Ceaușescu is overthrown

In mid-December 1989, the first inklings of civil unrest made themselves heard against Romania’s communist rule. The spark that lit the revolution was the public protest held by the Hungarian minority of Timișoara, in western Romania, against the attempted eviction of a Hungarian pastor who had criticised the regime in a TV interview. A huge uprising subsequently broke out in the city a day after, on the 17th December, and the police opened fire, killing approximatively 100 people.

In an attempt to placate the rising unrests and re-establish control over the country, on the 21st December Ceaușescu addressed a support rally of over 100,000 people, many of whom were workers that had been brought in to attend this assembly under threat of being fired. This decision backfired: two minutes into his speech, the crowd started turning against him and eventually developed into a full-fledged riot.

Ceaușescu was forced to hide and later flee when the entire city began to rise against the regime forces and its infamous political police, the Securitate. Ceaușescu and his wife fled the capital on the 22nd of December, but were captured not too long after that. After a show-trial on the 25th of December, the dictator and his wife were executed by a firing squad, marking the end of 42 years of Communist rule.

Although it had developed and culminated in just a few days, the Romanian revolution witnessed a regular use of disinformation tools by regime forces, with Securitate agents and officials attempting to create a wind of panic within the country and turn fighting groups against each other. Additionally, confusion amongst the military due to contradictory orders in the days following Ceaușescu’s fleeing vastly contributed to the death toll of the revolution. By the time the violence ended, over a thousand people had lost their lives.

After the Revolution

With Ceaușescu’s flight from Bucharest, political organisations started to rise from the underground. One movement in particular quickly became the main political actor leading the aftermath of the revolution. The FSN (Frontul Salvării Naționale or National Salvation Front) was composed of several high-ranking members of the existent Romanian Communist Party who had been vocal in their opposition to Ceaușescu since before the revolution. 

The FSN was quick to establish an interim government, led by Ion Iliescu as president and Petre Roman as the Prime Minister. On the 27th of December, with the violence finally placating, Ion Iliescu, a former friend of the Ceaușescu couple and an important official within the Romanian Communist Party, announced the abolition of the one-party system and called for free elections, to be held in May. These would be the first free elections Romania would have since 1937. 

The FSN Government

The FSN had originally promised not to stand in the May 1990 presidential and legislative elections. Despite this, in February the organisation registered as a political party, and by May they stood as a united front with a number of election candidates picked from the high-ranking officials of the former Socialist Republic. Iliescu, leading candidate for the presidency, insisted that the country had to move forward rather than focus on investigating the crimes of the former leaders. On the other hand, transitional justice was something that was strongly demanded by the other political parties that had emerged from the ashes of the revolution.

FSN knew that to win the elections they would have to portray themselves as something the people were familiar with. Iliescu used his charisma to be seen as a man close to the Romanian people. The party had no strong organised opposition running against them at the time and could boast the support of much of the international community. It thus came to no surprise that he was elected president with more than 85% of the votes and that FSN won a majority in both chambers of the Romanian Parliament, with Petre Roman remained Prime Minister, and its government started cautious economic reforms. With almost no opening on the rest of the world before 1990, Romania had, at the time, a severe lack of political culture.

The overwhelming support for the FSN would not last. While anti-Communist protests had already begun (or better, had never stopped) during the FSN’s interim government, the elections caused an uptick in civil unrest. Attacks against the government started at the hands of both the newly formed opposition parties and of the young generation and educated people, who had had a small taste of what it was freedom was like in most western European countries and liberal democracies. The violence of the demonstrations escalated in June 1990 during the so-called Mineriad.

The Mineriad

Discontent against the continuation of the former Romanian Communist Party under another name, on the 22nd of April 1990 opposition parties and students organised a peaceful demonstration and march in Bucharest. The goal was to ensure an investigation in the events which had taken place during the revolution, the political independence of the Romanian Television station, and to ban all former members of the Romanian Communist Party from the new government. The demonstration soon became a sit-in that would last for over a month.

