A surreal encounter with Ion Iliescu
As a nervous Romania votes, I recall being beaten up there by secret police, mocked by drunks in a paddy wagon, and tricked by the scheming president
The air was damp with the weight of a December evening in the heart of Bucharest. On one side of the central boulevard stood the brutalist National Theater and a cement tower known as the Intercontinental Hotel. On the other were relics of the interwar period, faded facades whispering of a bygone elegance, flaking under the dec…
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