There is comparatively little research on rural tourism coming from the postsocialist region. Hall (2004) made a brief overview of tourism in former socialist countries, but his discussion remained at a very macro level and was mostly concerned with the possibilities of developing rural tourism in the area according to a normative, ideal image, couched in the label of ÔsustainabilityÕ. Romanian rural tourism drew the attention of a number of foreign scholars who carried out country-level surveys of its
development, highlighting opportunities for further growth (Turnock 1999; Benedek and Dezsi 2004). An earlier picture of tourism development is captured by a survey of 195 guesthouses conducted in 2000 and 2001 by Benedek and Dezsi (2004). Their study looked at some of the basic features of rural households that offered accommodation and it revealed a pronounced selectivity in terms of the areas where tourism developed and the people it engaged, with 78% of accommodation owners having higher levels of education, including doctors, priests, teachers, people with secondary studies, and retired workers. Their householdsÕ endowment with utilities was also above the national average for rural areas (Benedek and Dezsi 2004:2-5). Ten years later, Iorio and Corsale (2010) report similar findings and comment on the pronounced unevenness in the development of rural tourism, in a paper that draws from seven weeks of fieldwork involving stays in six different touristic villages. The authors also show that agri- businesses are a complementary livelihood strategy, meant to bring families an extra income (160), that guesthouse owners tend to be dissatisfied with ANTREC, the main accommodation network involved in promoting rural tourism in Romania, and that they are over dependent on Ôword of mouthÕ marketing through informal networks. Iorio and Corsale conclude by arguing that the government and local administrations need to offer stronger support with marketing and with the integration and coordination of local efforts (161).
Although Talabă et al. (2011) have recently gathered twenty papers in a volume of conference proceedings titled ÔRomanian rural tourism in the context of sustainable development. Current realities and perspectivesÕ, this publication brings almost no empirical evidence from actual tourist destinations. Instead, the authors - most of whom have a background in economics or tourism management Ð present a lists of best practices for the sustainable development of tourism and comment on the rich potential offered by the Romanian countryside. Turtureanu and Tureac address the topic of rural tourism in a similar manner, generally praising its benefits, without discussing any ethnographic data and resorting instead to arguments that resemble excerpts from tourism promotion brochures, commenting on Ôthe absolute originality of Romanian folklore, its great variety and its exceptional preservation up to our timesÕ and on the Ôgenius of the anonymous artist, whose love for beauty and practical insight materialized in special buildings and production meansÕ, concluding that Ôthe rural village is a self-sufficient whole, defined by its dwellersÕ creativityÕ (2007:3).
Empirically grounded studies that offer a more critical and nuanced perspective are not numerous and most of them concentrate on villages located in Maramureș.
Maramureș is a region in the north of Romania that is emblematic for cultural tourism and it is commonly represented by media and by advertising as the most ÔtraditionalÕ place in Romania. Compared to other parts of the country, in Maramureș vernacular wooden architecture, farming practices and crafts like woodwork and weaving remained fairly unchanged throughout the communist period and until the 1990s. This was mostly due to its isolation - the area is surrounded by mountains and was located near a closed international border during communism, with limited transport routes connecting it with the rest of Romania. Maramureș was never close to one of the big industrial centres of the country, so alongside mining and forestry, the main occupation in the region has always been farming (Muica and Turnock 2000:182). Apart from becoming one of the major tourist destinations in rural Romania, in the past two decades Maramureș turned into a fertile ground for research. It attracted the attention of more academics than any other part of the country and it was also the subject of lengthier ethnographic fieldwork. Most of this research focused on the classic themes of heritage production (Catrina 2009), social change induced by tourism (Hristescu 2005, 2007), or the commodification of culture and staged authenticity (Cippolari 2002, 2003a, 2003b), but it also explored less common themes like the articulation between tourism and migration (Nagy 2008).
