Wild East Michael Palin's New Europe

National Day in Tiraspol, the capital of Transdniester, a place most people have never heard of.

It's a breakaway state of the republic of Moldova -

another place most people have never heard of.

Which makes me doubly glad to be here.

I never witnessed anything quite like this before.

A National Day parade for a nation that doesn't exist.

This is Transdniester. They have their own army, their own currency,

but no single other country in the world recognises them.

But today, they'll recognise themselves.

Transdniester, literally "Across the Dniester River",

consists of 4,000 square kilometres and just over half a million people.

Oh, and a helicopter.

When the old Soviet republic of Moldova won independence in 1991,

those on the east bank of the Dniester River felt let down.

The majority were Slavs, they used the Russian language and alphabet,

whereas the rest of Moldova spoke Romanian, the Latin language.

So in 1992, after a short civil war, the Transdniesterans declared themselves independent.

Which is what today's festivities are all about.

These people want so much to remain Russian.

But in most of their lifetimes, it looks increasingly unlikely

that the rift with Moldova will ever be repaired.

After crossing the Dniester,

I shall pass through the rest of Moldova,

into northern Romania,

south to Transylvania and Bucharest,

then on to the Danube.

I'm coming into Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.

This was once the far south-western corner of the mighty Soviet Union.

Now it's a tiny independent country, trying to find its place on the new map of Europe.

Chisinau isn't without its problems.

But first impressions are of a likeable, surprisingly verdant, easy-going city.

I take a walk in the park with Tatiana Tabuliyak, a local journalist.

For a moment, it's like stepping back in time.

BAND PLAYS

This is a place where, actually, old people come,

but you can see today, not only old people are coming.

-I think lonely people are coming here.

-Yes.

It's a place where they can be not so lonely.

You can see here, they're pensioners,

most of them, retired persons, living alone, with a very small pension.

Some of them, they're just left alone, you know?

They're not rich. They have very poor condition in life.

What they do every Sunday, they just put a nice dress on themselves,

make a little bit of make-up, put medals, nice suits,

and they're coming here just to meet each other.

-They can dance with anyone here, can they?

-A lot of love stories started here.

They're quite old, some of them. Almost my age!

This is not old.

You can come here for a good dose of optimism for your week.

You know, see when a man doesn't want to dance, a lady should have more courage.

Come on then.

-Will you be able to lead?

-We'll see what we can do.

-Oh dear, there we go.

-It's not so bad.

I'll just watch what everyone else does.

Is there much regret at the passing of the old Soviet Union?

Do people feel nostalgic at all here, for those days?

Actually, a lot.

If you would ask all of those people, you see here, they would start crying and they would say,

"We want back."

Young generation, they are not so nostalgic, we didn't even get too much from the Soviet period.

I think people miss not the regime, they miss jobs,

they miss pensions, they miss, er...I don't know,

cheap food and good vacations.

I also miss Sovietic period. You know why? Because I was young.

I had my parents alive, and if this means to miss Soviet Union,

yes, I miss, because I was a child, I had my grandparents,

I went to all of these places.

Everything seems to be so beautiful.

But now, logically, of course I'm so happy that it's not here

and I can speak with you today.

20 years ago, this would be a crime.

I would probably have a file now, if you would come and I would tell you all these things.

This is important to know and to keep in mind always.

Everybody is nostalgic for something, but it's important to be realistic at one point.

You miss the sensation of something, you miss the smell or the taste,

but you cannot miss something which killed and made unhappy so many generations.

Tatiana also helps run the UNICEF operation in Moldova.

Tomorrow, she's going to take me to a village outside the capital to see their work in action.

Moldova is the poorest country in Europe.

Many in the countryside can only support their families by working abroad.

Those left behind are easy prey for drug dealers and people traffickers.

With the help of UNICEF, the children of this village

have put on a play to make people aware of the dangers that they face.

What's...? What are they attempting to show and deal with here?

It's a story about trafficking. Here's a typical Moldovan village.

People wake up to go to work.

