Abstract
The text investigates the nature of remembering the journeys of a selected group of railfans to Romanian forest railways in the 1980s. It interconnects the concepts of tourism and memory anthropology.
The memories of historical railway tourism became a permanent part of travellers' generational statements through which they not only negotiate their group identity, but also acknowledgement. Narrations about journeys for a visit to forest railway and their performance are situated in a mutual dialogue of the communicative and the cultural memory.
From the perspective of the content, the shared memory refers beyond the frameworks which are relevant for contemporaries. The contemporaries associate their journeys to Romania with the categories of disappeared authenticity ("disappeared paradise" of steam traction), exotics, Balkanism, shortage in the realm of consumption, and criticism of limited motion and travelling in the era of socialism.
The motif of the Iron Curtain contrasts with the globalized world imagination, which is established by technoscape. The memory frameworks are entered by travellers' young age and adventures tied to it.
The adventure and the experience of authenticity are able to maintain the memories of the journeys for forest railways in the communicative memory and to produce cultural memory.