Everyone absorbs new cities in different ways, whether they visit museums, parks, or restaurants that encapsulate the area’s vibe. When I visit new places, I like to walk as much as possible. My classmate Lizzie and I began to take on this challenge in Bucharest a few weeks ago, walking through as many sectors of the city as possible. Our trip to Transylvania was no different, our most intense walk occurring in Cluj-Napoca (Transylvania’s capital and Romania’s second largest city). Dubbing it the “Cluj World Tour,” we walked around 18 miles, from the southernmost point of the city to the northernmost, then from the westernmost point to the easternmost, with other classmates joining us for various parts of the journey.
We couldn’t help but compare Cluj to Bucharest during our journey. Particularly, we noticed a stark difference between how the bodies of water are taken care of and interacted with. The first thing we noticed was the rivers. In Bucharest, our home base, we have the Dâmbovița River, which runs through the center of the city. I cross it every day on my way to class, and it has been a large part of our long walks through Bucharest, often guiding our journey. The Dâmbovița, however, leaves much to be desired. It is entirely lined with cement, is only a few inches deep in most parts of the city, and is filled with trash. My classmates and I often comment on how empty it is, as humans don’t really use it for recreation and there doesn’t seem to be much wildlife inside.
Cluj, on the other hand, has its own river, technically a canal, called the Someșul Mic. Guiding the horizontal part of the Cluj World Tour, we were pleasantly surprised to be able to follow a well-maintained riverwalk for a good portion of our journey. There were accessible entrances to the pathway, beaches for swimming, and it was crowded with people of all generations. Of course, we caught the river on a beautiful, sunny day, which perhaps added to our gleaming review. Though we really enjoyed this riverwalk, we were also confronted with the reality of returning to our not-so-shining Dâmbovița in just a few days.
As many of my peers are also writing about, it seems the reason for this difference in bodies of water is rooted in Romania’s time under a communist regime. Both of these rivers were clad in concrete for similar reasons under Ceaușescu, but our time in Transylvania showed us that the northern cities reacted and built-back from decades of oppression in a very different manner than the cities south of the Carpathians. In my case, the Someșul Mic has benefited from years of private, independent projects and international design competitions to rethink and reform the role of the river in Cluj. Still displaying schools and streets with names of former fascists (see Lizzie’s post), Transylvania has either reckoned with their past already, or refuses to let their negative decades define the present day. To me, Transylvania has moved on from Ceaușescu’s terror.
Bucharest, on the other hand, is stuck in history. There have been many attempts to upgrade the Dâmbovița, but for a mixture of administrative and political reasons, all efforts have failed. In an article about the Dâmbovița, it’s called “Zombie-Socialism,” an abrasive, but fitting term. The city can’t seem to escape its past. Of course, it would be negligent to not also point out that Cluj has the highest cost of living in Romania, so money is also a huge factor in this issue. Ultimately, though, what I noticed is how water becomes a mirror for broader civic identity. In Cluj, the Someșul Mic is a shared space, an invitation, and a sign of trust between the city and its residents. In Bucharest, the Dâmbovița feels more like a remnant of control. These differences suggest that rebuilding after communism is not only about physical infrastructure, but also about mindset. The way a city treats its water reveals whether it is simply preserving the past or actively shaping a more open, human-centered future.