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Living in Romania
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Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania! |
The Musings of Former
BBC Journalist Mike Ormbsy,
on Daily Life in Romania
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Excerpts printed with the permission of the publisher, Editura Compania and
the author
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English-speaking travellers are often somewhat comforted by seeing
the McDonalds on the way in from the airport.
Nice, they think.
At least I can get a cheeseburger if the local food doesn't work out.
And then the Kentucky Fried Chicken at the entrance of Bucharest's
biggest downtown shopping centre. Even the trumped-up Pizza
Hut is sure to bring a few smiles at Plaza Romania (and elsewhere thanks
to their wireless
internet of course. Try not to giggle at the formal tablecloths
and cutlery for your pizza, it's traditional if you're paying that much!).
Check out
Mike's Advice for Travellers
Coming to Romania!
But few such tourists on their first visit to Romania will realise
how superficial these Western touchstones actually are.
"Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania!"
highlights the confluence of Romania's deeply entrenched
cultural traditions as
they meet the new freedoms, temptations and commercialism that comes
with being the newest nation in the European Union.
The Cultural Prism
Mike Ormsby's illuminating narrative ably focuses on life in Romania
from an English-speakers' perspective, using his understanding of
Romanians to highlight the often amusing cultural chasms.
Just because young women aspire to the latest Italian fashions
and the men yearn for just the right pair of imported Nike footwear,
does not mean they've jettisoned their centuries-old traditions
resident in every crevice of Romanian life, from Christening to marriage, and
at the end,
equally elaborate and profound funeral ceremonies. Mike's visit with a
neighbour to a funeral down on the
Danube River
left him deeply moved.
Tipping is Not a City in China
So many aspects of Romania are improving daily, with corruption
at all levels of
government and society dying a slow death, as every
bit as excruciating as nicotine withdrawal.
A 2004 Campaign "Don't Give Bribes" is but a memory now,
although it and other anti-corruption programs mollified the
European Union officials just enough to let Romania into the EU in
2007.
Mike was flummoxed to find persistant resistance to his attempts
over a month to reserve a table to watch a football match on the big
screen at a swank hotel.
The stories he was getting were
simply inconsistant and frustrating; the ad-hoc "policies" made no sense, and his attempts
to sort out the situation in a sensible Western fashion went
nowhere quickly indeed. The problem? Mike forgot
about a little thing called "bacşis".
The combination of stunning vistas, hiking with friends, and an
encounter with the odd shepherd has kept Mike enchanted and imbued
for life with the beauty of Romania's breathtakingly dramatic
Carpathian
mountains.
Whilst looking ideal, the Carpathian mountains offer no
sanatised Disney version of natural splendour, with real
bears, lynx
and wolves, as Mike and his hiking friends found out on more than
one occasion. Even if you only have time to skim his book in a
bookstore, go straight to the "Lucky"
story for a great tale of high mountain drama!
- I'm in love with Transilvania.
I love the way the horizon rolls, I love how the
Carpathian Alps soar like
a tidal wave two thousand metres high. I love the sound of the words:
Făgăraş
(fugger-ash),
Ucea (oo-chay-ah),
Braşov
(brash-ov).
- I love the timeless images of rural life flashing past the window of my
train. A shepherd
leans on his stick, wearing a fleecy coat the size of a small car.
- A ramshackle wooden wagon jolts down a muddy track, lead by a prancing,
skinny black horse with blinkers and a faded rosette. Mucky kids squat
in ditches, tossing pebbles into pools. Stout women in headscarves carry
wood or chat over a fence, tough as old boots.
- Wizened old men sip from small glasses, playing chess in their rumpled black
suits, white shirts and black hats.
It is the key activity which can make your trip a
custom-designed dream or a quickly deteriorating Balkan nightmare.
Check out
Mike's Advice for
Travellers Coming to Romania!Living in Bucharest, Mike has some important tips and tricks on
getting around Bucharest (try the Metro subway first), and his
lively prose is packed with real-life experiences on Romania's
roads, often exciting and often not for the faint-hearted either!
Getting around by public transport, be it by
taxi in the city,
maxi-taxi between cities, or the train or plane for longer
distances, can make or break your Romanian holiday. Where you
are going more than cross-town in a city, we recommend finding a
reliable driver.
With a little forewarning and forearming, you can negotiate
reasonable rates for less then the cost of a rental car.
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"Deep in the Quarters of Bucharest"
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Below are a few items and places to make life in Romania easier for
English-speakers.
London Spre Centru
English-speaking tourists will be happy to know there is an English
Bookshop in Bucharest ("Anthony Frost"), with a very attractive space,
British atmosphere, right in city center, and kind and competent guys.
This is where Mike Ormsby's book was launched in Bucharest
Learn the Limba
Even though some tourists may not consider learning Romanian an
essential for their short holiday, those who were sufficiently charmed
by Romania to make the odd return visit or two, may well find it useful
to try out some of
the best textbooks for English-speakers.
The
Compania publishing house offer both a textbook for beginners ("Romanian
at first sight") and the most
comprehensive course in Romanian ("You Can Speak
Romanian!"). Either offer quick learning and meaningful
methods for picking up Europe's "other romance language".
See more about Romanian on our
Language and Literature
section
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They're Pretty Healthy Looking
Compared with Americans, very
few Romanians are fat.
This is probably due to
lower disposable income for junk food and the fact that seemingly half
of Romanian's lives are spent in a queue somewhere, waiting for a
license, some paperwork, registration, and inevitably, the news that
they were in the wrong line and need to go back to get a stamp on their
papers somewhere else.
Even soccer hooligans greedily chow
down on a mixed salad alongside their grilled pork neck, practically
diet food in other parts of the world.
Latin, by Language At Least
Romanians consider
themselves to be as Latin as is their language.
But much like their
blood, the Romanian language also has significant Slavic and Turkic
influences. Genetic studies show no actual distinction between them
and other Balkan populations (making Romanians essentially the same as
Bulgarians and Serbs).
There have been noted however
some very slight affinity clusters between Romanians and some
Macedonians, Albanians, and small populations on the Istrian peninsula,
who not surprisingly, share a few
linguistic similarities too!
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