Trafficking is a big issue in Moldova, actually.

A quarter of the population is out, mainly women, working illegally.

-Abroad?

-Yes, abroad.

These are people who went abroad and now they're coming back to recruit people for prostitution, for begging.

Actually, they have probably lived in the same village for many years and now they come here because

people trust them, because if you live with someone for 20 years, you trust that person.

And actually, these are the main traffickers.

Local people coming back to their own village?

People coming back, they promise them 200-300 per month.

For them, this is huge money.

Every time, you think this wouldn't happen to you.

You hope at least that this won't happen to you.

She's going to be...

-This is already somewhere in Italy maybe, or in Moscow.

-Yeah.

They take their papers, they leave them like in streets,

or in a room for years and years.

They usually see, he injected some drugs to the girl.

This is what is happening.

They are living, like three, four, five years, drugged...

being forced to prostitute.

And they come back. We have a lot of cases here

when they need years to recover.

Actually, children are very expressive.

Imagine that every second has parents abroad.

-Every second child here?

-Every second child acting has parents abroad.

Maybe they didn't see them for years - five years, six years.

They just received money from them.

Maybe that's why they're so good. They've just seen it on people's faces.

It's the look on the faces that's so intense.

It's full of feeling, isn't it? It's very moving.

What you are doing here, the play, does it do any good at all if people are just going to go anyway?

Do you think it does change minds?

I think the main message is that they inform them.

Now they can know that things like this can happen.

You should be very careful with who are you talking.

Who is taking you abroad?

You know, this is... We want to do this for them

and they're doing actually. Of course people will go.

But they will ask themselves ten times what they're doing,

with who they're doing it.

So what's happening now? She's being sold.

What sort of money is involved when they're sold?

Up to 5,000.

But for this money, she will have to work for years and years in prostitution. Years and years.

We've had cases when women were telling us

that they've been forced to sleep with 40 men per day.

-Yeah.

-Young girls, like 18-years-old.

-This is a tragedy.

-That's appalling, yes.

In the end, good defeats bad and those who were seized

escape their tormentors and return to the village.

It's been a moving performance to watch, but Tatiana remains a realist.

It's a beautiful happy end.

-But life is not always like this.

-No.

APPLAUSE

Despite all its problems, Moldova is far from depressing.

Chisinau continues to surprise me.

Under the Communist regime, the arts were always encouraged, provided they didn't question the party line.

So there was always a chance of stumbling across an experimental sculpture park, like this one here,

which turns out to be just around the corner from a housing block,

specially built to provide studios for working artists.

Lika, a children's book illustrator shows me one of them.

And I step into a world which nothing quite prepared me for.

POP MUSIC PLAYS

Believe it or not, this is an 87-year-old man - Lika's dad.

-Does he make? Does your father make all the masks himself?

-Yes.

The man behind the mask is Globus Shinchuk, one of the best-known artists in Moldova.

Did he always used to do shows like this?

Yes, yes, yes.

But he calls it... a theatre of one spectator.

-Right. Yes.

-You see, it's a theatre with one actor, but he is a theatre with one spectator.

For he doesn't like many people, being crowded.

It's few people and he shows there.

-I like that. A theatre of one spectator.

-It's very live.

I'm not sure if you show it, it will be all right.

It's live, you see, like jazz.

It should be seen live.

Yes.

Globus has been making faces for 50 years.

But it's the big stars that really seem to attract him,

though Pavarotti is usually a bit bigger than this.

Yeah, very convincing.

We must ask him.

'There's a lifetime's work here, providing a fascinating archive

'of the politicians and celebrities of the Soviet era, with whom Globus grew up.'

Were there good things about the Soviet system for an artist?

No, I don't think.

You see, people...

had a hope, somehow, but now they don't.

That's the difference.

They hoped that they will have an apartment, you see,

in 20 years, in 50 years.

They think, after 100 years, they will build communism.

It's a foolish hope.

But some people lived with this.

With this hope.

But now they must be more real.

Real, no?

You can still have a hope.

No, you don't now.