The numbers of demonstrators dropped after the FSN’s May victory, but many remained. The government attempted to negotiate, but on June 11th, the sit-in turned violent due to dissatisfaction over the results of these negotiations. Rioters attacked the government’s palace, and the police, military forces and army were called in to contain the violence. This uninterrupted protest between April and June 1990, led by university teachers and students, would become known as the Golaniad.

In order to clear out the protests, the government also called to Bucharest industrial workers and coal miners from the Jiu Valley, in South-West Transylvania, who were mostly in support of Iliescu’s government. On the 14th of June, the miners, led by trade union leader Miron Cozma, charged the protesters alongside governments forces and police. The result was a very violent confrontation and hundreds of wounded people.

While the pro-regime media claimed that the miners’ attack on the protesters “protected the newborn democracy”, the international community as well as the newborn independent and opposition press were shocked by this intervention and harshly questioned the legitimacy of the new government. The FSN only claimed that it “defended itself against anti-democratic protesters”.

FSN Splits: A Chance for the Opposition

Even though opposition to FSN and Iliescu’s government was at the time growing, the regime attempted to retain power by exerting control over powerful media outlets, trying to influence debates and delegitimise opponents. The local geopolitical context, which included Yugoslavia’s collapse and the invasion of Moldova by Russian forces, was used as a tool by the government to present itself as a stability token, ensuring freedom and fairness reigned inside the country.

Despite this united front to the population, however, tensions within the echelons of the party started to rise. In April 1992, due to tensions between Prime Minister Petre Roman and Iliescu, the FSN split. Iliescu left with his supporters and founded the Democratic National Salvation Front, rebranded one year later as the Social Democratic Party of Romania.

Only a few months later, in September, general elections in the country reconfirmed Iliescu as president, and the Democratic National Salvation Front entered into a coalition with left-leaning and ultra-nationalist parties such as the PRM (Greater Romania Party). Petre Roman’s FSN only got 10% of the votes in both chambers of Parliament, and while he remained as party secretary, the party would be rebranded in 1993 as the Democratic Party.

In the midst of the chaos happening within the former FSN, one particular electoral alliance rose to the occasion. The Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR), composed of several centre-right political parties, managed to become the main political opposition and second-largest party in Romania between 1992 and 1996. Its impact was positive enough that during the 1996 elections, Emil Constantinescu, leader of the CDR and presidential candidate, managed successfully defeat Ion Iliescu in the second turn of the presidential election.

Constantinescu wasn’t affiliated in any way to the former Communist authorities and was an early opponent to the FSN. His term, although marked by some progress within the institutions and allowed foreign investors to enter in the hope of revitalizing the Romanian economy, was also undermined by the most important governmental crisis of the decade.

Ciorbea and the Governmental Crisis

While Constantinescu led the Presidency, the government was left in the hands of Victor Ciorbea. During his term, which would only last under mid-1998, Ciorbea attempted to advance Romania’s transition towards a market economy. As part of this process, he introduced a number of austerity measures, including the closure of several bankrupt factories. Ciorbea’s reforms were met with protests and opposition from the population and workers, leading to significant protests and calls for his resignation.

With Ciorbea’s resignation in 1998, only halfway through his term, important quarrels within the CDR continued to occur. The ensuing political chaos provoked a significant dissatisfaction within Romanian society, and the rest of Constantinescu’s term would be continuously marked by protest movements.

At the Turn of the Century, the Spectre of Nationalism

With Constantinescu’s coming to an end, the year 2000 consolidated the realisation that he had been unable to successfully bring the stability he had promised back in 1996. As a consequence, he did not run for another presidential term. Ion Iliescu saw this as the perfect moment to return to the front of the political stage, taking once again the role of the person who would save Romania.

