Gypsy

Romania

"Why don't Romanians do anything by post?"
Theft.

For this after all is a nation of thieves. Postmen steal, policemen steal, shoppers steal, politicians steal, schoolchildren steal. Everyone steals! That's why no one uses the post service: you can't trust it.
I remember first telling my wife that when you want a passport in the UK you just send off a form with a cheque and some photos, and a month or so later you get your passport in the post. She looked at me as if I was mad. I went on: bills are paid by post, taxes paid by post. I know much of this is going online now but millions of people in the civilised world still live by post.
In Romania no chance. Imagine passports being sent by post in this country. I reckon less than ten per cent would ever arrive. For that reason (a bloody good one) nobody trusts the postal service. Europe’s worst capital.

Romerican It was 1:03am.

A tag-team of new, white Mercedes Sprinters whizzed up to the magazin half a block away. Lemonmouse ran over to them to ask if they were going to Valcea. She knocked on the passenger window of the second van. The driver rolled it down partially and said we couldn’t have a ride.

I caught my first glimpse of the driver of the first delivery van when he approached Lemonmouse to find out why the second truck was being accosted. He had the same dark skin as maybe one-third of Romanians, but his face was much more round and he had a handlebar moustache.

Romanian readers just perked; didn’t you?

Lemonmouse explained that we were looking for a ride to Ramnicu Valcea, but didn’t have much in the way of money. The man looked toward me in the distance and indicated that, yes, we should get in the second truck. Grabbing up our bags, I scuttled over to the awaiting cab and climbed inside.

I gave a brief greeting to our blonde-haired, blue-eyed driver as he tried not to look at the two of us getting in, but instead searched from some sign from his boss that this really was okay. As the caravan got under way, I was tempted to try a little magyarul since the driver looked so clearly Hungarian in my eyes. But then there’s always those Romanians who look ethnically Hungarian and get offended if you assume incorrectly, so I decided not to risk it so early in the journey.

One elephant in the room of Romania is the long-overlooked inter-ethnic DNA swapping.

Our driver had something of an insecure grin, which might have caused other people to think he was unintelligent. In fact, he was just nervous. The ways his eyes stayed wide open without blinking, his white knuckles on the steering wheel, his aggressive braking around minor curves. Ultimately, we pried enough sentence fragments in response to my barrage of questions to determine this was his first night of work. Aham, the nervousness was understandable.

As I recall, my attempts at conversation and humor lasted less than ten minutes before the mighty defenses of his unwillingness to cohort with perfect strangers, as if we were a danger. This little thought amused me as Lemonmouse leaned closed and whispered into my ear ominously, “they’re gypsies.”

Oh.

So, it’s the dead of night and we’re out in the middle of nowhere as captives to the infamous bandits? Ţigani. Gypsies. Roma. The unwanted scourge of Europe. The untrusted wanderers across all corners of the globe.

Romania

May 19, 2006

Romanian gipsy run a lot of dirty business (prostitution, drugs, etc) in Romania or in other European countries (like Spain or Italy). They show their gold jewelry in every occasion. They think gold is power and they are very proud of that illusion. J

Comment
Anonymous said...
ROMANIANS ARE NOT GYPSIES! So you see on your streets a lot of Gypsies
who left from Romania, but they are not ethnic Romanians.

The bad thing is that you should not blame all of us Romanians for the
gypsies acts. You have to make this difference, Romanians on one side,
and Gypsies on the other side. Please!

There is a difference between
these two ethnic groups, okay? Gypsies are originating from India and
they traveled in the history in all the Asia, arriving in Europe
finally. Their skin is dark, they are dirty, they have no civilisation
and most of their time they do crime.

Romanians on the other hand are white people, and as a nation they
were born when the Roman Emperor Trajan conquered Dacia in year 101,
ruled at that time by king Decebal. Romanians are those a Latin
people, and their language is very similar to Italian also.

