Vasile was still talking when we rolled around the Bucharest shantytowns and into the train station. My friends Kevin and Alina were waiting for me at the train station. I was more than an hour late.

Some parts of Bucharest look like a developing country

Kevin and Alina live in one of the few places Bucharest can still boast about after decades of degradation: the leafy Bulvardul Aviatorilor, which is not so much a boulevard as an avenue. But its age-old villas made up for the misnomer, and I quickly shed my travel stress at a nearby restaurant, where we sat down for dinner.

My comfort ended the next day, in an early-morning traffic jam. I was to meet a state secretary of the Ministry of Defense and ask him about Iraq, where Romania had sent the largest contingent of troops of any former Communist country. The Defense Ministry building had been constructed to intimidate, and intimidated I was. It looked as though Stalin and Julius Caesar had designed it together: huge, immensely powerful and extremely ugly.

Instead of the state secretary, I saw Mihaela Matei, the head of Euro-Atlantic strategy in Romania. Integration into Europe was proceeding unevenly: The European Union promised membership to Romania but not until 2007 at the earliest, whereas NATO had admitted the country in 2002. Romanians decorated Bucharest with about a million blue NATO flags -- which are still up -- and enthusiastically sent hundreds of soldiers to Iraq on top of the hundreds they'd already sent to Afghanistan. But antiwar France -- Romania's old friend -- may no longer back Romania's E.U. bid.

Communist-type buildings decorated with the colors of capitalism -- billboards

"We have tried as much as possible not to engage in [the Iraq] debate," Matei said. Military participation helped Romania assert its role in the international community, and she said the country had also promised active participation in a future joint E.U. military corps. Meanwhile, "We are trying to run business as usual and avoid the political quarrel."

Out of necessity, Romania had always put a lot of emphasis on its military might, she reminded me. The country's location on the Black Sea, an obvious and hard-to-control east-west route, and its relative proximity to unstable areas like the Balkans called for military muscle.

As we rode in a rusting Romanian-made jeep to the headquarters of the military police, I began to doubt her cocky assertion of Romanian might. But then First Lieutenant Ivan Eduard appeared at our vehicle, and my doubts evaporated. He was well over six feet tall and sported shoulders that made me shrivel.

The 26-year-old Eduard had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but he didn't say much about his experiences. "We were trying to block smugglers," he muttered, walking along a decrepit corridor. "Drugs and weapons. We had a lot of responsibility." He opened a door to a tiny room. Two women were waiting there, wives of soldiers whose husbands were serving in Iraq, somewhere near Najaf.

The Romanian military wives

The wives were nervous. "Except for the heat and dust, which is killing them, they are OK, they say," said one of the women, Claudia Nistor. "They write when they can, and they often call, but they can't really talk about what they do."

She turned away. The other woman, Valerica Tatuta, saved the situation and said she would take her husband to the mountains when he came back. "Nothing of that flatness, heat and sand," she smiled. "We'll be there for a week, just the two of us, and then take our daughter to the beach. She's 11 and can't wait to see her father back. But he's mine first."

The soldiers bring back more than their fatherly presence. They make US $50 a day in Iraq, which adds up to a bounty when they return from their six-month rotations. Nine thousand dollars is equal to some five years' average salary here. Many of them buy cars or take on a mortgage. But, said Tatuta, "I don't think money will change too much. My husband considers this his mission."

The communication officers smiled reassuringly. Then Tatuta let out a deep sigh. "This is the last month they have there, and it's by far the most difficult period for us."

As the jeep squeaked and bounced its way back to the ministry, the words of these two women stayed with me. The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring peace and prosperity; instead, their husbands were serving in a remote war. Prosperity, too, was relative. The stores in Bucharest were now full, the buildings were decorated with glitzy billboards, but most people would never be able to give up the penny-pinching that had become second nature.

Kevin and Alina took me to a Middle Eastern bar that afternoon, complete with a hookah and exotic tea. My mind was racing as I went to bed. In the morning, I would say goodbye to the East and head for France in a 28-hour train marathon.

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printable version of "EUROPE: The Re-Orient Express"