With such a familiar and historically controversial figure heading the Social Democratic Party of Romania on one side, and the right-wing and centrist parties struggling to choose a strong presidential candidate on the other, Romanian voters were discontent. Many saw Corneliu Vadim Tudor, leader of the PRM (Great Romania Party), a former prominent supporter of Ceaușescu now converted to ultranationalism, as the only viable candidate to vote for.

Tudor never tried to hide his extremist tendencies, publicly calling for the execution of people he considered as opponents if elected. However, while he did reach the second turn of presidential elections together with Iliescu, pro-democratic protesters rallied behind ‘the lesser evil’ and, on the 10th December 2000, voted Iliescu into the Romanian presidency once again with 66% of the votes. 

Post-2000 and Beyond

Eleven years after the revolution, some things promised to change Romania for the better never happened. Significantly, the promise of banning former Communist leaders from government after the revolution never materialised. The 2000 election is a good case study to show how the former members of the Communist dictatorship found their way back into the Romanian political life in several different parties.

The very fact that former members of the Communist elite led the country for several terms after the revolution may be key in understanding the struggle that exists up to this day, within the Romanian Republic. While the situation within the country has significantly improved since 2000, especially with its entry in the EU in 2007, many experts and Romanians say that so much more could have been done with a cleaner break from the past Communist political class. At the turn of the century, the story of the reborn democracy in Romania was only at its beginning.

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1 – The Romanian city of Brasov is home to the third narrowest street in Europe, coming just behind Spreuerhofstrasse in Germany and Parliament Street in the United Kingdom. The street, called Strada Sforii, really does make for a tight fit: at its narrowest, it’s barely over a meter wide!

2 – Romania is home to Europe’s largest population of brown bears. Transylvania itself has about 60% of the bear population. Thus, Romanians believe that during the last months of winter, if a bear wakes up and returns to hibernate, it serves as an omen for a longer winter.

3 – The south-western region of Caraș-Severin is home to an important paleontological discovery: a complex system of galleries contains the so-called Cave of Bones, which is home to the oldest fossils of early modern human to be found in Europe. The fossils are between 37,000 and 42,000 years old.

4 – A Romanian inventor, Traian Vuia, is credited with designing and building the first aircraft to run on its own power.

5 – Romanians have not only contributed to aeronautics, but to science at large, too. Notable Romanians include Victor Babes who discovered fifty different kinds of bacteria, Emil Palade who won the Nobel Prize (among three other fellow citizens) for his contribution to cell biology, Nicolae Paulescu who discovered insulin, and Petrache Poenaru who invented the fountain pen.

6 – Romania enjoys one of the best 4G internet networks in the world, with an average speed of 35.61 Mbps. In fact, Romania ranks fourth worldwide for its 4G speed.

7 – The Romanian village of Săpânța has one of the most colourful and pleasant cemeteries in the world. Aptly called Merry Cemetery, the place is full of brightly painted wooden crosses, each depicting stories of the deceased’s life, sometimes with a humorous or poetic epigraph. Different colours have different meanings: Săpânța blue symbolised hope, freedom, and the sky. Green represents life; yellow, fertility; red, passion; and black, death. The other symbols are white doves for the soul and black birds to represent a tragic or suspicious death.

8 – Peles Castle, located in the Sinaia mountain resort, was the first castle to be fully electrified in Europe.

9 – Another must-see place in Romania is the Gold Museum, also known as the Mineral Collection of Brad, located in Brad, Hunedoara county. Romania is also one of the richest resources of gold in Europe. There are over two thousand gold exhibits from all over the world.

10 – Everyone knows that the two longest man-made navigation routes are the Suez and Panama canals, but the third longest such canal is in Romania. Located in the south-eastern area of the country, the Danube to Black Sea Canal is also the longest man-made canal in Europe.

