigarettes are greatly appreciated. Other well-appreciated gifts include toiletries and Western clothing.

Cluj-Napoca - History

Cluj:
judet (district) in Transylvania, northwestern Romania; it occupies an area of 6,650 sq km (2,567 sq mi). The district is drained by the Borsa, Somesul Mic, Somesu Rece, and Somesu Cald tributaries of the Somes River.
Cluj-Napoca is the district capital. Machinery, metal products, chemicals, textile and footwear industries are well represented in the city; building materials and glass are manufactured in Turda; iron is mined at Capusu Mic; coal mines operate at Ticu, Tamasa, Surduc, and Cristoltel; and salt is quarried at Ocna Dejului. A hydroelectric plant operates on the Somesu Rece River near Tarnita, and construction on a hydroelectric project near Marisel began during the late 1970s. Both Tarnita and Marisel developed into very appreciated recreational areas.

Industrial progress has been substantial since the union with Romania. Cluj-Napoca's products include refrigerating equipment for industrial and domestic use, footwear and leather products, china, cigarettes, and foodstuffs. Pop. (1982 est.) 265,824.


Cluj-Napoca:
city, capital of Cluj judet (district). The historic capital of Transylvania, it is approximately 200 mi (320 km) northwest of Bucharest in the Somesul Mic River Valley. The city stands on the site of an ancient Dacian settlement, Napoca, which the Romans made a municipium.
In the Middle Ages the name of the city was Culus, as attested in documents of 1173, but by the beginning of the 15th century it was known as Cluj. The name Cluj - Clus as named by the local people speaking a middle age and popular latin language, comes from the latin c l u s u m, or closed, due to the fact that the place is surrounded by protective and beautiful hills. Later, the city has also been known by its German name, Klausenburg, and its Hungarian name, Kolozsvár. It became a thriving commercial and cultural center, and in 1405 it was declared a free town. After the constitution of the autonomous principality of Transylvania in the 16th century, Cluj became its capital. In 1920 the city, with the rest of Transylvania, was joined with Romania.

Somes River:
One of the most important in Transylvania. It has two headstreams: the Great Somes, which rises in the Rodnei Mountains and flows southwest, and the Little Somes, which rises in the Apuseni Mountains as the Somesu Cald and Somesu Rece and flows northeast. The two headstreams flow rapidly out of the mountains to meet at the town of Dej in the Transylvanian Basin. >From there the river follows a zigzag course toward the northwest to enter the Tisza (Tisa) River in Hungary after a course of about 250 miles (400 km), including either headstream. Between Dej and the Tisza, the Somes is joined by several tributaries.


A little bit of history

The Ancient Dacian Napoca:
Today there are sufficient conclusive proofs that allow one to place the earliest signs of inhabitation of the region surrounding Cluj-Napoca at least in the Middle Paleolithic period. Moreover, many Neolithic, Iron Age, and Roman remnants have been found in Cluj-Napoca and Gilau.
The Carpathian-Danube region in which the Romanian ethnic community evolved was settled about 2000 BC by migratory Indo-Europeans who intermingled with native Neolithic peoples to form the Thracians. When Ionians and Dorians settled on the western shore of the Black Sea in the VIIth century BC, the Thracians' descendants came into contact with the Greek world. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, called these people Getae (Getians). Together with kindred tribes, known later to the Romans as Dacians, who lived in the mountains north of the Danubian Plain and in the Transylvanian Basin, the Getae developed a distinct society and culture by the second half of the IVth century BC.

The Roman Napoca:
The expansion of Rome into the Balkan Peninsula in the IIIrd and IInd centuries BC decisively affected the evolution of the Geto-Dacians. To oppose the Roman advance, they revived their old tribal union under the leadership of Burebista (reigned 82-44 BC). From its center in the southern Carpathians, this union stretched from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Balkan Mountains to Bohemia. It posed such a threat to Rome's ascendancy in the peninsula that Julius Caesar was preparing to undertake a major campaign against the Geto-Dacians when he was assassinated in 44 BC. In the same year, Burebista was also assassinated, by disgruntled tribal chiefs who opposed his centralizing rule. His imposing tribal union disappeared with him.
The final showdown between Rome and the Geto-Dacians came at the beginning of the IInd century AD. By that time the Geto-Dacians had reconstituted a powerful state that, under their resourceful ruler, Decebalus, threatened Rome's Danubian frontier. Geto-Dacian civilization was at its height, but its flourishing economy, prosperous cities, and bustling trade throughout southeastern Europe posed as great a challenge as its army to Rome's ambitions in the region. To end the danger, the emperor Trajan mounted two campaigns between AD 101 and 106 to force Decebalus into submission. The Romans triumphed, and, with his state in ruin, Decebalus committed suicide.

For more than a century and a half the Transylvanian Basin and the plain to the south constituted the Roman province of Dacia. Officials, soldiers, and merchants from all over the Roman world settled down alongside the native Dacians. Although the population was ethnically diverse, Roman administration, numerous cities, and the Latin language brought about intense Romanization and rapid integration into the empire. Dacia, in turn, supplied the empire with grain and precious metals.

