From Budapest to Bucharest

From Budapest to Bucharest

17.-23. October 2026

Comrade Rusu sits perched on a bulldozer. It is the

beginning of autumn, 1988. The machine’s noisy

engine disturbs the warm breeze.

The First Secretary responsible for propaganda in

Sector 4 stretches his arms wide, like an abyss ready to

swallow the earth, and, like a conductor orchestrating

a calamity, he sets the demolition in motion amid the

rumble of machinery.

Trees crackled from their roots, dogs howled as if

an earthquake were coming, old people wept, and

Rusu smiled with satisfaction at what was obediently

spreading out before his feet and what was to become

a communist dream.

Thus began the misfortune of the Bucharest residents

who had lived in Vacaresti, the place where Ceausescu

wanted to create the lake that would bear the same

name. Over one autumn and winter in 1988, more than

500 households were crushed by machinery like the

tomatoes and cucumbers in the abundant gardens of

the vegetable growers. [...]

Seventeen years later, people were left with nothing

but their property deeds, which no court would take

into account, and the hope that, one day, their parents’

land would finally find peace.

- translated into English from Andrei Ciurcanu, “Cartierul Vacaresti, o lume disparuta” October 11, 2008

We will follow the trails of erased histories to uncover the layers which lie hidden beneath constructed identities. Night trains will take us from the thermal bath and the Danube in Budapest, through the forests of Transylvania, and finally to the wetlands, lakes, rivers, and the erased landscapes of Bucharest, thus traversing through different versions of Romania: between north and south, mountain and plain, water and land, nation and region, construction and erasure.

Expected cost: around 520 CHF (outbound trip included)