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Michael the Brave

Wallachian Voivode Michael the Brave, from the house of Drăculești, is credited with the earliest attempt at uniting the lands more or less comprising present-day Romania, his efforts taking place between 1599 and 1601. This ambitious undertaking was ended, however, when he was assassinated at the orders of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II who, it seemed, did not approve of the idea of letting Michael keep Transylvania as well as Wallachia. Michael did briefly manage to hold Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania together, however once he died, the nascent union of the three principalities died with him.

The Quest for Autonomy under the Empire

Under Austro-Hungarian rule, seeing no realistic way of unifying with the other principalities,  Transylvanian Romanians often pushed for autonomy within the empire, generally with minimal success. One major instance of this was during the 1848 revolutions, where the Transylvanian peasant forces of Avram Iancu proved to be one of the major obstacles for Hungary securing Transylvania. In so doing, the Transylvanians significantly hampered the Magyars’ own war for independence against Austria. Their hopes for autonomy were, however, dashed when it became apparent that the Austrians did not intend to further antagonise the Hungarians or risk fomenting Romanian separatism, after having to resort to Russian support to put down Hungary’s own rebellion.

Later advocates of autonomy included Aurel Popovici, whose plan caught the interest of influential figures in the empire –  including Franz Ferdinand –  as a method of reforming the empire to withstand it’s ethnic troubles, thus ensuring its survival. This plan involved federalising the empire into autonomous regions, which would be based on cultural and linguistic demographics. Fascinating as these plans may be, they came to nothing in the end, as the world descended into the horrors of the First World War with Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

The Long Road to Unification

In 1859, Wallachia and Moldova achieved a remarkable feat by coming together in a political union, under the leadership of Alexandru Ioan Cuza. This began as a way of circumventing the prohibition on the union of these two states, a legal limit imposed by the 1856 Treaty of Paris, that had brought the Crimean war to an end.

Instead of declaring a formal union, Wallachia and Moldova simply elected the same man to the throne, which was allowed by the word of the law while in total disregard of the intention. This man was the ambitious Alexandru Cuza, who attempted to both modernise the economy of the United Principalities, and create an absolutist state. Both of these tendencies upset the major landowners, who in 1866 overthrew Cuza and replaced him with Carol I, a Hohenzollern prince related to the Prussian monarchy. It was at this point that the country became known as Romania, with the adoption of the 1866 Constitution.

Romania obtained full independence from the Ottoman Empire by allying with the Russian Empire, which wished to claim territory and in general weaken their primary geopolitical rival of the time, the Ottomans. The Russian-led Orthodox coalition proceeded to defeat the Ottoman Empire, imposing several conditions, among which numbered Romanian independence. Romania was nonetheless forced to give Southern Bassarabia to Russia, in exchange for receiving Northern Dobruja. Formal independence allowed Romania to declare itself a kingdom with Carol I as its first king.

From Defeat to Union

While Carol I lived, he pushed a Germanophile policy, in line with his dynastic ties but contrary to the more pro Entente attitudes of the general population. After all, union with Transylvania was impossible if Romania attached itself to the Central Powers. However, when Carol I died, his heir Ferdinand I pledged to prioritise the interests of Romania over that of his house and backed aligning Romania with the Entente. As such, Romania joined the war on the Entente side in August 1916.

This timing proved to be disastrous, as the Russian army, so recently victorious during the Brusilov offensive, began to crack under the strain. Furthermore, German reinforcements helped Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces to squeeze the small Romanian state on all fronts. Despite this, the Romanians fought until December 1917 when an armistice was signed. The 1918 Treaty of Bucharest paradoxically allowed Romania to take Bassarabia back from the collapsing Russian Empire, but outside of this territorial concession, the peace was brutal.

Romania was stripped of access to the sea, ceding Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria and most of northern Dobruja falling under a condominium of the four Central Powers. Bucharest was further forced to concede the Carpathian passes to Austria, as well as yield oil extraction rights to Germany for 90 years. The king refused to sign this treaty, and with Entente advances on all fronts and the surrender of Bulgaria, Romania was able to repudiate the treaty and rejoin the war in November 1918.

