Romania

[topum]

What are the first couple of things that come to your mind when you think of Romania?

Comments

[real-marsel.livejournal.com]

Dust.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Why dust?

[sparkythegeek.livejournal.com]

Dracula, and Eastern Europe (?) and my general non-understanding of where it actually is.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, I liked the last one.

[bichoose.livejournal.com]

They were perhaps once part of the Easter Block...
They were part of the Cold War...
A very real thing..when i grew up in the 60's..

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yes, the cold war. Interestingly, we were told that during the cold war the border between Romania and the USSR (of which Moldova became a part) was completely closed. So much so that people on boths sides could not even get any info about their families and relatives left on the other side. Like an iron curtain within the Eastern Block.

[prorsus.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately mine are: Dracula, Gypsies and Chaushesku.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yeah, these are popular.

[(Anonymous)]

Dracula and communism

[topum.livejournal.com]

An odd combo, isn't it?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

1) animal cruelty. I know several people who are involved in dog rescue in Romania, and the animal welfare issues there seem to be absolutely hair-raising.

2) Sarmizegetusa, the Dacians and Trajan's column. Yes, I know those all pre-date modern Romania by a lot.

3) fruit : I have read that Romania is particularly blessed in wild fruit forests, and is the origin of many now-popular varieties

[topum.livejournal.com]

Mine were similar before I visited it for the first time but instead of animal cruelty I had cruelty to children in their infamous orphanages (especially for kids with developmental conditions) and instead of fruit and fruit forests I had vast dark mountainous forests and wildlife. And I shared the Dacians and Trajan with you without any tweaks it seems.

[pink-halen.livejournal.com]

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well (1937)

[topum.livejournal.com]

Oh that's nice. I knew very little about Marie of Romania beyond a couple of quotes attributed to her but read a little bit about her here when queen Anne died in August.

[meowmensteen]

Transylvania and that the population of Romania is 92,043 square miles...When I was in fifth grade a partner and I had to do a report on Romania. My partner never showed up for the oral presentation of the report, so I had to do it alone. I was so nervous I forgot everything and mixed up all my statements. I always think back to that one above in particular.

Also, all the movies I've ever seen from Romania are in black and white, so I have a hard time visualizing that country in color.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yours are probably the most unique on the list.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

Vlad Tspse.  Dracula.  Wallachia.  Mountains.  Bats. Caves. Blue flame.  Gypsies.  Garlic. Crosses. 

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

I wanted to ask if you knew that Vlad Tepes and Dracula were the same person but then I remembered who I am talking to, ha ha. Of course you do ). And you can probably teach most Romanians about Vampire stuff (they didn't seem into it at all).

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Caucescu
Hagi

[topum.livejournal.com]

We had quite a heated conversation about Gigi Becali and Steaua between the locals at dinner tonight but unfortunately we could not follow any of it.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

The most important person in my life (my prof. teacher) was from Iaşi. What comes to mind after this? Maybe it's a very weird version of communist regime with that weird finale, when they killed old Chaushescu and even his wife on camera. After this, all this salad of landscapes, vampires, ridiculous claims of "ancient-Roman roots" of their aristocracy, and a very hardcore holocaust: they practically wiped their jewish population.

In fact, I know very little about the country.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I thought their royal family was Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

[darkoshi]

Gypsies and colorful wagons
the fact that is is next to Bulgaria where I went for vacations a few times as a child on the Black Sea
state-sponsored gymnastics/Bela Karolyi/Nadia Comaneci (though I had to look up how their names are spelled)
Nicolae Ceaușescu's dictatorship, people being forced/encouraged to have a lot of children / neglected children filling orphanages

[topum.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, you went on holidays to Bulgaria a couple of times from the US as a kid? It wasn't a popular destination, was it?

[bluemeanybeany.livejournal.com]

Bucharest, stag do weekends, Dracula and general medium-level Vampire activity.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Is Bucharest popular for stag dos? I thought it definitely wasn't in top 20 in Europe.

[sagittariusbun.livejournal.com]

Nadia. --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Com%C4%83neci

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yes, I forgot about her.

[(Anonymous)]

Chaushescu, female gymnasts, immigrants.

[topum.livejournal.com]

These are popular ones.

[majesticarky.livejournal.com]

Gypsies. Cleopatra Saran (child singer).

[topum.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Cleopatra is actually Moldovan (now living in Romania I think). We are on a project in Moldova now and we heard about her a number of times.

[pageeater.livejournal.com]

Transylvania - I would like to spend a few months there someday.

[topum.livejournal.com]

It is becoming a rather popular destination these days but luckily not even close to mass tourism yet.

[wanderipity.livejournal.com]

Dracula and castles.

[topum.livejournal.com]

They have plenty of castles there but are much less fond of or interested in Dracula than people outside Romania are we thought.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Beautiful women.
Coz the two Romanian women I know are both movie-star beautiful. Which is almost certainly just a weird coincidence, but, hey, it's what I think of.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, women are beautiful there but for me so far Croatia is the torch bearer of Europe when it comes to beautiful women. Moldova is also high on the list. People keep telling me though that nothing compares to Ukraine in this respect.

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

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[found-world.livejournal.com]

A line from a cartoon from the early '90s, "I'm going back to Romania; it's safer there." And Dracula, and I think of forests.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I have never seen that cartoon. Forests was one of mine too and they are home to Europe's last virgin forests indeed.

[plicease]

Vampires. Also a guy I worked with at IBM who was from Romania. And that time the Internet bubble burst and he lost a lot of his savings. So bubbles too.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Bubbles is an interesting one. We are going to Cluj - Napoca soon, it is Transylvania's first and Romania's second largest city and apparently their internet startup capital.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

Dracula (I know it's a cliché)
Peter Maffay
Siebenbürgen and the crumbling churches there which they try to save with architectural and building engineer students

[topum.livejournal.com]

German influence is everywhere there and seem to treasure it these days. We met a couple of german young couples who bought houses in the beautiful villages their ancestors came from and are restoring them.