I was born in Romania and am of ethnic Hungarian, unfortunately…I never liked Romanians and I never will. Liars, thieves they got it all in their genes, they are the plague of Europe!

March 20, 2007 Romanian culture of queuing
Filed under: Romanian traditions, Society/Lifestyle, Romanian food, Romanian symbols — darian @ 12:37 am
In the old times – read Ceausescu’s time –there were some rules for queuing. Since the food was inexistent as soon as the rumour reached among the city or the little village and their proud citizens of the communist mother, hungry crowds of people will assault the empty stores….once you entered you knew where is the queue and what for. Many times people didn’t even know what was the product and many people will send their kids to just sit there for them to ‘keep the line’. I never really figured how the rumour circulated but I suppose that were people in charge of spreading and others in charge of over-seeing the whole operation…they will get their share of chicken, bananas, oranges, eggs, rarely fish, rarely exquisite drinks, chocolate and other rarities before all the others. The securitate people had all the necessary in their houses in excess, which has been documented.

Anyway…once you spotted your place in the queue, you also needed to secure it otherwise older people will kick the kids out with no remorse….hence, most of the kids were very well trained to overcome any hindrances might appear in between them and the ratio of chicken or oranges or bananas ….otherwise, the parents will be upset and everyone in the family will starve once more until the next rumour of food available will come into town.

The milk queue was the worst: people will get up at 4.00 in the morning, take these types of bottles –photo bellow – and just put them in line outside the store for a few hours. The milk supply will come around 7.00 a.m., so they could still sleep a few more hours before going to work. The old people, retired, will just sit there chatting and waiting since 4.00 until 7.00 – if you knew one of them maybe they will get your bottles too. Some people could not afford these queues because of work, but pregnant women needed to do it; the powder milk was awful and had no nutrients at all. Better of were those with relatives in the countryside. There were awful, depressing times.
One would expect that these queuing ‘culture’ will build in a community spirit, will appropriate people….I cannot tell and it would be interesting to read a research on that. I would rather say, given the paranoia of ‘tell and go to securitate’, people will rarely make the mistake to open their hart while waiting and chatting with the guy next door….though many did. Considering that all were hungry, suspicious and anxious to grab as much food as possible that was the primary target and nothing else…people will often fight, swear and bully each other while queuing when the food was brought in. Nobody cared about the other but oneself. That might explain why the Romanian dissidence was almost un-existent and why there was not a solidarity spirit among people in this country. Everything was grey inside and outside and everyone will struggle for its own family and that’s all. No time for pity, any time for sympathising with the old woman next to you….she will grab the last piece of meat in front of you without blinking….that was, probably, the queuing mentality on those times. Romanian Survival Book

Romanian Survival Book April 24, 2007
Is there a Romanian culture of betrayal?

Last week was busy, busy. People went off in the streets again after our President was suspended by a bunch of 322 dazed Parliamentarians. I would not be so irreverent of our Representatives, those who go to that huge building to work hard making laws for my immediate benefit if I wouldn’t have seen their looks and their behavior. Worse for me, I used to work in that building for them, as a civil servant in the International Relations Department and later in the policy section. So i know them well enough to know who I am dealing with: a group of wannabees, many of them, not all of them, craving power and money for their un-existing virtues, other than being aggressive and intolerant, willing to get there to any price, doing any sort of compromises. People with a little education with many degrees obtained through friends in universities because, in case you didn’t know, in Romanian universities you can buy your degree or even your grade. A pass in the Medical School in Timisoara costs 300 euros, in case you were wondering. In Bucharest a post as a Assistant Professor in the Medical University again I have been told that can reach 10.000 Euros.

So…you can see, I have no trust in the mental capacity and high powered brain abilities of those who represent me in this country. I am not here to say that Basescu, the suspended President is a saint; but for what is worth he moved things forward. He is also under the suspicion of fraud in the past but it is obvious to me that he gave up narrow interest and just broke the Romanian cat after all.