The favourable treatment of Romania in the treaties ending the war stemmed from a perfect storm of the clever politics of Ion Brătianu, who had ensured that Romanian claims were accounted for by the Entente and Wilson’s 14 points. The latter, due to the fact that the representatives of Bucovina, Bassarabia and Transylvania all voted to join Romania. Albeit with dissent from Ukrainians in Bucovina and Hungarians in Transylvania (though the Transylvanian Saxon representatives did vote in support of union with Romania).

Continued Hostilities

Romania’s unification was not yet secure, however, as while negotiations with Hungary were ongoing, the govenrment of Károlyi was overthrown by communists led by Béla Kun. Kun argued for restructuring Hungary into a federal state in an attempt to minimise ceding territory and to gain international sympathy. Nonetheless, Kun was told that he must accept the demands made of the previous government, which he rejected, promptly beginning to build up forces. This rejection led to a Romanian offensive, which pushed the Hungarians all the way to the Tisza river, annoying the French who wanted only an advance to the demarcation line Kun had previously rejected. Hungary subsequently asked for a ceasefire with Romania, which Kun used to redivert forces to attack Czechoslovakia, occupying much of Slovakia and creating a Slovak socialist republic.

In the meantime, Romania had to contend with attacks by forces of the USSR trying to take back control of Bassarabia, though the Romanians managed to repel these offensives by May 1919. In July 1919 Hungarian forces attempted to push back the Romanian defensive line on the Tisza. At first, the Magyars managed to establish several bridgeheads, but the subsequent Romanian counterattack pushed them back across the river and continued advancing until the Romanian army marched into Budapest on August 3^rd 1919.

Romania’s union was a hard fought achievement requiring clever political tactics as often as, if not more often than fighting. Its opponents and oppressors were some of the greatest powers of the day, albeit ones in decline. The union created on 1st December 1918 was threatened with dismemberment during the Second World War. Indeed, territory was lost, but the worst was mitigated by the overthrow of the fascist regime of Antonescu by Michael I and retaking the parts of Transylvania occupied by Hungary in 1940.

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The best result for the country is the third place, achieved two times, the first one in 2005 with Luminița Anghel and Sistem and the song Let Me Try, the second one in 2010 with Paula Seling and Ovi and the song Playing with Fire.

Last year Romania was represented by Ilinca and Alex Florea, that with the song Yodel It! that reached the seventh position with 282 points.

This year the country will be represented by The Humans, a band of six members, each with their own mix of musical backgrounds.

The group is composed by Adi Tetrade, Alin Neagoe, Alex Matei, Alex Cismaru, Corina Matei and Cristina Caramarcu who is the lead vocalist.

The song Goodbye was composed and produced by Alin Neagoe and Alexandru Matei, the lyrics were written by Cristina Caramarcu and the video was directed by Anthony Icuagu.

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Most of the traditional Transylvanian recipes include meat. So we can eat the ciorbă de perisoare with pork-and rice meatballs, or the Szekelyalmas, the traditional pork with apples and cider creamsauce. Chicken is prepared with paprika in the recipe of the Csirkepaprikas and with semolina dumplings in the Supa cu Galuşte. Traditional of this land of castles also Mititei, grilled sausages typical also of other Romanian and Balkanian regions. As a dessert, the queen of Transylvanian sweets is surely the apricot cake prepared with lemon zest.

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Four years ago, I made a decision that radically changed my life, namely to move abroad. And while it might not be that big of a change for a German to move to the Netherlands – both well established Western countries – moving from Romania to Austria certainly was. That is not to say that I find Austria in any way superior to Romania as a country, despite it being a wealthier state. The problem I’m addressing is the cultural and social barrier. And I’d like to share some of the things I’ve learned along the way:

1 – The notion of home is as subjective as it is subject to change.