Hope was fed by...

by the...how?

By the party.

-By the party.

-Yeah.

The party would probably not have approved

of the partying that goes on every night in the nightclubs of Chisinau.

Through Tatiana I meet Olga Maxim,

who, at 16, left Moldova to study as an actress in Romania.

Though she now has a partner and a child there, she comes home regularly to visit her mother.

She suggests I might like to go with her and see a quieter side of Moldovan life.

Her mother lives in a farming village, one hour south of Chisinau.

Yes, I'm visiting her quite often - once a month.

We're coming every month.

-Have you got brothers and sisters?

-I have a sister.

'Olga's father died seven years ago, and her mother, Helena, lives alone in the family house.'

Mum is working.

She wants you to do the work now. Yes, exactly. Hello.

What should I say really?

THEY SPEAK IN MOLDOVAN

Very nice to meet you. She's been very helpful to me.

THEY SPEAK IN MOLDOVAN

But she's a crazy driver.

Like many who've grown up in the world of Communist collectives,

Helena has learnt the importance of having something of your own.

Does she have to buy any food at all or she quite self-sufficient?

No, she doesn't buy anything.

She's growing everything in her garden.

She buys sugar or probably rice.

I mean, for sure.

But everything that she grows in the garden.

What are her luxuries? What would she like to spend her money on,

apart from a new pair of garden gloves?

Chocolate!

Chocolate.

-Sweet things that she cannot grow in the garden...

-That's good.

-..that she buys from the city.

-I'll remember that. I'll get you a box of chocolates.

The rest, she has everything.

She has everything and she's growing chickens and ducks and all these kinds.

Helena gets up at four every morning.

When I look at her garden, I can see why.

Mum wants to show you her garden.

-She grows tomatoes.

-She grows all of this herself,

and picks them, and all that?

-Yes, everything that she grows in here is for herself.

-Yes.

Your family have lived here for generations. On both sides?

Yes, yes, yes.

What did your father do?

My father was a...

He had kind of ruling jobs.

-First, he was...

-In politics?

He was a Communist, actually.

He was... How they call it?

..In the party, in the Communist Party. He was kind of boss.

-Most people were at that time, weren't they?

-All of them. All of the men in the village.

-Picking like a maniac here!

-Yeah, she's picking.

-I love it, really.

We natter on, and she's just really concerned about getting the raspberries in.

They're lovely. What does she think about Moldova now?

I mean, does she think things are going to get better or worse?

THEY SPEAK IN MOLDOVAN

She says that...I think that...

She thinks that things might go worse because of the economic situation.

The salaries are very small, and the prices are growing.

For her, it's enough - she says, "For me, it's enough, I have everything."

-Yes.

-But for the other people from the cities, especially,

things might get worse because of the economy.

Does she...? Is she nostalgic for the Communist time?

No? No, she's happy.

Despite this, I suspect it will be a long time

before "new Europe" changes the way of life in the Moldovan countryside.

Certainly, the meal Helena treats us to owes more to the old days.

-How is it?

-It's very nice, yes, yeah.

'And she's made the wine as well.'

-But it must mean that...

-She wants to toast.

-A toast, oh, yes.

Yes, well, thank you.

-Cheers.

-Here's to Moldovan way of life,

Moldovan food,

to the best cook in Moldova.

Are people more inclined now towards Romania and...

obviously then to the West and Europe?

After the separation, they just remain alone, totally alone.

And Moldova has no industry, has nothing to live from, just land.

There, you see, they are growing vegetables, and they are having this.

Actually, the Soviet Union was calling Moldova the sunny country,

because everything was here very natural,

the vegetables and the chicken and everything was growing naturally from the land.

There was nothing chemicals or stuff like this.

Would you come back to live here?

In Moldova? Maybe when I'm very old...maybe.

There you are, you see?

A qualified person like yourself can't really work here.

Here in the south of Moldova, old and new worlds meet in quite surreal circumstances.

DRUMMING

The country's top group, Zdob Si Zdub, much influenced by folk music,

has come here specially to re-unite with a gypsy lady,

known and loved by all as Grandma.

