Just what you always wanted to know!

I occasionally "browse" through the online version of The Nine O'Clock, an English language newspaper here in Romania. Most of the content is (bad) translations from a variety of Romanian newspapers. And every once in a while I learn something interesting...

Tonight I was reading an article about the town of Sinaia(really more of an extended travel advertisement), and I learned that President Gerald Ford was here in Romania the day that I was born. For your reading pleasure -

"If you travel by train, the first contact you will have will be with the Station. It is one of the places with an important historical past. The first one was built by the Demeter Cartner company in 1913 and the second one a little later and was exclusively reserved fro the Royal House and its guests, such as foreign heads of state. On the platform of the Sinaia train station you will find a commemorative plaque for the Romanian prime minister I. G. Duca who was murdered by the Romanian Iron Guard in 1933 here. The death of the Romanian high official could be easily turned into a crime film script. Immediately after election, Duca was mysteriously summoned to Sinaia to see King Carol II. He caught the first train without being aware of his assassins’ travelling in the next carriage. In Sinaia his talks to the king was reduced to two hours as the PM was needed back in Bucharest on the 9:15 PM train. At about 8:30 PM, I. G. Duca was informed that his train had been delayed for more than an hour. At 9:30 PM, while he was walking to the official carriage, a cracker was fired in front of him, and it caused a blast. In the panic of the moment, Iron Guard activist Niki Constantinescu tapped him on the shoulder and than fired five bullets into the back of his head. Duca died instantly. The first one to run away was exactly the man who had the task of guarding the President of the Council of Ministers. Niki Constantinescu immediately put his hands up and surrendered himself.

Apart from this episode, the place is an important stop, the halt of the Orient Exprses or Arlberg express in the beginning of the century. As for the Royal Station standing a few tens of metres away, it was built after the plans of architect Duiliu Marcu in 1939. It is a stone building in the Romanian style that used to carry the royal signs of Kind Carol II at the time. The building was designed in such a way as to accommodate the entire royal train. In front of the station there is a large square where the heads of state would be greeted. The central hall of the station accommodates a mural painting (5,50 x 5,50 m) representing a noble wild bore hunting scene with eight characters riding horses, in natural sizes, with an inscription in Latin: Basarab Voievod 14th century.

The station continued to be used during the communists as well. A presidential train took US President Gerald Ford and Nicolae Ceausescu to Sinaia, on August 6, 1975. The Royal train station is not open for the public."
by George Grigoriu

www.nineoclock.ro