My family is in one country, but entire my life is happening in another. My passport says Romania, but I speak German well enough to pass as a native speaker. I grew up with the customs of an Eastern European culture, but have spent my most important, formative years – adolescence – in a Western one. Where is home to me, then? In all honesty, in both of them. My Romanian friends feel betrayed when I share these thoughts with them, but I disagree with their mentality. You can be at home in more than one place, as there are different things that can evoke that feeling. Romanian evening air, the dim lights of my room at night and my family make me feel at home in Romania. Viennese streetlights in winter, the best hazelnut ice cream at Tichy’s and my community of friends make me feel home in Austria. They’re both parts of who I am – parts that coexist and don’t alternately replace each other depending on where I am.

2 – Differences lie where you wouldn’t expect them.

Do you ever spend a lot of time thinking about how you greet people you haven’t met before? Well, I know I never used to. The etiquette is pretty simple in Romania; you shake hands and, voila, you’ve made a new acquaintance. Well, things are slightly different in Austria. People here prefer cheek kissing. Now, you have to understand that in Romania you would almost never do that with someone you’ve only just met, or at least in my town you wouldn’t – that would be a breach of privacy. I didn’t know that, of course – this isn’t something anyone thinks about. Ever. Let’s just say that it lead to many awkward moments and bad first impressions on both sides…

3 – Your brain starts working in a mixture of different languages.

Oh, were you looking for that specific word in German? Well, “Pech gehabt” (bad luck) as the Austrians say. Thankfully, I can come up with that exact word in every other language on the planet. This can happen several times a day in many different languages. Eventually, you find friends who are in a similar situation as you (the only good part about boarding school) and you connect spiritually thanks to your mutual ability to speak three languages simultaneously. Yes, it does seem odd to anyone who hears you talk, but the efficiency is worth it. Who has time for translations, anyway?

4 – There is more to language than just vocabulary.

Being a proficient German speaker, I can confidently say that I understand 98% of all the words that are used in both common written and spoken language. However, just because I understand what a word means or how it is used does not always mean I understand exactly what a person is trying to communicate. That’s because the culture we are exposed to during our upbringing affects the way we associate words with meaning. So, when receiving assignments at school, there would always be some minor detail of the task I left out because I had never even thought it was part of the assignment.

My classmates, however, never had a problem in understanding the unspoken part of the message. Sadly, I don’t think there is much anyone can do to overcome these minor gaps in communication. Despite them not being all that important, it’s quite frustrating when you try to explain to a native that you do understand the language but are having difficulties with the cultural barrier. People sometimes simply assume you don’t pay attention to what they’re saying, unfortunately.

5 -You change the way you view your own country.

I don’t identify as a patriot, because I find it slightly strange to be proud of something you can’t take any credit for. I do, however, strongly identify with Romanian culture, which I hold very dear to my heart. Even so, before I moved away, I didn’t feel this way at all. Romanians usually think of themselves worse than others actually think of us, and I was no exception. I just assumed that, because I was unable to identify with Romanian morals and values, I couldn’t identify with any part of my culture either. Furthermore, I felt like Romania wasn’t a place anyone would

want to be from – I felt angry because I couldn’t understand why it was my country that every other European state was making fun of for being poor.

However, after moving away, I started having a much more objective perspective of my home country and myself. Every time I would learn something new about Austrian culture from my friends, I would immediately want to tell them something similar about mine. I slowly realized that there was more to my country than I previously could see. I started looking at it in a different light and fell in love with the music, the culture and the people as if I hadn’t lived there for 14 years (the first fourteen years of my life, to be precise).

6 – Sometimes it is difficult being the odd one out.

I was never bullied for being a foreigner. When I first came, I had the luck of finding a group of amazing friends who made me feel welcome and at home. I adapted in no time. Still, there would be moments when I felt like I couldn’t fit in. For example, whenever people would gather together and start singing an older Austrian song everyone knew the lyrics to, I felt so awkward standing by the side having no clue what to do. It sounds silly, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t about the song. It was about the fact that they were enjoying something I would only understand by association. Moments like those are the ones that put a glass wall between me and the rest. While that doesn’t happen too often, it’s something you must prepare yourself for when you decide to move abroad.

