Vama Veche
Vama Veche
About
Several km to the south of Mangalia, in the summer, one can meet a Bohemian community, i.e. Romanian artists, actors, singers, dancers who come for a holiday in a secluded place, the peaceful village of Vama Veche, a traditional destination for those enjoying quiet beaches, sea swimming and nudism. The name literally means "Old customs point" as it is near the Bulgarian border. During the communist era, concern for border patrol sight lines spared Vama Veche the development that occurred in other Romanian Black Sea resorts. It became a hangout for intellectuals; for reasons that are not exactly clear, the generally repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu chose to tolerate this counter cultural oasis, as long as people had their identity papers with them. Accommodations consisted of tents or rooms rented from peasants or fishermen. After the Romanian Revolution, the village of Vama Veche began to develop into just another mainstream sea-side resort and a campaign "Save Vama Veche" was initiated by the Academia Catavencu newspaper against this trend. They also organized each year starting 2003 a music festival, Stuffstock, to protest against bad quality music (i.e. manele and Romanian pop music) and to lobby for the area's environmental conservation and a halt to development and mass tourism, but all these actually had the reverse effect: the village stopped being a small, clean and quiet place, as the festival and concerts attracted more than 40,000 people in the 2005 edition
