Romania - General Overview

ROMANIA - parte generale-informazioni pratiche

I chose Romania out of curiosity about this people who have recently invaded us, but also out of nostalgia for the peasant world in which I was born and which I abandoned as a boy because of the exodus from Istria, my native land. In Romania a full 40% of the population is employed in the fields, growing potatoes, corn, hemp, tobacco, cabbage, grapes and lots of fruit. In the small fields of the north you see groups of 3-4 people working slowly, while in the endless countryside you cross to reach the Black Sea you meet no one and can't understand how they've been planted and tended.

I've seen few purely bucolic scenes and this disappointed me, but in any case the landscape is always extraordinary, with many woods that provide Romanians with plenty of timber, which they use for heating in the cold winter that drops even to minus 25°, and for making the massive, inlaid furniture found in the guesthouses and hotels they frequent. There are beautiful mountains, green valleys and plenty of water: streams, rivers and many lakes. The Danube Delta is a true paradise, which we travelled through in a small motorboat accompanied by Iuli, a twenty-year-old who at the same time hosted us in his camping site in Murighiol equipped with two comfortable bungalows with bathrooms and showers alongside.

The things that struck me most about the country are: - the kindness and good manners of the Romanians, who always answer you politely and often in perfect English, but sometimes even in Italian, languages they learn from TV in films broadcast in the original language; there are also many Romanians who have lived for a while in our country and then returned home - the maniacal cleanliness of the cities but also of the countryside; you don't find a bit of litter around and you see cleaners even on mountain roads far from inhabited centres - the care taken over the houses and gardens full of brightly coloured flowers and over the frequent city parks equipped with every comfort - the beauty of the central squares, which in every city represent the living room where Romanians organise film, theatre and music festivals, and the nearby pedestrian streets with outdoor bars and restaurants covere

d by advertising umbrellas from the big beer brands (Peroni, Becks, Stella Artois, etc...) under which Romanians drink beer in company, cocktails and various refreshing drinks because of the great heat we found - the modernity of the country, which made me, as an Italian, feel I belonged to an almost more backward country, and I'm not joking about that: giant billboards and signs showing film clips, a healthy, educated and well-dressed youth equipped with all the electronic and communication accessories; lots of local fast food places providing sandwiches, sweets and various snacks at ridiculously low prices - the tourist infrastructure with extremely well-kept family guesthouses with private bathrooms, TV, minibar of international standard, and inviting small hotels with very professional staff.

If anyone thinks of judging Romania from on high, they are definitely on the wrong track. The reason many Romanians leave their country is purely economic. With the end of Ceausescu's communism, accession to Europe and the introduction of the capitalist system, most of the gigantic combinat (industrial plants) have closed and are rusting away in the industrial outskirts, and many Romanians have lost their jobs. Those who haven't managed to retrain have preferred to emigrate, also because wages are low (200-300 euros a month) while the cost of living, cheap for us, is not for them, since they also have to pay for food at prices not far from ours (because of the too many intermediaries between producer and final consumer).

Many Romanians, surprisingly, miss Ceausescu's regime precisely because of the jobs, but others firmly deny it, recalling a dictatorship that denied them freedom and opportunities for the future.. Romanians are kind and help you in a way we couldn't imagine. A gentleman got in the car with us to take us to the motorway entrance and then went back to the centre on his own. At the airport I couldn't find the car rental company's office for returning the car and a Romanian accompanied me around for half an hour to help. On my first outing from Bucharest I couldn't find the hotel and a young man called home on his mobile to locate my hotel using his home computer. The Romanian language is Latin with some words of Slavic origin and, apart from the accents that modify the vowels and some verb conjugations, it's fairly easy, since many words resemble ours simply by cutting off the final vowel.

I studied Romanian for about a month before departing and I got by quite well, to the great surprise of the Romanians, who are not used to a foreigner speaking their language, but in any case flattered by the effort. If they see you in difficulty they immediately switch to perfect, fluent English, which in Italy not even teachers speak at school.

Romanian cuisine is traditional peasant fare, tasty and rather rich. It recalls that of Valtellina: lots of polenta with cheese and eggs, and pork, good salami, tomatoes, cucumbers and... cabbage and capucci. As a first course, the excellent ciorbe, that is, soups with meat and vegetables, the tripe one being the most popular, and the taranesche with veal. The bulk wine by the jug isn't up to much and costs about 4 euros, but the bottles of Feteasca, a dry or semi-sweet white wine, are really good, though they cost around 7 euros. On the other hand, the beers that Romanians drink in rivers are good and cost around 1 euro for a half-litre bottle. They have all the international spirits, including our digestifs. The ice creams of the Betty Ice brand are good, and Romanians queue up at the kiosks for them..

A giant sundae in a restaurant with cream costs around 2.50 euros and two scoops in a cone or tub less than half a euro. Along the roads and in the city markets they sell lots of cherries, strawberries and apricots at about 1 euro per kg. And many opportunities to buy grappas, blueberry and strawberry jams, honey with pollen and propolis, pine syrups for coughs, creams and oils from the legendary Gerovital, and local cheeses, smoked provola at 4 euros per kg. Thank goodness that when booking I paid 10 euros for the luggage weight supplement from 15 to 20 kg, because after those purchases of products I reached 19.80 kg, after abandoning a pair of shoes and filling my hand backpack to the max. I apologise for this somewhat disjointed diary, but perhaps it's immediate and spontaneous.

If anyone prefers not to eat Romanian food, but for example Italian, there's no problem. All the restaurants offer well-made pizza and even our pastas, and then there are the luxury Italian restaurants reserved for wealthy Romanians or well-off passing tourists. On the very hot days we abandoned the traditional dishes and threw ourselves into big salads, the well-known Greek one with black olives and feta cheese and the Bulgarian one which also contains onions, another type of cheese and diced cooked ham. They cost about 3-4 euros, you add a beer and with 5 euros you're sorted and cool.

The coffee is good: the espresso scurt (short) or lung (Americano). At the border with Bulgaria they make Turkish coffee. It always costs less than 1 euro. For sweet lovers, Romania takes particular care. First of all the cozonac, which is a dry, hollow cylinder with a pastry sheet on which they apply various ingredients such as walnuts, almonds, etc.. The papanasi, sweet little dumplings filled with chocolate or jam and topped with cream. The legendary placinte, that is, apple strudel, but a