7 – You’ll start doing weird stuff to fit in.

And I mean this in the funniest way possible. Just to give you an idea of what I mean, let me tell you about my Latin classes at school. Obviously, with Latin being a dead language and so on, it is difficult to try to recreate the way it was pronounced because there’s no way to know for sure. What usually happens instead is that people just read and pronounce it the way they would their own language. See where I’m going with this? So, after 4 years, I believe I’ve perfected the art of speaking Latin with a German accent. Why, you ask? I think it’s hard to convey in words the awkwardness of being picked by the teacher and starting to read out the text with the most beautiful Romanian accent (which technically is closer to the actual pronunciation, considering Romanian’s origin as a romantic language and being of direct Latin descent), with everyone looking at you as if you were an exotic bird. And I wasn’t the only one who started doing this – in fact, all my non-Austrian friends do the same thing without it being something we commonly agreed on. The things we do for social acceptance, amiright?

8 – Makeup.

This may seem to be an odd one, but – again – it’s not a difference I anticipated. The modern Romanian woman sees makeup as a part of her identity and would rarely leave the house without putting at least some mascara on. I simply assumed it would be the same everywhere else. Well, not exactly. While the Austrian woman sure likes makeup, she treats it as something she wears for special occasions. Her attire during the day is casual unless she needs to attend an important event. To be honest, while I much prefer a natural face to the foundation-caked ones I had gotten used to seeing, I do miss the creative aspect of makeup. I used to hate the way Romanian women covered their faces in it and found it almost disgraceful.

Then, when I came to a country where women seldom wore any, I realized I was more “Romanian” in my heart than I’d like to admit. I started seeing a different side to makeup – no longer something “slutty”, but rather another medium to express myself. Something feminine, flirty at times or even elegant when you need it to. Makeup is one of the few things I consciously do different to Austrian girls, even though it might make me stand out negatively. I refuse to comply to superficial, social standards just to fit in, because I don’t want to give up such an important part of my identity. As much as I like being in Austria, I always enjoy being in Romania so I can let my inner makeup artist out for a couple of days, without being afraid of mean glances. So, for all the ladies, maybe do some research regarding aspects such as this one before making a big move. You never know what might await you.

9 – Most people won’t care, and the ones who do don’t matter.

As I’ve mentioned above, I used to be insecure about my country of origin as I had a very bad opinion of it. So, when I came to Austria, I actually expected people to treat me badly because of it, or at least because of my status as a foreigner. Well, turns out, most people genuinely don’t care. Of course there are some who seem to mind – and they’re not afraid to show it. But I can console myself with the fact that they’re mentally stuck somewhere in a past century when globalization wasn’t “a thing” yet. That aside, Austria is an incredibly accepting place. Whether this is the result of it having been a multi-cultural empire not so long ago or not, I don’t know. But I do know that Vienna is the best example I have ever seen of how an array of different cultures only make the native culture richer, and in no way threaten it.

10 – Your passport does not define you.

(Or your lack thereof) My life is very un-extraordinary. I have the same access to education or medical care as my Austrian friends, we like similar things and face the same sort of everyday problems. I used to wonder what role my status as a Romanian played in my relationships with people around me, but that seems so ridiculous and shallow now. People are people. When you look at a person, you don’t see a nation. You see a friend, a stranger, a boy or a girl and not an Italian or a Slovak. And while I am aware of the fact that stereotypes DO exist, I believe that the European Union is the first step to a future without – or at least without negative ones. I think my life is a great example of how the EU promotes inter-cultural awareness. I came here and got to learn so much from an incredible place full of traditions – but the people around me learned a lot about my country too. I have had several friends come visit in Romania and they genuinely seemed to enjoy being there. Any experience that involves culture is an exchange by definition: a “Give-and-Take” and not just a “Take”, as many maliciously imply. My friends also told me that Romania was very different to what they had imagined because of the mean things they had heard. That goes to show that ignorance is the only real obstacle that stops inter-cultural acceptance. As much of a cliché as it is, we are more similar than different.

