Anyway, we had friends come over and visit from US this spring. The ones that have traveled all over the world and have seen poorer countries than Romania loved it here! They said they’re impressed, and didn’t expect it to be this beautiful. The ones that have never traveled before and live in suburban US focused on the horse-carriages, prostitutes on the side of the road and the holes in the streets.

In the end it’s all a matter of perspective. :)

As for Bucharest, if you can get past the traffic, heat downtown and dust, you’re clever :) There a lot of less known bars and coffee shops with nice little garden, little oasis of peace inside all that noise. One thing I like in London is there is more vegetation. I don’t think it’s that hard for the authorities in Bucharest to invest more in planting more trees here and there. Cleaner air, a more relaxing overall city scape, who knows maybe even relaxed people, less yelling, less frowns, more smiles :)

Hopefully things will change for the good back home.

No, there is no society without bribe. And there is no perfect society. But small-scale bribe varies a lot from place to place, and that’s the one we deal with every day, not the one that the government gets for selling a factory. On one hand I think bribe is useful, on the other hand it’s bad. But as with anything else in life – it has good parts and bad parts.

Yes, China has bribe too, but as you say, it’s on the higher levels. And 90% of the people are not directly affected by that anyway.

I don’t agree with bribe, it’s definitely not a good solution for a functioning society, especially when factories are sold for $2 and the bribe for government officials is $2mil. ( such was the case of Roman SA in Brasov). But in some cases it works better than the solutions implemented by the state, like the health insurance case in the US.

I also don’t believe there is any country in this world where bribe doesn’t exist on a level or another. That’s why there is no perfect form of society. If there would be one I would hope and think that would be Sweden, but they do use bribe in other countries, so I don’t know..

In Romania materialists are not lower class. They should be, yes, but “should” is the key word. See that doucheface becali (*throws up* excuse me! :D) and others like him.

Romanian-style bribe is pretty uncommon in China. I think people are afraid to take bribe and it’s also not part of their culture. What’s used here though is the concept of guanxi, which is more like relationships (the “CR” in the Romanian PCR – Pile Cunoștințe Relații). But now that I think about it, a bribe-free society has benefits too. For example nobody expects you to leave a tip (yes, I consider the tip as a form of bribe, one that I don’t agree with). After eating in a restaurant you will get the change up to 1 cent of a Yuan, as opposed to 10.000+ Lei in Romania. :)

I do know people that live here that are doing things to make Romania better, and improve people’s attitude towards life. :)

its like those that live here are either, bored or maybe too scared to respond for fear of backlash?

I dunno, but its great knowing that through @ibz and @anca we see/hear the hope in their voices (comments)

and yeah, they do know about the recession – otherwise would’ve been only 35m bribe. haha

slow process it is, but still a process. Stagnating would be worse :)

@ibz i wasn’t referring to you that you left and blame people here. It’s a general attitude Romanian emigrants have – including some of my friends, that refuse to even come back and visit because they say everything sucks here.

I do blame the materialists, sorry. Especially the ones that would sell their own mother to make an extra buck and believe they are too good to throw trash in the garbage cans, and that the whole world has to kiss their ass just because they have money. Those people are the ones that ruined Romania.

glad we agree about the bribe part. China is functioning a lot based on bribe, doesn’t it?

then the bribes @ government level get taken to a completely new level!

interesting notes. brown-envelopes (so openly at least) is not the way. the corruption is incredible.

a new ski-lift in the mountains is costing us €85m. Trouble is, €20m is the real cost for something twice the size. €65m is being handed out in bank-handers and bribes. Do they not know about this recession? :)

Regardless, until the corruption stops, and Beggers S.A. go and live of their current fortune, it’ll be a slow process.

It’s pretty normal I think for people to think that having money and bragging about their ‘possessions’ is what the life is all about, because it hasn’t been that long since the fall of communism. Parents felt like they should give their kids everything they didn’t have during that time period, and everything got offtrack due to the suddenly acquired ‘freedom’ – bad education, lack of cultural responsibility and lack of interest in schooling – all of these due to how easy it was to steal and bribe and lie, and get rich doing it.

it takes time for the fundamental beliefs to get back to normal, but I believe Romanians will get there. I was 10 when the revolution happened, and growing up, it became more and more obvious that kids that were 5 years and younger at that time are very different than my generation.

We just have to keep giving a good example, and not give up our hope to pessimists and negativism, liars and uneducated, but show them they’re idiots, and their lives are meaningless, even if they’re full of money.

I left Romania 4 years ago, and whenever I come back I see things that improved while I was gone. It’s easy to leave and blame people here for not doing anything to make things better, but I rather focus on the things they did make better – because I have friends that are trying, and I know a lot of good honest people here.

As far as bureaucracy goes – all that I gotta say is that it was a lot cheaper / faster / overall easy to get my husbands’ romanian residence permit than it was for me to get my US residency, and the same goes for health insurance, bank account, job.

And bribe-wise, I’d rather give $400 directly to a doctor and get a major surgery done, and done well, than pay $1500 per year to an insurance company and not get anything in return, unless I get a surgery that costs more than $7500.

I could go on and on about how to look at Romania in a positive way :) I’ll just end with saying that yes, it will take generations to put things on the right track, but I know that we’ll get there. Until then, I’ll take a trip around the country and take pictures of awesome scenery and meet nice people. :)

the fun is in the trying.

i am on the same wave-length regarding the preservation of the countryside living, the own animals, growing your own crops etc.

to be honest, i am not sure if I will ever miss Bucharest, if/when we leave. Maybe the countryside is the next step for me.

I am originally from London, but have lived in the USA 3 times, and Germany.

Besides the nature, and history behind the ‘growth’ of Romania, I see too much potential, and believe (maybe foolishly) that I can make a difference here. Be it politically, be it whatever, I see the pain and missery on most faces, and what to turn that around.

If not, I come to China :)

With all that in mind, I don’t miss it at all. I’ve been there a couple of times since I left (2 years ago) and I felt like everything is completely wrong and I need to escape ASAP. China offers me most of the things that Romania had, but it’s a much more livable and interesting country.

BTW, where are you from? And what do you like besides the nature?

been to the seaside many many times, nothings compares unfortunately to what I saw yesterday.

it’s not so often people pay attention to the beauties of Romania, instead they focus on bad news that the mass-media keeps pushing out there.

I love it here, and I love Romania’s diversity of old/new wild/urban – definitely can’t get bored around here.

have you been to the seaside yet?