So... how do you find Romania?

The most boring question for a foreigner: "How do you like «X country»?" Everybody asks this and the answer have big chances to be a stereotype.

When I was living in Poland y answer was: "You have nice old buildings, not so many, but it's nice, it's very clean! I like the people here, they are very warm and everybody is helping me even when I don't ask this!". Bialystok was very similar with our cities from Transylvania: an old center (actually what remained after WW2, 'cause the city was almost destroyed in that period) surrounded by several "communist" neighborhoods with squared non aesthetic blocks of flats, like some huge matches boxes, here and there some companies. The people, ok, hard working, similar with Romanians, used to live a hard life. When the subject was "money" you couldn't beat the poles :) Some says that they are more entrepreneurs than Jewish and more "economical" than Scottish.

When I was in Portugal, the things changed. The advantage was on the architecture side. There are very old and very interesting things in Portugal. Squares, buildings, palaces, castles, so on. All of that from different stages of Portugal's development. You can see the results of colonizing times, when they had Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Capo Verde, Goa, Macao and they brought lots of resources from these places. In general, in west the people are not so social, maybe because they have almost everything. They are thinking that if they have it, you also have to have it and that's why they don't offer their help so often. Everybody with their own tings. They were wondering that I don't have a laptop... What shocked me at Portuguese was the exaggerated bureaucracy and general disinterest from the public functionaries. What should I say about Portuguese? "You have a very nice country, I like the Portuguese architecture, especially the old parts of cities. For me Portugal is also an exotic country, very nice beaches and exotic vegetation."

I arrived in Targu-Mures on Saturday morning. Even from the air I could felt something different. I remember the moment when I landed on the Vidrasau airport... uncutt grass, Roman old trucks, airport stuff with dirty uniforms in an old and sticky environment, entering the terminal in open space, lack of seats, dirty seats where I just couldn't sit after coming from a western airport. I remembered what Dragos posted when he returned from Dubai: "Romania or life at the countryside". My sensation was similar, it was like a visit at my grandparents at Idicel Padure. Well... still... is not so bad, I like also living at the countryside, it's my country and I love it! Romania was in our tradition a country with lots of villages and that makes our country different then other countries. Our Romanian traditions are at countryside.

So, very soon after I arrived home, the questionnaires bombing started. The most common question... what do you think it was? :) "And... how do you find Romania?" Now what should I answer to this? ... that we are still far behind the western countries or that the things evolved a little bit from the moment I left Romania?

Living with Chinese

Last 2 months in our flat lived also 5 Chinese. The flat has 3 more rooms excepting ours, 4 girls are sharing 2 rooms and a guy is staying in the last one.

They are from Macao, and they are Erasmus students, staying until June. From the beginning we noticed that they are acting very... different. They look different, they act different than Europeans, their communication style is the Asian one (I talk, you listen, pause. You talk, I listen, pause. And so on...). Because of that we thought that they are some... retards. But it wasn't so, we saw that after we managed to understand them.


What they did different than us was... their dinner. They invited every evening their friends at the dinner, so it happened that we had in the flat in one evening 14 people. They were cooking many hours and they used the kitchen very much. They were so many of them ... like bugs.


Almost all of them are really really nice and polite, except one girl which didn't even say "Hallo" back when we said it. I was joking with Diana, saying that she has a big carrot in her ass. The rest of the guys were ok, they showed us some words and signs in Chinese (Cantonese). My name in Cantonese is spelling Owaitou and in Mandarin is Owaitau.


And this one is for Todomondo band :), just in case they want to make a remix with Chinese lyrics as well: "ou 'ngoi sei"=I love you.


Anyway, it was an interesting experience to live with people from a different culture. It made me realize that people have different values, according to their culture also and if I want to understand them, I have to know their guiding values first. I will remember their dinners, karaoke evenings and their way of learning Portuguese, a kind of Portuguese with Chinese accent.

Also their English with Chinese accent is interesting (Yu luk spot= You are dressed sport). Oh yes… and I will never forget their “Good bye!”.

It's “Papaai!” :)