While your origin does define certain aspects of your personality, you’ll learn more about a person through a hand-shake than by asking them where they come from.

External contribution by Ioana Crisan

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Casa Poporului (People’s House) – this is the name given to it by the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu – is the second biggest administrative building after the Pentagon and the fourth largest building in the world. It has more than one thousand rooms and it’s almost entirely built with materials extracted within the Romanian territory: the wet dream of any autharchic despot.

Coming from a Mediterranean city like Naples, known for its sunny and warm climate, I found the first days of stay quite depressing: the ever grey sky of Bucharest in February overlooked the ever grey blocks of Communist memory which filled the sector I lived in. I spent the first days exploring the city alone, and despite the ubiquitous grey accompanied by a neverending thin rain, those were the days I first discovered real freedom.
That was really a big deal: a guy who used to live with his parents now had a big shared apartment at the centre of a European capital, with enough money to live in a decent way for five months; without the EU funds I couldn’t have afforded it.

Later on I began to contact other fellow Erasmus students: I met people from many countries, especially France, Spain and, of course, Romania. I’m still in touch with some of them, and we became really good friends.
The local section of the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) played an important role by letting the students know each other more easily and organizing tours of Bucharest’s most important places that maybe I wouldn’t have visited independently.
The context in which Erasmus students find themselves at the beginning of their exchange program allows them to form cohesive groups and good friendships, because the situation is the same for everyone: alone in a completely unknown city where you will spend from 3 to 12 months of your life.
I also met interesting colleagues at the University of Bucharest – where I studied – with whom now our website has started a good virtual collaboration.

Contrarily to the stereotypes we’re used to hear in Western Europe, in general I found a well educated youth with a very good knowledge of the English language, way better than in countries like Italy or France. The transportation system was excellent, with buses and metro trains being brand new and usually in time (trams were generally very outdated). Other stereotypes were contrarywise confirmed: homelessness, poverty and alcoholism are still widespread and the Romani people (which constitute the second biggest minority in the country after Hungarians) are still heavily discriminated against, and left to fend for themselves. You could see ten year olds sniffing Aurolac – a toxic metallic paint used to suppress cold and hunger – even in the center of the city, in front of dozens of people.

I enjoyed the local food, especially the sarmale and the papanași, but toward the end of the Erasmus the need of pasta and Italian food in general (which was really expensive there) was reaching unbearable levels.

At some point my friends and I decided that Bucharest was not enough: taking advantage of the discounts given to university students, we explored the rest of the country traveling with the cheap and outdated Romanian railway lines. We mainly toured Transylvania and the sea coast, visiting small villages and cities like Brașov, Sighișoara and Sibiu, which I strongly recommend visiting for their beauty. We were always well received by the local people, especially in small villages, and found it really easy to hitchhike when trains or buses were not available.

What I find difficult is to answer to those who ask me if I liked Bucharest: the city has certainly beautiful spots and parks, but I find it pretty ugly overall, especially for the omnipresent Communist era blocks and the pervasive neglect of public spaces, even in the old city centre. The Romanian capital may be not the perfect destination for a casual trip, but it has everything an Erasmus student could ask.

Overall, this has been an amazing experience; everyone, from students to workers, should have the possibility to explore a European country and study at a foreign university. Check the websites of your universities or institutes to find the scholarships available: you will learn a lot, and you will probably come back as a different person. It’s really worth it.

Don’t get used to Erasmus too much though, you could end up in a small dispersed village at the Danube Delta drinking ţuică in a garage with two Romanian rappers.

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