Wild Carpathia

I've found another nice movie about Romania and the Carpathians:

The inventiveness of the Romanian peasant

Take it with a grain of salt, of course:

A Britishwoman on a Romanian Tank

BBC had an entertaining episode of the "World's Toughest Driving Tests" programme that was filmed in Romania. A female presenter and an actor spent one week training with the Romanian army and learnt how to drive a tank. Enjoy:

The full episode here:
http://www.peteava.ro/id-488713/bbc-se-intoarce-in-romania-cu-tancurile-la-pitesti

No Reservations

Highly controversial upon its release in our media, maybe you can find something useful in this episode of "No Reservations" about Romania:

Essential Romanian Phrases

Searching the web i've stumbled on this page that teaches you some basic Romanian words and phrases.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/quickfix/romanian.shtml

I recommend to learn the following sayings too, they might come handy:

• rupe-i făşul - tear his foil -- when you assist to a sports event, as an encouragement for your favorite player;
• dă-i carbid - give it carbide -- step on it!
• trăi-ţi-ar franţuzoaica - may your French woman live long -- when you want to complement a buddy for the quality of his woman;
• plimbă ursul că rugineşte lanţul - walk the bear 'cos the chain is rusting -- it's a nice and polite way to say to the police officer that you don't posses any illegal goods.

to be continued

Welcome!

Or wellcome, how our locals like to greet foreigners when they pretend to know English. This is a blog about Romania, well, mostly Sibiu, because I live there. The goal is to make you like and understand my country but also to have some fun reading my stories. The facts here are based on reality - loosely and with a twist.

Let's begin with a comprehensive primer about Romania: it is situated in Central-Eastern Europe and has around 22 million people. The currency is Leu/Lion, who doesn't actually bite anything, he gets kicked in the ass most of the time and we had to cut four zeros from its tail to make it look decent. You have a funny story right there: a country that has and always had lions only at zoo defines its currency in a flamboyantly stupid manner. It could have been called zebra, apache or quasihemidemisemiquaver for the same logical reasons. But, to make the situation even more funny, we could trade names with Botswana because we have plenty of its national currency and they have plenty of lions.

If you've traveled to Italy or Spain, chances are that you've already met some Romanians there, some statistics say that we have around 2 million compatriots living in each of these countries. If you misplaced, lost or got your property stolen it might have ended up here, in Romania. Heck, for all I know my iPod could be yours, especially if your name is Travis. Also, do you remember that online transaction for that cheap, cheap Mustang you made a while ago? Yep, that was us, you never got your car but somebody here bought a nice BMW with your money. Thanks, bro!

You may have heard of Dracula and Transylvania, one of our provinces. Yes, Transylvania is in Romania, I'm positive, certain and firm about this, even if you think of Pennsylvania, they are neither related nor bordering. 

That's all for today, the only hour when we have electric power is about to expire and I have to go back to my cave. One more time: Bienvenue en Roumanie! Yeah, we have Latin ancestors and we like to brag about it. I'll tell you the story about the dacs that came from the tracs later.