It's only been 17 months

Hi Everyone,

Having been in Romania for 17 months now (can you believe it??) my linguistic ability in the local language is, of course, extensive. I can confidently say that I am effluent in Romanian! As I walked to the office a couple of days ago, a man walked up to me and spouted a load of words that I did not understand at all. I have learned that if you say "Poftim?" (pardon) they just repeat the same thing at the same speed and you are left with the same blank look on your face. So I replied: "Imi pare rau, nu spune Romaneste." which means "I'm sorry but I don't speak Romanian". This time it was the turn of the person speaking to me to have a blank look on their face. He just stared at me! So I walked away thinking that he is probably puzzled as to why I had said I don't speak Romanian, in Romanian! However in the office I did check out with Lavi and Diana that I had got it right. Of course I hadn't. "Nu vorbesc" means I don't speak, "Nu spune" means I don't talk. So with my bad pronounciation and wrong words I had managed to say to him:
"I'm sorry I don't speak to Romanians"!!
I have decided that this is an excellent sentence to remember and to use as often as possible.

But you know what they say about speaking another language - make an attempt and people will appreciate it. You don't have to get it exactly right, people still understand what you mean and will be pleased you are trying. Well tell my taxi driver that. I got into a taxi and said:

"Maria Rosetti saispre varog" (Maria Rosetti number 16 please) I was getting a taxi home.
"Poftim?" (pardon) says taxi driver
"Maria Rosetti saispre" (Maria Rosetti 16)
"Saispre?" (16)
"Da saispre" (yes 16)
"You mean 16 one six?" he asks in English
"Yes" I said in English.
"Si atunci mergem Plaza Romania" (And then we go to Plaza Romania) I said as I wanted to drop my bag off quickly at home and then go to the shopping centre called Plaza Romania.
"Ce?" (What?) says thetaxi driving frowning
"Si atunci mergem Plaza Romania" (And then we will go to Plaza Romania)
"Oh just say it in English" he says quite sternly and in English
"I then want to go to Plaza Romania"
"Oh, that's what you were trying to say" and off he drove.
So there was the friendly, happy you are making an effort, really encouraging attitude you expect when trying to speak an impossible language such as Romanian.

However the whole situation has been redeemed by ING Bank - they are a Dutch bank that have a big presence in Romania and I have a Romanian Lei and Euros account with them. I needed to go to their main office to speak with them so in I went and did my usual:
"Buna ziua, vorbiti englezeste?" (Good day, do you speak English?)
"Da" said the lady, "De ce?" (Yes, why?)
"Because it makes my life a lot easier" I said in English.
"Oh" she said in English, "I thought you were Romanian. Your accent is very good".
Now THAT is the way to do it. She may have been lying through her teeth and patronising me like anything but I don't care - she made me feel really good. Look, listen and learn taxi drivers!!!

So here's a quick Romanian language lesson, just to help you understand why:
a) I have an interpreter
b) I have made slow progress with learning the language
c) Romania and Moldova are the only places in the world that speak this language
d) everyone wants to speak English

If you want to say a coffee, it is "o cafea".
If you want to say the coffee, it is "cafeaua"
If you want to say the coffees, it is "cafelele" (I'm sure this is the name of the President of Rwanda)
If you want to say of the coffees, it is "cafelelor"

Cafea is feminine, but of course masculine nouns have a whole set of different endings and again different for neuter words. How do you know if a word is masculine,feminine or neuter? There are some general rules but naturally there are also hundreds of exceptions. So for an English speaker it is utter guesswork most of the time. Like in many other languages the adjectives have different endings which follow the nouns (with exceptions of course) and the verbs not only have different endings depending on who is speaking but also the whole word can be different! For example the Romanian for "to take" is "a lua".

I take - iau
you take - iei
he/she takes - ia
we take - luam
you take - luati
they take - iau

Just try to make sense out of that. No wonder they find English easy to learn (but horrible to spell!!).

Within Romanian society there is one group of people who are the lowest of the low. Everyone looks down on them. No, they are not Scoucers (although that’s very close) and nor are they people from Middlesborough (known to the rest of us as Geordies). The real Romanian underclass are the gypsies. They face genuine and aggressive discrimination. Everything is blamed on them, from AIDS to the very hot summer Romania has been experiencing. Their music, called Manele, is hated and seen as very common and uncultured. Yet you will hear this music at every wedding and inevitably it is being played by a gypsy band. Those gypsies that make a lot of money and are rich show it off in extravagant ways, such as huge very ornate houses that they don’t live in. The house is empty inside, it is purely for show. The family will live in a small house at the side.

Before coming to Romania I worked in the Equality and Diversity Team in Customs. So as most of you know I am committed to these principles – except regarding women of course. They should stay at home and look after their husband. If they don’t have a husband then they should spend all their time looking for one. But except for women – oh and Scoucers of course and anyone living south of Watford and particularly those who live in London thinking it is the centre of the universe and all taxi drivers and men with hairy backs and it goes without saying ALL the French – except for those few exceptions I am committed to equality and diversity.

