A twenty-first century waiting to happen

BOTIZA, Romania - Two children walk hand-in-hand in a village of 2,500 where 18 years ago there were just two cars (one owned by the priest) and one color T.V (also owned by the priest).

Botiza in the rural Mararmures doesn't yet have a high school, but nearly two decades after the fall of Communism, horse carts share the roads with plenty of cars. It seems most everyone has a satellite dish and cell phone. Everywhere there are piles of bricks and lumber. Construction is booming.

I thought about what the future holds for these children whose parents were children themselves when the Communist governments throughout Eastern Europe fell in 1989.

After spending just nine days in Romania, I'm not an authority, but my guess is that their future and the future of their country is bright.

Some leave Romania in search of better-paying jobs in Western Europe, but many return to their villages for part of the year, investing the money they earn in new homes or guesthouses.

Tourism won't replace all the jobs lost after state-run factories closed, but it's spawned new careers for people such as Nicolae Prisacaru and George Iurca, two English-speaking men in their mid-40s whom I hired as guides for a few days.

Privately-run businesses used to be banned. Now everyone's free to become an entrepreneur. Marius Adam, in whose guesthouse my husband and I stayed in Sighisoara, has a business plan that calls for more rooms, and his son goes to college preparing for a career in robotics.

Young people seem enthusiastic about their future. I talked with a group of journalism students from Bucharest. All said they wanted to stay in Romania. One was already working for a television station. Their parents studied Russian. They study English and French.

I'm not sure if the guidebook authors haven't kept up, or if things are just changing so fast, but traveling in Romania turned out be a much different from what I expected.

We didn't get ripped off by the taxi driver, bothered by Gypsies or overcharged in a restaurant.

We did find clean and inexpensive places to stay, wonderful food (ate cabbage only once), friendly people and a level of attention rarely found anymore in Western European countries used to mass tourism.

Outside the rural villages and medieval fortress towns of Transylvania, there's a 21st century Romania waiting to happen.

In Baia Mare, a city 40 miles from rural Botiza, where Bucharesti Street is lined with shops selling bikinis, cell phones, pizzas and wedding dresses.

The young woman behind the desk at the hotel where we stayed our last night spoke excellent English. When I mentioned we had to leave very early for a flight to Bucharest, she offered to pack us "breakfast to go."

Waiting for us the next morning was a bag with sandwiches, an apple and a chocolate-filled pastry.

I think she's going to go far.