Each year, the European Union selects a city to represent the Union as the "Cultural Capital of Europe." This year Romania's Sibiu has that honor. It brings with it loads of tourists, money and art. Sibiu is a beautiful city filled with Romanian, German and Hungarian architecture.

The website: http://www.sibiu2007.ro/en/publications.htm

....shows more about it and the elaborate history of the region. Most of us Americans have such a narrow view of history that 200 years seems old!

As a self-appointed "Romania-phile," I'd want the world to know what this place was like before the communists arrived. It was something, they say. Bucharest was the "Paris of the East." There's an old Jonie Mitchell song where she sings, "They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot." Except here, "They destroyed Paradise and put up a GA-ZILLION 9 story, concrete block apartment building."