The constant pressure of migratory peoples on the long, exposed boundaries of Dacia led the emperor Aurelian to withdraw the Roman army and administration in 271-275. The upper classes and many urban dwellers followed, but the majority of the population, who lived in the countryside and were engaged in agriculture, stayed behind. Once again, the Danube became the frontier of the empire, although written and archaeological evidence points to continued trade and to the maintenance of military bases on the north bank of the river until the 6th century. In addition, during this period there was an intensified propagation of Christianity, which had been only sporadically present in old Dacia.

The fate of the Romanized, or Daco-Roman, population north of the Danube after Aurelian's withdrawal has been a subject of great controversy. Many scholars, especially Hungarians, argue that Romanization in Dacia was, in fact, modest and that the later Romanian population living north of the Carpathians was not native to the region but migrated there from south of the Danube. Other scholars, including the majority of Romanians, insist that a substantial Romanized population maintained itself continuously in old Dacia and that the ethnogenesis of the Romanian people occurred precisely there. The account that follows expands upon the latter interpretation.

Cluj-Napoca in the migratory period:

For nearly eight centuries after the withdrawal of the Roman administration and army, Dacia was overrun by a series of migratory peoples. The earliest of them--the Visigoths (275-376), the Huns (end of the 4th century to 454), and the Germanic Gepidae (454-567)--had little impact on the Daco-Roman population. But the Avars' defeat of the Gepidae in 567 opened the way for a massive advance of Slavs into Dacia. Together with the Avars, the Slavs then broke through the Danube frontier of the Byzantine Empire in 602 and occupied much of the Balkan Peninsula. Now, for the first time since Trajan's conquest, Dacia was cut off from the Roman (Byzantine) world.
The Slavs achieved political and social preeminence in Dacia in the VIIIth century, but even then they were already undergoing assimilation by the more numerous Daco-Romans. Their position was enhanced in the 9th century when the rulers of the first Bulgarian empire extended their control over Dacia following Charlemagne's crushing defeat of the Avars in 791-796. Local Slav chiefs apparently entered into a vassal relationship with the Bulgarian tsars, who, after the conversion of Boris I to Christianity in 864, served as religious and cultural intermediaries between Dacia and the Byzantine Empire.

The ethnogenesis of the Romanian people was probably completed by the Xth century. The first stage--the Romanization of the Geto-Dacians--had now been followed by the second--the assimilation of the Slavs by the Daco-Romans.

Between the Xth and XIVth centuries new political formations emerged in the Carpathian-Danube region. The Hungarians, who had settled in Pannonia at the end of the 9th century and who entered Dacia in the 10th century, overwhelmed the Romanian kniezates, or " voivodates," that they encountered there. Despite the resistance of the Romanian kniezates and voivodates, the Hungarians succeeded in the 10-13th centuries to occupy Transylvania and make it part of the Hungarian kingdom (until the beginning of the 16th century as an autonomous voivodate.) To the south by 1330 a number of small voivodates coalesced into the independent Romanian principality of Walachia, and to the east a second principality, Moldavia, achieved independence in 1359.

To consolidate their power in Transylvania, where the Romanians continued to represent over the centuries the largest ethnic population, as well as to defend the southern and eastern borders of the voivodate, the Hungarian crown colonized in the 12-13th centuries the frontier areas with Szecklers and Germans (Saxons).

XVth century - to present:
The events of the next couple of centuries were dominated by the ascent of the Ottoman empire, and the whole Balkan peninsula became a Turkish-ruled territory. While the Hungarian kingdom disappeared and Hungary was transformed into a pashalik, Transylvania became a self-ruling principality (1541) that also recognized the Ottoman suzerainty.
In 1599-1600 Michael the Brave united for the first time in history all the territories inhabited by Romanians, proclaiming himself "prince of Wallachia, Transylvania and the whole of Moldavia", but this union was short-lived as Michael the Brave was assassinated in 1601.

For Transylvania it followed a very tumultuous period with several annexations to the Hapsburg Empire, and was incorporated into Hungary after the dual Austria-Hungary state was created (1867). For the Romanian population and other ethnic groups, this brought a period of heavy ordeals.

The defeat of the Hapsburg monarchy after the first world war in 1918 made it possible for the nations that had been under Austrian-Hungarian ruling to emancipate themselves. In Transylvania the National Assembly called at Alba Iulia on December 1, 1918 voted to unite Transylvania and Banat with Romania.

When World War II broke out, Romania declared neutrality. Under the Vienna "Award" (August 30, 1940) Germany and Italy gave to Hungary the north-eastern part of Transylvania (including Cluj-Napoca) where the majority population was Romanian. The end of the second world war, by the Peace Treaty of Paris, brought the come-back of the north-eastern Transylvania to Romania.

So it is not surprising that strong ethnic tensions exist today in Transylvania, but they are by no means unique in Eastern Europe today. However, the Romanian citizens of all nationalities proved to be wise enough to deal with these issues at political levels so that Romania has become today a model country in issues related to minority rights.