The idea of tradition is central to all tourism promotion for the area and travel to Maramureș is commonly presented as a trip to the past (Cippolari 2010:24-25). The same imagery becomes part of the touristsÕ gaze. Foreigners interviewed by Cippolari explained their destination choice by making references to the past, saying they wanted to see how their European ancestors used to live or to remember their childhood days (26). They also tended to represent villagers and the landscape as closely intertwined and they idealised the hospitality they received as being one of the distinctive features of the locals (Cippolari 2003:4). Hristescu too argues that tourists coming to Maramureș - both foreign and domestic44
, are pursuing authenticity and ÔtraditionÕ (Hristescu 2005:94). Faced with touristsÕ interest in the cultural and natural features of their village, locals in Botiza began reassessing their resources (Cippolari 2003a:4). Encouraged by a local NGO, they started producing and selling to tourists various hand- made objects such as woven carpets, baskets, or painted icons. These objects were generally similar to those that people used in their households, although some variations in style and techniques also developed. For instance, responding to touristsÕ preferences,
44
Between 2000 and 2002, 65% of the tourists were Romanian, while later in 2006 the ratio between foreign visitors and domestic ones was 50% - 50% (Bădulescu 2006:12).
locals returned to using vegetal dyes for colouring their woollen carpets, instead of the chemical ones that had taken over since the 70s (Cippolari 2003b:5). Catrina also described extensively how villagers in Maramureș showcase their local knowledge and culture by decorating home interiors with woollen bed covers, hanging embroided mats and glass painted icons on the wall, displaying ancient petrol lamps, or dowry boxes (Catrina 2009:11) and even old wooden weaving machines that they use to make demonstrations and offer short initiations to interested tourists (14). Visits to the sheepfold are another tourist attraction, including tasting of fresh dairy products (Catrina 2009:19). Folk violin performers called ceteraşi are sometimes invited by hosts to perform in front of their guests. Traditional wear is owned by most of the locals and used for religious holidays but also for entertaining tourists when serving meals or enacting farm work demonstrations (Catrina 2009:26)
Hristescu (2005) and Cippolari (2010) also show how guesthouse owners organised so-called Ôexhibition roomsÕ where they display various hand-made objects such as carpets, ceramics, icons painted on wood, clothing or bed covers. What the authors leave out is that these Ôexhibition roomsÕ are not an entirely new development brought by tourism. They are, in fact, an extension of a very old practice that at some point was widespread across rural Romania and remained popular in Maramureș until today, as many households have a Ôgood roomÕ (camera bună), a space for storing and displaying the familyÕs most prised possessions, most notably a daughterÕs dowry (Iuga 2006:40). This room is also the place where guests are usually welcomed for important family events such as weddings or funerals (idem). Faced with touristsÕ interest for these spaces, locals modified or ÔenhancedÕ them, adding objects that in the past might have not been kept there Ð as for instance the weaving machine, which is now used to stage demonstrations for visitors (Cippolari 2010:28). Tourism in Maramureș also contributed to changes in the local gastronomy. Some of the older recipes have been brought back into use (Mihăilescu 2007:254) but also new dishes developed, more varied and complex than what locals used to eat in the past, but which nonetheless are presented as ÔauthenticÕ and ÔtraditionalÕ (Hristescu 2005:101-103).
Modernising trends in Maramureș were also documented, although none of the authors quoted above insists on them. In 1999 and 2000, at the time of her fieldwork in Maramureș, Cippolari found that most tourists were lodged in the same house with the hosts, but she also met families who decided to build separate buildings for accommodation (Cippolari 2003b:4). She also notes that local authorities improved the infrastructure, paved roads and introduced street lighting, while villagers started
building indoor bathrooms and refurbishing their houses (Cipollari 2003a:9). Later, in 2009, Catrina comments on the presence of new modern houses made out of bricks, PVC and cement, along the older wooden ones, that give the built landscape a composite look (Catrina 2009:7). Trying to point at the impact of tourism on villagersÕ worldviews and practices, Hristescu labels the owners of guesthouses as Ônew peasantsÕ and argues that their actions are guided more and more by financial motives and by a desire for conspicuous consumption (2007:1) and that the values of mutuality and cooperation are not as widespread as they were in the past. Unfortunately the evidence she brings is not very organised and it is not helping her illustrate this claim. She presents a long list of interview excerpts that refer to situations when people do help each other and in the end she shows how cooperation still takes place, but seems to go more along kinship networks and between neighbours (127). Hristescu essentialises the role of tourism in shaping the new worldviews and she also overplays the differences between the villagers who host tourists and those who do not.
