Fieldwork in Romania

Since 1996 Liverpool Hope has been taking first year Geography students to Romania for fieldwork. The trip is based in the small town of Orşova in the South West of the country. Orşova is situated on the River Danube (with Serbia on the opposite bank). We stay at the University of Bucharest’s Geography field centre on the edge of the town.

- The town of Orsova

- The Geography Field Centre

Orsova itself is a new town built in the 1970s when Romania was under communist rule.  Romania and Yugoslavia constructed a massive dam across the Danube which was completed in 1972. As the water level rose behind the dam many settlements were flooded.  One of them was ‘old Orşova’. The town of ‘New Orsova’ was built to house the population whose houses were now under water. It was intended as a showpiece of what communist Romania could achieve.

- The Centre of New Orsova

Orsova is situated in a spectacular in the southeastern part of the Carpathian mountains.  Here, the Danube has carved a spectacular gorge through the rock which is known as the Iron Gates.  This is an area of spectacular limestone scenery which contains many karst features of particular interest.

- The Danube Gorge at Cazane Mici

- A doline at Ciucaru Mare

This is also an area with a distinctive biogeography.  Much of the area is grazed by sheep and cattle producing a rich mosaic of oak-hornbeam woodland and species-rich calcareous grassland. The grasslands have a high density of and diversity of invertebrates, particularly hymenopterans (bees, wasps and ants) and orthopterans (crickets and grasshoppers).

- Plant species identification in a limestone landscape

- Hymenopteran burrow at Ciucaru Mare. The ground flora of the woodlands make a spectacular display in the spring.

- Helleborus in the ground flora of Oak-Hornbeam woodlands at Ciucaru Mare

- Violets, anemones and other woodland herbs carpet the ground of this part of the woodland, which is developed on a limestone pavement. An exposed part of the limestone pavement can be seen covered with mosses

The landscape of this south eastern area of the Carpathians is predominantly pastoral with woodland. The grasslands are grazed by cattle, sheep and goats, and cut for hay to feed the animals during the cold continental winter. This traditional pastoral agriculture, which has been lost from much of western Europe, has sustained an extremely high biodiversity. In the summer the pastures have a spectacular display of wild flowers and are alive with butterflies and many other insects.

- A hay rick. These are a common feature of the pastoral landscape of South West Romania.

Modern cultural geography looks at the ways in which landscapes can be interpreted as symbols of power and identity.  Close to Orsova is an interesting collection of statues which illustrate how different regimes have ‘marked’ the landscape in different ways.  One statue is from the communist era and celebrates the human triumph over nature that the Iron Gates dam represented.  Another statue from the post-communist era is very different in its focus: it commemorates those people who died trying to swim across the Danube to escape from totalitarian Romania.  The two statues are very different in form and the values they ‘write’ on to the landscape.

- A ‘memoryscape’ beside the Danube close to Orsova

South West Romania is a predominantly rural area with a low level of urbanisation and industrialisation.  Agriculture is largely un-mechanised and the area is characterised by a level of rurality unknown in the UK.  This gives a unique chance to look at remote self-sufficient rural communities where people live in a far more sustainable manner than in Western Europe

- Traditional agricultural practices in Dubova with the Danube and Serbia in the background

A spontaneous game of football with Hope students and local children in Dubova

30 kilometres from Orsova is the city of Drobeta Turnu Severin.  The centre is an elegant townscape showing Austro-Hungarian influences.  The outskirts are an example of planned communist industrialisation. The city illustrates many of the trends of ‘transition’ from communist to capitalism.

- The centre of Turnu Severin

One day of the fieldwork is given over to independent student projects.  Those students who are interested in physical geography or ecology usually go to the nearby Mraconia Valley.  Students who choose a human geography project usually work in Orsova or take the train to Turnu Severin.

- Fluvial studies at Mraconia

- Stream invertebrates from the Mraconia river can be used to indicate environmental quality. This stonely nymph indicates very clean water, rich in oxygen

The Romania fieldwork ends with 2 nights in Transylvania.  This in itself is a chance to look at the way the West creates stereotypes – or ‘imaginative geographies’ of other places.  For example, the Western stereotype of Transylvania is somewhere dark, sinister, haunted, mountainous and thickly forested. In reality,  Transylvania is very different:  an area of rolling hills, fertile agricultural land and spectacular scenery.

- Transylvanian landscape

The final activity of the fieldtrip is a visit to “Dracula’s Castle” at Bran in southern Transylvania.  This is another opportunity to look at the way in which the Western myth of Dracula has been imposed onto Romania.

- Bran Castle – the so-called “Dracula’s Castle”