ELECTRIC GUITAR PLAYS

HE SINGS IN MOLDOVAN

Grandma won international fame banging the drum for Moldova

in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest.

They came sixth.

Well, we've now left Moldova, and we're in Moldavia.

Moldova's a separate country, as we know. Moldavia is a part of Romania.

It's confusing, I know, but it's very, very beautiful.

In the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains,

largely protected from marauding armies and political commissars,

are some of the least-changed communities in Europe.

Religion remains the focus of local life,

and the churches are works of art.

The walls of this one, the monastery at Moldovita,

are covered inside and out with frescos painted 500 years ago.

These ones here are a graphic account

of the siege of Constantinople, with Christian armies desperately fighting off the Turks.

It's like mediaeval news footage.

-Every single wall is covered.

-Yes, every square inch, we can say, is covered with paintings, yeah?

What we see here, this is Last Judgment scene, always at the entrance to remind people about...

how important it is to take care of their next lives.

'Carolina is my guide to this extraordinary Byzantine masterpiece.'

-Presumably where the altar would be.

-Behind that wall would be the altar, where no men of other religion

-and no women are ever allowed to go, except nuns sometimes.

-Yes.

And the wall here is called the Icon Wall, or the Iconostasis,

which is one of the most marvellous parts of this church, basically.

-Is that gold leaf or gold?

-Yes, it's gold, yeah.

-It's carved in wood and covered with gold.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And they're still working.

-And they are still working on it, yes.

Gosh, such detail.

Yeah, so much detail, so much time consuming.

How long have they been working?

Just over 15 years now.

Since it's about 700 euros per square metre to clean it.

For centuries this has been a hidden gem, but in the new Europe it could be tourist gold.

BELL TOLLS

In the mountains of the Maramures region, it's All Souls' Day, and if evidence were needed

as to why communist atheism made so little headway here, look no further than this churchyard.

The graveyard in the village of Ieud is packed with families here to remember their loved ones.

The priest blesses each grave in turn.

Candles are lit and bread specially baked.

Ionut, a local student, tells me why.

This is one of the most important days in the...of the year.

Yeah.

Because this is...this is the day when we celebrate death.

Right, remember the dead.

Yes, just like we celebrate the birth, the wedding,

and this is the day when we remember the dead.

It's not just relatives of the living who are remembered.

Any member of a family who has died in the past 200 years can have their name read out.

It's a touching image of the power of remembrance and continuity,

and surely helps to make the work of the Grim Reaper seem a little less grim.

After the mass, I walked through the village

with Ionut and his father Filimon, who've invited me back to their house to carry on the celebrations.

Meanwhile, with the dead remembered, the living go back to work.

Despite the beauty of the countryside, life here is hard,

and the way to find relief from the daily grind is usually with strong drink and a good knees-up.

I fear that Ionut and Filimon are no exceptions.

With Ionut's mother keeping a beady eye out in the background,

the first of several toasts is raised.

Cheese and sausage is on the table, and in the glass - palinka,

a fiery eau de vie made from apples and pears.

And with an awful inevitability, one thing leads to another.

And another.

Why can't they just have afternoon tea just like anyone else?

Next morning, I find myself and my hangover aboard a horse and cart,

along with Clara, whom I'd met last night at the party.

We're in the town of Sapanta and, perhaps appropriately

in view of how I feel, on our way to another cemetery.

-Are we here?

-Yeah, we are here, we're gonna stop here.

But one, as they say, with a difference.

Most of the graves are decorated by local artist Stan Patras.

It's nice that all... I mean, the usual symbols of death,

the skulls and the Grim Reapers, they don't have those things.

I mean, it's life. I mean, this one here...

Yeah, this one, it's very...

-What's that?

-This sign is not so sad, actually.

Here it's about a very happy man who lived a very happy life.

He liked to drink wine and palinka

and to entertain woman, you know?

So he's had a happy life, and when did he die?

-Did he die when he was...?

-He died when he was...

