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Show The Salt Lake Tribune WORLD Friday, August 22, 2003 Capitalists getting underthe skin ofhippies at nudist resort Culture wars: Longtime visitors to the Romanian beach at Vama Veche lobby to save the area from overdevelopment By ALISON MUTLER The Associated Press VAMA VECHE, Romania Naked men and women sun themselves or play backgammon as peaceful, silvery waves lap at the Black Sea beach. But the peace is deceptive: Vama Vechehas becomethesetting for a bitter summerdispute. An influx of post-communist money, entrepreneurs and tourists along with noisyjet skis, blaring pop music andflashy ho- has irked students and ag- A visitor gives some change to a Romanian teen playing Bob Dylan songs on the beach in Vama Veche, Romania, earlier this month. Students and aging hippies want to preserve their nudist paradise from ing hippies at the beach resort. As a result, the purists and what they see as uncontrolled tourist development. longtimevisitors have launched preserve their nudist paradise from what they see as uncontrolled tourist development. an international “Save Vama Veche” campaign to try and So far, the hippies seem to have the upper handraising op position to Romania’s new laws regulating development. Oisteanu calls the transformation of the area “wild capitalism.” The entrepreneurs and the newcomertourists to Vama Veche say they are a bit baffled by the “Save Vama Veche” campaign. “This place was an abandoned village, and we have raised the standards here,” said Weekendtourists began flocking luliu Neamt, 33, who invested to Vama Veche, which was free from the throbbing discos, mass tourism andhigh-rise hotels built elsewhere under Nicolae Ceausescu, the communistdictator. Vama Veche’s location — a strategic border point constantly under observation saved it from that kind of desecration. Buildings would have blocked the gaze of police keeping people in and out of the country. Ceausescu’s overthrow meant an end to the ban on construction. Now, hotels, motels and discos are cropping up across previously pristine stretches, many exploiting an absence of $168,000 in a hotel and a disco modeled on an Inca Temple. “Save Vama Veche from what?” said Petre Soporean,45, who hails from the city of Cluj and started coming 15 years ago for annual stays in a peasant’s cottage. “It is better than it was before.” Some purists say it’s too much. “Change is normal,” said Bogdan Preda, who has coming to Vama Veche for more than 10 years. “But everything has been built without logic, taste and style it’s too chaotic.I’m never going to comehere again.” ason * wasat © work when hereceived the call. Thoughts » about his six-dayold daughter raced through his head. “Wejust got her. Please don’t take her away.” Its9 r1ous‘ At the Dixie Medical Center in St. Ge orge,ateamof physicians and nurses worked to stabilize the infant Within moments, Pediatric Intensivist Chris Maloney called Dr. Twiggs “I think this baby has congenital Pediatrician Jerry Twiggs recalls, “When you see a heart disease” baby that sick, you knowthat you have to act really. [hat diagnosis prove d to fast or else the baby won't make it.” be the turning point. a couple of years At the same time, physicians at Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City were monitoring the Had this happened | Me Ke earlier, Dr Twiggs believes situation. Thanks to IHC’s exclusive internet software have survived it. We a t have been able te get the “Results EKG up there to be looked at as qui kly as it was Review”, they had instant access to McKenna’s laboratory results, EKG and chest x-rays THE NUMBER ONE nna he probably wouldn’t “Although it’s nice to be ranked #1 nationally for our integrated approach,” states JHC president Bill Nelson, “seeing how it helps people like McKenna is the true reward.” To learn more about IHC’s integrated approach, visit IHC.com. ; rs INTERMOUNTAIN HEALTH CARE Dr. Maloney agrees. “The system worked. It saved her life” Hi RATED HEALTH CARI + S YS TEM IN THE NATION TER tels Associated Pressfile photo “They harassed you from time to time checking your identity papers because it was near the border, but mostly they left you alone,” said die-hardresortgoer Simona Kessler. Kessler and others welcomed the end of communism in 1989. They were less happy about what it meant for their surf paradise. capitalists who would see Vama Veche become a moneymaking resort region: This past weekend a concert featuring jazz, classical and rock music that was organized by the hippies to call attention to their fight drew a crowdof10,000 people. Vama Veche, just a few minutes walk from the border with Bulgaria, became famous in the 1960s as an oasis of freedom far from the prying eyes of what was then a communiststate. “Poets and writers came here and cohabited with the fishermen,” said writer Andrei Oisteanu, whohas been coming here since 1967. “It becameabig colony of intellectual nudists that upset the communists.” Under the communists, writers and intellectuals dozed or sunbathed naked, anddiscussed philosophy on the sandy beach, sitting under reed umbrellas. Apart from occasional police controls, Vama Veche was a small oasis of tolerance, they say. |