Anyway I have tried not to join in the Romanian sport of Gypsy blaming and hating. This week however I saw something that simply amazed me. I had heard about it, but never seen it before. Most of the flower sellers on the streets in Bucharest are gypsy women (the men stay at home, drink together and wait for their women to come home to make their dinner). I would advise anyone visiting Bucharest not to buy from these street sellers. I am sorry to say they will rip you off. I have experienced it and every non Romanian I know has had similar experiences.

The local mayor of sector 3 of Bucharest decided that he did not want the pavements of his sector cluttered by the flower sellers. So he passed a local law saying they must have permanent cabins to work from that are not on the street (in other words they must have a shop). This sparked a riot on the streets. Literally. The gypsy women went mad. Now I had been told that they are very emotional and theatrical people. That is an understatement.

Firstly, the noise is incredible. They don’t just shout, they scream very very loudly. They wail at the top of their voices. There must have been about 50 women (the men were still at home drinking and getting hungry!) ALL shouting screaming and wailing at the same time that their livelihood was ruined that they would starve, their children would die etc etc. Then they started fainting and falling to the ground, well throwing themselves to the ground would be more accurate. Every time this happened people would rush to them and there would be even more shouting and wailing.

Then the Police and medical services arrived. This was when it just went utterly crazy. A nurse went to look at one of the collapsed women and while she was doing that she was being shouted at by many of the other women. She decided to get her into the ambulance to treat her and get away from the crowd. Exactly what the gyspy women thought was happening I do not know but they tried to stop her. The police intervened causing more screaming and wailing. The women wanted to “rescue” their compatriot from the ambulance, so they started using their children to hit the policemen! Yes, that’s right, they picked up their children and used them as weapons to hit the police!! I could not believe my eyes. As the children were being swung around by their mothers so the kids were also kicking out, punching and biting. It was unbelievable. By doing this the gypsy women managed to get to the ambulance, get the door open and one person went inside, grabbed the stricken woman who was lying down attached to some form of drip and pulled her out of the ambulance, dragging the drip equipment behind them. They carried her off somewhere, the police tried to secure the ambulance, the medical staff decided they had had enough (understandably) and drove off as soon as they could and the police backed off leaving the women to shout, scream and wail themselves to exhaustion. Quite unbelievable.

I have noticed within Bucharest that things are changing slowly. The effects of EU membership are beginning to be seen. For example on the street opposite my office window is a snitzel shop. All they sell there are chicken or pork snitzels to take away. The other side of the street is a small bakery producing a variety of savoury and sweet pastries. At the beginning of August the bakery closed – not usual for a shop to shut for the summer holidays. But then a notice went up saying it had been closed by Health and Safety. This is about the fourth shop I have seen in the past couple of weeks that has been shut down like this, not to mention a couple of restaurants. On the news you frequently see items about how some traditional activity or every day occurrence is being stopped because of new regulations. Yes, soon they will not be able to buy bent bananas etc!

But the real shock for the Bucharest drivers is that the Romanian Authorities have discovered bollards!! Yes all over the city these metal pillars are springing up on the pavements. This is infuriating the drivers because of course the pavements are for parking on. In some cases the cars have simply run over the plastic bollards, flattening them to the ground and parked there. So now the metal ones are appearing. Already I have seen outside the Howard Johnson hotel near Piata Romana that some of these bollards have been hacked away so the cars can park where obviously they have Divine right to park!

In a public survey last week 62% of Romanians interviewed said that their main concern at the moment was the level of wages/pensions (being too low of course!). 27% said their concern was the level of public services and the third concern trailing far behind on just 7% was corruption. As part of this project is tackling corruption I found that interesting. The level of concern about corruption in a country notorious for it is surprisingly low. This seems to be because the public hates corruption in the Government- so ministers taking bribes or official projects (such as the construction of the Bucharest Constanta motorway leaking huge amounts of money) is corruption. But the everyday low level bribery is not seen as corruption but just a way of getting things done.

So a Romanian friend of mine has a sister who decided she wanted to get a job in Information Technology (this is where they think the big money is.) She bought a computer, not a full price one of course but one “that fell off the back of a lorry”, and enrolled on a course (ECDL). Unfortunately she seems to have been last in the queue when they were handing out common sense and brains. After a couple of weeks she decided it was too difficult and so paid the tutor about 100 euros to get her qualification. Rather worrying she did exactly the same thing for her driving licence. Yes, that’s right. She did not take any lessons to learn how to drive. She did not pass any tests. She simply paid an official for a driving licence!! Of course this explains why the driving in Bucharest is nearly suicidal and so chaotic. But also it is genuinely worrying that both members of the public and officials are quite happy to use bribery without thinking of the very real consequences (never mind all the ethical arguments).

Well, this Saturday is Lavinia's wedding. She is getting married in Bran (where Dracula's castle is...mmm seems fitting that she should chose there, poor Horatiu her victim, sorry husband to be!!!) So I shall report back with all the details about a traditional Romanian wedding. If I remember any of it!

Take care.

Andrew.