Swedish Cop Uncovers Grandpa’s Crimes in Romanian Museum

That's why museum owner Adrian Nastasa thought something was odd when he noticed that one visitor had been sitting for more than an hour in one section of the museum.

The section houses a colourful collection of flashy items designed to recreate life under Romania's former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, celebrate Dracula and the flamboyance of gipsy culture - and take the visitor on a nostalgia trip back to the wild and genuine 1990s.

"I could see him on the security cameras from the reception, and decided to check on him," Nastasa told me after the young man had left - just before I arrived on 24 September to take photos for a feature story. 

The man seemingly sitting forever in the communist kitsch section was Michael Cojocaru, a 23-year-old Swede born in Stockholm to Romanian parents.

Michael Cojocaru at the Bucahrest Kitsch Museum. Photo: BIRN

As I was about to find out from Cojocaru himself, his father, Mihail, had been in the Romanian air force before escaping Ceausescu's dictatorship, seeking freedom and a better life abroad.

It was 1973, and Cojocaru had got a visa to visit Jewish relatives in Israel. After a few months there, he moved to Sweden, where he was granted political asylum.

In Stockholm, he would later marry fellow Romanian Florentina, who had joined relatives living in Sweden in 1986. The couple had two children, Michael and his sister, Caroline.

Michael grew up far away from his parents' country, but speaks Romanian fluently, and on September 24 was in Bucharest to attend his sister's graduation; she had moved to the city six years earlier to study dental medicine.

"She was going to get her nails done today, so I had the day off," Cojocaru said, back at the museum after Nastasa - who...