-18?

-They don't say the age exactly, but he lived a very happy life, so I think he also died very happily.

I quite like that. I'd like that on my grave, actually.

Much better than "Here lies so-and-so so-and-so" to have a little sort of picture of me.

-Yes, it's an idea to...

Wouldn't you? Some bit of your life celebrated rather than, you know,

just the word, "Died here," and all the grim stuff, celebrate life.

Ja, ja, I think it's very nice, ja.

And people are much more enjoyable when they read that about you

-and what you did.

-I think that's what you want to remember.

-Of course.

Some of them, they are...let's say, happy, cheery, but some of them, they are quite, I think,

-sad, let's say.

-Yes, accidents - this one here, for instance.

So it's a bittersweet combination.

What's that? What does that say?

It's a little kid, and it's about a cab driver, he drove a cab,

and the girl wondered, "Why that cab should stop near the house and kill me?

"From all this country he couldn't find another place

"but next to our house where I was living and stayed nearby?"

And the cab killed her, so then she is also...

That describes what happened.

Yeah, that describes over there, ja, how it happened,

how the kid drove into the fence and killed the little girl.

It's an odd combination, isn't it? Cos you feel, you know, an awful accident and a dead girl there,

and yet somehow it takes the curse off it somehow. It celebrates her short life.

Yeah, that's true, yeah.

They call this the merry cemetery, and I can see why.

There's no better place than this to learn about the pain, pleasure

and the preoccupations of life in Maramures.

It's a region that's not overflowing with job opportunities,

but the forest, high above one of its most remote valleys,

has for many years provided local men with work.

It's Monday morning, and I'm joining the train which takes about 80 lumberjacks up into the forest.

No comment.

Morning... Hi.

Well...

I don't have a ticket, do I need a ticket? No?

Just need an interest in trees.

WHISTLE BLOWS

The more beautiful it gets, the colder it gets, and the only heating's in the engine.

WHISTLE BLOWS

This isn't luxury travel, but they're lumberjacks - they're OK.

It may not look like it, but things have changed for the Romanian lumberjack.

The chainsaw has replaced the axe,

and environmental concerns have limited how much they can cut,

reducing the workforce by a fifth.

At lunch, I'm introduced to a local delicacy - very useful, I'm told, for soaking up palinka.

-What's this, by the way?

-This is slanina.

-What's that?

-It's like the lard.

-White fat.

It's a fat, it's fat, yes.

It's from pig meat, it's a pig,

and usually you take a bit of this, and you must...

-Do you?

-Yes, of course, let's do it.

-Let's do it.

-Is this very...?

-Trust in me.

..very sort of typical of Maramures?

Typical of Maramures, yes.

What do you do? You dip it in there?

No, no, no, no, just...bite it.

-Oh, yeah.

-Cheers! Noroc!

Noroc! Noroc!

Mmm, yeah, quite salty and...

It's not spice, it's good.

Well, it's fat, but I like it, I like it.

It's fine, fine.

We used to have dripping when I was young.

In Sheffield, you'd have dripping on bread, we'd have that,

but now nobody...ooh, nobody has it, it's kind of shocking.

Far too much sort of bad things for you,

but I think it's... a little bit every now and then.

Having probably shortened my life by a good few years, it's time to leave this otherwise delightfully

clean and healthy mountain air and head south with the timber.

HORN BLOWS

BELLS RING OUT

Well, I've come south from Maramures, with its merry preoccupation with the dead,

to Transylvania, with its rather more sinister preoccupation with the undead.

This is Sighisoara, in the very heart of Romania,

and the word "heart" reminds me this is Dracula land.

The town was fortified by Saxons from south Germany,

hence the Brothers Grimm, fairytale-like appearance.

It was intended as a bulwark against invaders coming through the Carpathians,

Europe's last line of defence.

Ioanna, my guide, tells me the Germans lived here happily for centuries,

but the Communists made them unwelcome, and now they've all left.

One of the most legendary figures in history was born here

and is still remembered. Ioanna has mixed feelings about his legacy.