The signs of change in Maramureş are indeed visible, but widespread labour migration abroad, something entirely left out by Hristescu and hardly mentioned by Catrina (2003) or Cippolari (2009), may play a stronger role. Offering an empirically grounded critique of the stereotypes that describe Maramureș as a ÔtraditionalÕ and unchanged place where people maintained the same cultural identity across the centuries, Șișeștean argues that even if there was a peasant society that survived until recently, from the 70s onwards it started to disintegrate (2011:1). The main source of change was the ÔopeningÕ of the area through its localsÕ labour migration, first to other parts of Romania, and after 1989, abroad (Șișeștean 2011:2). Indeed, in 2008, 27% of the population of Maramureș had worked in a foreign country for at least three months and every household had at least one person who had been or still was abroad, making the area one of the places with the highest incidence of external labour migration. Migrants, more than tourists, bring new models of consumption, new architecture styles, and new values (idem). Given the seasonal nature of tourism, overall, they are also likely to be bringing more money.
Closer attention to the articulation between tourism and migration in Maramureș has been given by Nagy who showed how, through migration, villagers secured money for investing in guesthouses45 (9), they learned how to be Ôcultural brokersÕ and how to
communicate with their foreign guests (10) and they understood what are their foreign
45
Guesthouses are often transformed homes that migrants had built for themselves Ð important status markers and signs of achievement. As their return is sometimes postponed indefinitely, they use their houses to accommodate tourists (Nagy 2006:13).
guestsÕ expectations of comfort, endowing their houses accordingly (13). Nagy also points out that Spain and Italy, the two main destinations for villagersÕ migration, also turned into a source of tourists (15). With a more careful eye to details, Nagy shows how not all villagers in Maramureș respond in the same way to the touristic image of the region and she argues that they have three options available. They can either stage authenticity and tradition, playing a role for tourists, they might also appropriate the discourse, making it part of their identity, or finally, they can abandon or contest it in a pursuit of ÔmodernityÕ (Nagy 2006:4-5).
Apart from Maramureș, there are a few other countryside destinations that attracted research interest, mostly from sociologists. Although their studies relied on qualitative interviews, they covered shorter periods of time, remaining largely descriptive or keeping a narrow focus. In Albac, for instance, Văetişi and a team of students carried out a Ôdetailed description of the practices, strategies and effects involved by tourismÕ (Văetişi 2006:1). Their research identified a number of factors that stimulated tourism development: pre-existing tourist demand in the area coupled with earlier practices of accommodating guests, localsÕ inclination towards imitating each otherÕs strategies, the natural and cultural resources and the availability of large houses with extra rooms, emphasising as well the role of power networks, prestige and favourable legislation (5-8). Touristic activities and attractions observed by Văetiși in Albac included local gastronomy, folkloric shows or fairs, hiking, skiing, horse riding and more dynamic pastimes like kayaking, mountain biking or jeep touring (7). Hosts interviewed in this study argued that they preferred foreign guests over domestic ones, saying that the latter were less demanding and more interested in nature, while Romanian guests showed more concern for the accommodation standard, for the material culture and for the local gastronomy (8). Trying to cater for both ÔtastesÕ, hosts in Albac began to advertise two types of guesthouses Ð one ÔtraditionalÕ and the other ÔmodernÕ.
IancăuÕs research in Bucovina, a region in the North of Romania renowned for its painted monasteries, shows that locals have acknowledged and incorporated into their offer some of the touristsÕ pursuit of ÔtraditionÕ (2011:90), but also brings evidence of extensive change in the architecture of the region that is becoming more urban, losing its vernacular features. IancăuÕs conclusion insightfully captures the dilemmas with which rural tourism is riddled: both locals and tourists appreciate a blend of modernity and ÔtraditionÕ, but they differ in that urbanites emphasise the old, requiring only modern amenities for a better degree of comfort, while villagers embrace a
predominantly modern aesthetics, with some traditional elements included as decorations (2011:91).
Finally, the only study that I am aware of, that pays close attention to the institutional element, is ZamfirÕs research that examines the construction of heritage in a Transylvanian Saxon village under the influence of an NGO that had substantial foreign support and inspiration46 (2011). As most part of the Saxon community left after 1989,
many of the old houses were uninhabited and it was easier for the NGO members to materialise their vision, creating a unitary touristic product, following to a large extent the Ôideal typeÕ of heritage tourism. However, as Zamfir found, this development left out many of the more marginal Roma members of the community (idem).