BUCHAREST. Following in the footsteps of fellow gadflyer Cliff Schecter, I flew from Baku to Bucharest.

Gypsies
The Gypsies, who now prefer to be called Roma, are the new Jews of Eastern Europe. The Roma unfortunately appear to have all of the disadvantages of the Jews without any of their advantages. While the Jewish Question has largely been "solved" due to the mass murder of the Holocaust and mass emigration of the survivors, the Roma remain a large, stateless, and often persecuted people throughout the region.

Ethnic Romanians are not always thrilled about the group name change because Roma sounds like, well, Romanian. The Roma form a sizeable minority of Romania's population but no one quite knows how many Roma there are--estimates range from 500,000 to 2 million out of Romania's 22 million people. Slavery of the Roma persisted in Romania until the mid-nineteenth century. Many Roma were also murdered during the Holocaust.

There are a lot of abandoned Roma children on the streets of Bucharest and they are pitiable yet scary. I was told that a children's mafia organizes begging with the smaller children paying off the older children. One aggressive child who looked about eight threatened to harrass me unless I gave her a euro and then told me to fuck off when I did not give her one.

Outside of a bar in the old section of Bucharest, I saw a group of Roma kids playing soccer on the street at 10pm on what would be a school night if they went to school. Another group was playing so roughly with one of Bucharest's many stray dogs, I wasn't completely sure of the dog would survive the encounter unscathed even though the dog was nearly the size of the children.

Many of these abandoned kids are addicted to glue sniffing. The temptation to escape through drugs must be hard to resist for the street kids. The kids nonetheless evoke little sympathy among the population because of their wild and amoral behavior, which reinforces existing anti-Roma prejudice.

Prejudice toward Roma often bears a striking resemblance to anti-Semitism where Jews become the symbol of the Other and are blamed for all of the world's problems. Just as Jews were often blamed simultaneously for capitalism and communism, Roma today are often attacked as wealthier than other people due to mafia-style activity and as dirty, poor people in the next breath.

Roma culture has a strong insider/outsider mentality which helps maintain the gulf between Roma and ethnic Romanians. According to Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca, Roma often view outsiders as polluted so it is important to keep separate from them to avoid contamination. Since outsiders are not part of the group, the prohibitations against taking advantage of them are small.

Such an attitude is not particularly surprising in light of extremely hostile attitudes in the past toward Roma but it seems maladaptive today. Roma who enter a university are perceived as leaving the group and often no longer accepted by their own people. Roma also participate in politics at a very low rate; those who do vote often vote for the ex-Communists without extracting much in return for their support.

Yet, one should not paint the situation as completely bleak. Romania may even be somewhat ahead of other countries in the region in dealing with the problem. The Czech Republic, often the perceived as the liberal darling of the West, tried to deport many Roma as Slovak citizens during the breakup of Czechoslovakia. Romanians at least accept the Roma as belonging there. Reserved seats for minorities guarantee the Roma at least one seat in the parliament--not much but more than neighboring countries.

Many Roma also occupy an economic niche. All of the people operating flower stands and collecting scrap metal are Roma. Many Romanians realize that the status of the Roma remains a real problem even if they are unsure what to do about it. Romania remains a poor country so resources are also highly limited.

The problems appear so huge and difficult to solve that it makes America's racial problems appear almost trivial in comparison. At least American blacks and whites share a largely common culture. As Professor Henry Louis Gates provocatively likes to point out, African Americans have far more in common culturally with David Duke than with most people in Black Africa.

Tramps
Flying from Baku to Bucharest via Kiev and Vienna nicely illustrates some of the contrasts between Eastern and Western Europe. Aerosvit, a Ukrainian airline, rather suprisingly distributed an English language newspaper with a long, and rather positive, story about Kiev's huge sex-tourism industry. However, I did not have the chance to contribute to the local economy because I was just changing planes at Kiev's Borispol Airport. I did try to photograph the sign in Hebrew and English wishing Jewish visitors a happy Rosh Hashanah but was stopped. I guess that Jewish New Year is a military secret in Ukraine.

Changing planes in Ukraine is a unique experience. Instead of the usual O.J. Simpson-style running through airports, one must first ride a bus about 50 feet from the plane to the airport door. Then, one must sit and wait until the second airline comes to collect you for security screening and check-in. I was worried about missing my flight since the connection was less than an hour but it was difficult to explain to the woman who had benched me across from passport control since my Ukrainian was nonexistent and my Russian limited to two words ("yes" and "excuse me").

As it turns out, prostitution is shockingly not limited to Kiev. Tourists get regularly solicited on the streets of Bucharest. The world's oldest profession has long flourished in Romania. Athene Palace luridly describes how prostitutes stalked the halls of Romania's most famous hotel on Bucharest's main square as Romania slowly descended into World War II.