They've really got Dracula...

Look at all these! Dracula has taken over your town.

-Yes, this was the house of the father of Vlad the Impaler.

-Yeah.

Maybe he was born right here.

But who was he?

He was a great voivode, you know?

-Voivode, no, what's a voivode?

-A prince.

-A prince, yeah, yeah.

-And a great leader.

-So he was quite a hero for the Romanian people, he fought the Turks.

-A big hero.

-He defended very well his people, and he beated the Turks.

-Yeah.

He did a bit of impaling, though, didn't he? He wasn't very nice, was he?

It was a good thing, because he loved justice, and it was a habit, you know, all around.

-Was it? Everybody was impaling everybody else?

-Yes.

We think the medieval times are charming, don't we?

-This is all Bram Stoker's work, isn't it?

-Yes.

-He's responsible for this.

What do you think of all this?

-These are pretty kitsch, huh, don't you think?

-That's what I like.

-Yes, it's funny.

-I like these especially.

-OK, buy them.

-Would you mind? Turn your back if I just...

-I'll be your witness.

-Keep the Dracula business going.

-Please buy them in front of me.

Maybe I can have these two here.

Whoops!

There we are.

A coffee for me and the wife. That will be nice in the morning, before impalings.

Can we have those? Thank you. How much?

-300.

-OK, 300.

It's good, this.

OK, fine.

And if you want, I have a colleague performing Count Dracula.

-Oh.

-The character of Bram Stoker.

Is he scary, your friend?

-Very.

-Very scary.

If you want to be scared.

Combining history and local superstitions, Irish writer Bram Stoker

created a character responsible for a tourist industry that has brought wealth

and car parks to the gentle Transylvanian countryside.

Dracula's most blood-curdling deeds were set here at Bran Castle.

It certainly looks the part,

and attracts some strange people.

-Welcome to my castle.

-Thank you.

-Come with me.

-Thank you.

Be my guest.

'Johanna's friend Peter has to be one of them.

'He doesn't look well.'

Come with me...my friends.

You first.

No, you first!

Oh, dear. Into-the-little-passageway syndrome.

Bring the garlic!

It's strange.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

HE CONTINUES LAUGHING

It's death.

These rooms were done up in the 1920s by Queen Marie, wife of King Karol,

when Romania had a royal family.

Sorry, back to the story.

-Old vampire.

-Girl!

Ssh, girl!

Aaargh!

Transylvania, oh, Transylvania.

In Transylvania you can see very strange things.

'Telling me!'

But I have more.

My revenge is begun.

I spied it over the century,

and time is on my side.

I've seen a lot of Romania's unchanged rural byways.

Now it's time to head for the capital, Bucharest, to find out how modern Romania has been shaped.

And, as happens on trains, I end up learning a thing or two on the way.

I notice the book you're reading is by Cioran.

-Yeah.

-In my guide book there's a great bit here about

Emil Cioran, the philosopher, who published On The Heights Of Despair, setting out nihilist anti-philosophy

that the only valid thing to do with one's life is to end it.

-But continued to expound this view until he was 84.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, quite so.

-So is he well known?

It is, actually, it is.

It's one of the Romanian biggest philosopher.

He's part of the golden generation of Romanian spirituality,

built up between the wars.

Europeans seem to be able to respect and admire philosophy more than they do in England. Is that so?

-Really?

-We don't really have great philosophers.

You have Shakespeare, which explains everything.

-Maybe that's it.

-Yeah, yeah.

We have this sort of conceit in the West that we are Europe.

And I've discovered from this journey that it's not like that.

The culture and history is all entwined. And Romania must have felt itself to be part of Europe.

Romania has...in one way, in one time in its history,

elected to be in eternity, to have no connection with historical time because it's a tear-off of history.

We are in the middle of the crossroads of all nation invaders, empires and everything else.

And to survive, the Romanian people choose to be suspended in eternity.

I'm not entirely sure what that means.

When I set out to see Bucharest next morning, I'm not entirely sure where I am.

