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.

[sparkythegeek.livejournal.com]

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

[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..

[prorsus.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately mine are: Dracula, Gypsies and Chaushesku.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Why dust?

[(Anonymous)]

Dracula and communism

[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)

[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.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

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

Athena

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Caucescu
Hagi

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I would have mentioned the orphanages, but I thought that they had closed, was I wrong?

I know the animal issues are ongoing, and I have had a couple of interesting conversations with Romanians in the UK who were fascinated and alarmed by my dogs, rather as though I had a pair of tigers on a lead. I've been told that 'dogs aren't like that in Romania'.

[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.

[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

[bluemeanybeany.livejournal.com]

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

[sagittariusbun.livejournal.com]

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

[(Anonymous)]

Chaushescu, female gymnasts, immigrants.

[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.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, I liked the last one.

[topum.livejournal.com]

An odd combo, isn't it?

[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.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I thought their royal family was Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Queen Anne who died this August was half Danish btw.