Romania

I must confess that my inspiration to write this piece was watching Jeremy Clarkson's ignorant ramblings on this week's Top Gear episode filmed in Romania, less than a week after I myself returned from living and working in the country. This isn't going to be a run-down on what there is to do in Romania, there are countless travel sites for that. Nor am I going to solely trash Clarkson's somewhat skewed views, I can save that for a thougthfully-worded letter to Top Gear. Instead I am going to share with you some insights from someone who has lived in this fascinating country and seen it for what it truly is. My first hours in Romania were a total ...  Read the complete review

ROMANIA First I have to confess, maybe I repeat my self, but Romania is my birth country, despite the fact that now I’m living in Cyprus because here my hubby wants to live. All I want to do here today is to write some tips of what is Romania, where is this country, what kind of people they are making this country and not last what really deserves to be visited during a holiday. Yes, maybe you’ll tell me you’ve already learned which places worth a visit, but I can bet you on anything You Don’t Know (I don’t want to be rude, but this is the truth, it’s a very big country with hidden treasures, that nobody bothered to show them more in details or the ...  Read the complete review

Landing in Bucharest, the sight of the scarred landscape outside is pretty bleak. This was the region most affected by Ceausescu’s madman policies, especially that of agricultural systemisation; where rural villages were demolished and inhabitants moved to poor quality tower blocks. This was done in order to create more land for growing crops; the vast majority of which were exported. Meanwhile Romanians went hungry and often had to do without electricity or hot water, as part of the communist party’s fanatical attempt to wipe out foreign debt. The country has come a long way since the 1989 revolution, the bloodiest off all the former Soviet bloc countries. ...  Read the complete review

Before I even start to write about Romania you must put aside anything that you have ever been led to believe about this country. The reason why you have to do this is because your mind has been poisoned with false information about a truly wonderful country. Bucharest, the capital city, is a city full of magnificent French influenced architecture. With architecture such as the People’s Palace (now called the Parliament Palace because parliament have moved there office to this building), the Arc de Triumph (a copy of the one in Paris) and the Free Press Building. Not all of the architecture in the city is quite up to this standard but a lot of work is ...  Read the complete review

What do you know about Romania? Orphanages? True. They're good at football? True (a difficult lesson). Illegal immigrants? True. Hospitality? True. But if that is your opinion about this country, then I would say that you are wrong. It takes a lot more to know why the above are true, and that reason can be more important than the final result. I have gone to a town called Craiova countless times (for the first few times as part of a project that did various avtivities with mentally and physically handicapped children). It is not a tourist town, so I do not have a tourists impression of the place. It is a poor industrial town 200Km west of ...  Read the complete review