Have I been flown back to London overnight?

Perhaps I never left Maramures.

Ah, now I understand! Of course, I'm in the American West!

Hello, you're Bogdan.

Very good. Very good to meet you.

I feel I have been all over the world in the last two minutes trying to get here.

Bogdan runs the many make-believe worlds here at Castel Film Studios.

It's a Romanian success story,

with international hits like Cold Mountain shot here.

And another American movie currently in production.

Action!

-How did it come to be you?

-Post communism was very chaotic.

Most of the industry is trying to find pace, trying to find direction, markets were collapsing,

systems were collapsing and changing.

So it seems to be crazy for a young DOP at that time called Vlad Paunescu to start a business like that.

You know, it seems crazy but in the end, now,

it seems to be a very successful business.

Bucharest - a sprawl of some 2 million people, has been a capital for 350 years.

But it's the traumatic recent history, shaped by the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu,

who ran the place for 25 years, that is stamped all over it.

That building in front of us there, the white building, was the central committee of the Communist Party.

This is where the revolution in 1989 started in Bucharest.

This is where a big crowd of people was gathered in December 1989,

by Ceausescu, strangely enough, in a big rally,

to support communism actually.

And people started to boo him, and in a way to attack him verbally,

and then, gradually, literally attacked this building

and from the top of the building is a very famous shot of his helicopter taking off from the Palace.

Within days he was executed.

The Communist system in Romania was probably,

if not the toughest, definitely one of the toughest in Eastern Europe.

It was very similar... and he actually had models

from those areas in North Korea and Vietnam at that time, in Iraq.

He became a very good friend with all these dictators.

And this was the result - Ceausescu's palace of the people.

After the Pentagon, the second largest building in the world.

It now houses, amongst other things, the Romanian parliament,

and I'm shown around by another Bogdan,

MP and current president of the Chamber of Deputies, Bogdan Olteanu.

Frankly, everybody hated it because of its history,

because of the people that were brought here by force.

Some of them died. Thousands of houses had been demolished in this area

and people were forcibly removed, so, basically Romanians hated it.

There was a long debate in the early '90s about what to do with it

and one of the ideas was to bomb it.

-To bomb it?

-To demolish it, OK. The idea was to bomb it from a plane.

In the end it was easier to keep it.

A headache for Bogdan and his colleagues now is how to fill the space.

The statistics are staggering.

Begun in 1984, 20,000 labourers and 700 architects

worked 24 hours a day

to build over 1,000 rooms, hang 4,500 chandeliers,

lay 1 million cubic feet of marble, and it's still not finished.

One carpet alone weighed 14 tons.

There's a nuclear bunker dug 70 ft below ground

and 26 churches and 7,000 homes were demolished for this and the civic centre that surrounds it.

You can see the grand scheme here from this balcony.

Yeah. Here, he can address the people, and they will never know

who's addressing them because they can hardly see you from there.

That's a bit of a mistake. Was he illuminated?

-Minor mistake!

-Minor mistake.

If he had the time, probably he would have built a second building.

Was that based on the Champs Elysees?

I wouldn't say it's based on the looks, but it's certainly based on the size.

He wanted to have a boulevard longer and wider, and he managed to have it longer and wider.

It's a little bit wider and a little bit longer.

Nobody compares them, obviously.

Fragments of the old city can still be seen

but, in truth, there's little left of the golden days of the 1920s and '30s,

when Bucharest was known as Little Paris.

Of course, there have been golden days for Romania since then,

many of which involved their world number-one tennis player of the 1970s, Ilie Nastase.

Oh!

Oh, I say!

I've never been in a tennis superstar's home before.

-So show me these...

-I'm not any more. I'm no superstar.

Well, there you are. That was the superstar days.

There's one with the ugly chap. Oh, my God!

-How long have you been in this house?

-33 years.

Have you ever wanted to live in another city?

Yeah - New York. And also Rome, but I was in New York the first time.

I don't have time for Rome after.

I feel I know you because I've seen you so often and followed your...

