Fericit și totuși frământat

Hey…

How’s it going?

Yes, I know. I’ve been gone a while. It’s a long story.

Listen. Romania, I’m worried about you. I really am.

I’m still over here in the Republic of Moldova, otherwise known as the Stefan cel Mare #1 Fan Club, but I’m worried. Everyone I know in Romania is feeling unsettled, restless, uneasy.

And let’s be frank. The government of Romania is essentially a collection of friggin’ idiots.

Romania is pretty much failing as bad as could be right now short of a literal war breaking out. One example – and I have to limit myself to one – is the tragic case of the Big Sad Church.

2018 is and was supposed to be a big year for Romania. The country’s “national day” or most patriotic holiday is December 1, which commemorates a big political gathering that occurred in 1918 when Romania decided unilaterally to embiggen itself. Ahem.

Thanks to the most colossally improbable good luck in living memory, Romania got to see that symbolic 1918 gesture become reality in 1920. In fact, 1920 exceeded their wildest dreams as Romania inherited everything from Timisoara to generous slices of what is now Ukraine, Bulgaria, and the Republic of Moldova, all at the stroke of a pen.

Yahoo! But then just 20 years later, fascism was “all the rage” and Romanians went crazy, basically. Amongst a whole slew of other batshit crazy stuff, Hitler said, “Hey, give Transylvania to that fascist Hungarian government your dumbass troops installed in 1918, yuk yuk,” and Romania said, “You got it, boss mang.”

Yep. So the whole “let’s all stick together 4evah, my Romanian bruvah” plan fell apart raaaaaal quick. But then the Legend of 1918 became part of Romanian mythology, and now it’s an official holiday. But hey, why not have a day to be proud to be Romanian? December 1 works as good as any for me, so let’s do it!

But please, for the love of god, do not forget the dream is just that, an old dream. But here came 2018, and suddenly everyone went way too overboard. And there is no better example of that than the Big Sad Church.

Millions and millions and millions of euros were spent on building this church, called the Savior of the Entire Nation Cathedral. The thing is clearly way too big. The church was financed partly by the Romanian government directly and partly by the (Romanian) Orthodox Church. But here’s the fun “catch” – the Romanian government also partly funds the Orthodox Church. Sigh.

Anyway, the plan was to have this Big Sad Church open in time for the Big Centennial Anniversary of the party in Alba-Iulia in 1918. Everyone friggin’ knew that was the plan. But you can guess what happened.

The church didn’t get finished on time. The roof is on and parts of the interior are done, so the priests ran in there and waved their arms and incense around and made it officially a “church church” in time for December 1.

Okay, well better something than nothing, amirite?

Except, of course, everyone forgot the fact that foarte multi villagers wanted to go inside God’s trophy house, so when they all piled into Bucharest, the police didn’t have enough thugs on hand to do crowd control.

One thing led to another, and a riot broke out. A bunch of old grannies got shoved around and pushed to the ground, and more than 1,000 people had to seek medical treatment.

Jesus wept, folks. For real.

Listen, Romania, I’m saying this as someone who loves you. You’re going off the rails, darling. You need to put on your big girl panties and get your shit together.

Anyway, don’t worry. As my part of my royal responsibility as the eternal King of all the Romanias, my wife and I are keeping the torch lit for ya.

Check this out (click for full size):

True fact: I acquired this by barter at the corner of Lenin and Soviet Street in Tiraspol. Yep. I’ve been having some interesting experiences lately.