Oltenia

Today we have a guest post by Gabriela. She forgot to tell you about two important words from her region: zaibar and praz. Maybe next time.

Oltenia. Olteni and oltence! So if I come from Olt County which is part of Oltenia region, then I’m what they call “olteanca”. And by “they” I mean Calin and the rest of the country. Oh wait! Even we call ourselves “olteni”. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, Oltenia is located in the south of Romania, bordering Bulgaria. I just want to make sure that you have a clear picture of it… and also to show off a little: the village where the Americans received permission to set up their missiles defense shield is in Oltenia. And since then the other regions bear a grudge against us because everyone has been waiting for the Americans since WW2!

Brief historical info about Oltenia: it all starts with the “dacs that came from the tracs”. Then it continues with the Romans. I guess they didn’t like us much coz we ended up with the Ottomans. I do hope you know who the Ottomans were! Tough luck! They lost us in favor of the Habsburg Monarchy which we thought it was great back then but then we realized that the administration imposed by the Austrians was too rigid for our free spirits. Later, for some reason, the region became the promoter of some revolutions (check out Tudor Vladimirescu’s revolution! How cool is that??). And, finally, the “olteni” crossed the mountains in Transylvania and saved the Transylvanian people. Otherwise, nowadays the Transylvanian people would have had their capital in Vienna or even Budapest. And that would have made a lot of citizens, including Calin, so (un)happy.

The oltenians…oh my God…this is not even a word! Microsoft Word corrected me and made me choose from a bunch of other words including ‘ottomans’. I’ll be darn!! I guess even Word knows our story!!! But anyway, the oltenians are very fine people. Just look at me and you’ll see!

To be continued.