Voluntari, Romania ? Engines grumbling in the Balkan twilight, giant semis roll past the truck stop and its overflow of wedding guests.

Gears grind as the trucks leave the highway ramp and head northeast toward Bucharest, laden with goods for the capital’s growing middle class — Japanese electronics, German roadsters, French cosmetics.

Oblivious to this parade of a changing Romania, partygoers at the roadside restaurant are celebrating a remnant of the old Romania.

It’s a Gypsy wedding, and the 15-year-old bride is mourning shattered dreams of studying medicine as she steels herself for a life more Middle Ages than Modern Times. A schoolgirl just weeks ago, she soon will be little more than her husband’s chattel.

After years of backwardness, most of Romania appears to be on the mend. Roads long the bane of the Balkans are fixed, rest-stop toilets are generally clean, and membership in the European Union is set for 2007.

Bucharest was the darkest capital of the Soviet bloc. Now, neon crawls and pulsates in a city of light, whose vibrant pulse can be measured by the daytime din of construction and traffic.

At the Corina truck stop, where diesel fumes mingle with the smell of barbecue, the colorfully clad wedding guests also seem a part of the new Romania — on the surface.

Broad grins split the faces of the parents of the bride, and no wonder — poised and pretty, Narcisa Tranca is a dream in white satin, huge gold earrings and faux pearls piled high in her hair.

But her smile is forced, and her mind seems far away as she obliges requests for a dance. Her wedding is a rite of passage into a role she dreads — cleaning, cooking, working in the fields, having babies. Her husband will decide on everything.

Gypsy bride Narcisa Tranca, 15, walks with relatives and friends during her wedding in the village of Voluntari, on the outskirts of Bucharest, Romania. Narcisa's wedding was a rite of passage into a role she dreads. Yesterday she was a child. Tomorrow, she will be a Gypsy wife. And that means cleaning, cooking, field work and pregnancies.

School? “Not once she’s at my house,” says Marin, who hasn’t seen a classroom from the inside since fourth grade. “She’ll be busy with housework like the other women in the family!”

Just weeks ago, Narcisa was in junior high school in her town outside Bucharest, an A-student with dreams of studying medicine. She pleaded with her parents to let her continue her education.

No, they said. That is not the Gypsy way.

“I wanted to be a pediatrician,” she says, resignation tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I told them again and again, but my parents just wouldn’t listen.”

Her father, Marcel Tranca, says that had he not agreed to the marriage, the alternative would have been worse: Narcisa’s abduction by potential suitors who didn’t want to wait for negotiation.

Her parents reached a deal with Marin’s family, a clan of prosperous horse traders: $2,000 for Narcisa.

Narcisa’s world is as old as the 14th century, when the ancestors of what now are an estimated 8 million European Gypsies started arriving from India.

Discrimination and clannishness created a gap that persists to this day. Millions of Gypsies scattered across Europe, particularly in the former communist states, are overwhelmingly disadvantaged in education, job opportunities and status.

Governments in the east now are pushing to do away with that divide, partially in recognition that it threatens their chances of meeting the standards of joining the rich club of the European Union.