I think I saw you, too. Seriously.

-Not playing tennis?

-No, no.

I know your face, I don't know from when, but your face, I saw, yes.

-Way back, way back.

-Way back?

-Me too.

-Yeah.

When you were a tennis superstar in the '70s,

what was it like here in Ceausescu's Communist Romania?

Yet being able to leave the country and go to the bright lights of the West?

Did you feel a bit in two worlds?

It was difficult for me because, you know, I was living mostly in the West.

And I play in the West all the time.

And when I play Davis Cup, I have to come back, and I know the situation not very good.

Because my parents told me what's happening.

They have a good life, but other people not.

We're looking at new Europe, and how it's changing.

How much has Romania changed, since the fall of communism?

Unfortunately, I think the people have more freedom

but they have less money, unfortunately.

I'm talking about general people, not the few who are very rich,

and they have not millions but billions, some of them.

But unfortunately, like I said, freedom is there, but they cannot travel.

Before, they have the money to travel, they do not have the passport.

Sorry, this is a slightly different tack.

It may be rather personal, but I read a quote where you said you had slept with 250,000...

-Sorry, no, 250,000 women.

-No, 2,500.

-2,500 women.

-Well, it's not exactly like that, but I just said it.

I cannot tell you the story because then the autobiography, it not sell my books!

No, I did with David Beckham, and she's English, the lady I did the book.

-And of course...

-Was that a round figure?

He came to me, and asked me, how many girls do you think you sleep with?

I said, I don't know, I never count them, but I said, for 30 years,

I didn't put more than 30 years, but 30 years, maybe three a month,

four a month, five a month, it's, you know, almost 2,000.

No, I said, 800, 900.

And she said, no, it cannot be like this. First, it doesn't look good for your reputation,

it does not look good for my book, can't sell the book,

and then I said, OK. I said 2,500.

"That sounds very good!"

So, that's what I said. It is a joke, you know?

I think I'll try and say that. You can get away with it, I can't.

No, but it's, you know, you never count.

For me, the one that counts is the last one.

In the villages and towns of northern Romania, we saw the legacy of the past respected.

Ceausescu, the son of peasants, signally failed to do the same for Bucharest.

He treated the capital as his plaything, destroying lives and history in the process.

The time has come for me to leave this rather oddly endearing mess of a capital.

It seems to have got over the indignities of the Ceausescu years

and is coming well on the way to becoming Little Paris again, or maybe Little Milan.

It's time to head on back to the Danube - my highway through Europe.

At the spot where a Roman bridge once spanned this far frontier of their empire,

I walk with Dan Badorau, who was born and brought up here.

A National Theatre actor, he's also much in demand to play baddies in American action movies.

The ideal person, perhaps, to escort me out of Romania.

A massive Hydro-Electric plant has transformed this dramatic stretch

of the Danube from a turbulent gorge called the Iron Gates,

to a wide, windswept sea.

-The gorge is...there?

-Where those rocks are, yes.

You'll see.

-It's fantastic.

-The whole thing narrows, very, very tight.

The Danube here is like a big lake.

'Ahead of me and Dan, another gorge waits to be navigated..

And now you will see, in one minute,

a huge statue of, er...

of our ancient king, Decebalus.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-Where is it? Just round the inlet there?

-Yes.

Strange place for a statue.

I still can't see anything.

-The eyes.

-Oh, yes!

-Nose!

-Yes!

-Huge...

-That's very good.

And what does it say?

It says in Latin, "Decebalus Rex. Dragan fecit."

-Dragan made it.

-Dragan made it.

-Who's Dragan?

He made his fortune in Italy and he gave a gift for the Romanian people.

-Gift to the Romanian people?

-Yes.

King Decebalus is a hero?

-He's a hero, he fight with the Romans.

-Ah, right, yeah.

With Trajan, Emperor Trajan.

Trajan, yeah.

Trajan, yes.

As we approach the gorge,

I experience a feeling the Roman legionnaires might have shared,

of leaving a far-off outpost,

as the Danube carries me onwards.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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