Granta 33

At the end of last year, William McPherson went to Europe to celebrate the revolutions of 1989. He passed through the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve and had plans for visiting the great capitals of the east: Prague, Budapest, Belgrade. And then a friend suggested spending three days in Romania. It was, after all, the last of the big European revolutions - and the most dramatic.
Why not?
But when he got there, McPherson was unprepared for what he discovered. He was puzzled and moved and engaged. He couldn't leave. He wouldn't be able to leave for another six months: until the thirteenth of June, and the arrival of the miners in the Jiu Valley.