Romanians Arise

On Friday last week I attended the Romanian premiere of Modigliani. After getting over the shock of seeing Francis Ford Coppola walking into the hall just in front of me, the audience was treated to a quick speech by the director of this film, Mick Davis.

Mick Davis came to Romania in 2003 to make the film at Buftea and he fondly recalled his time spent here. What was interesting was that he had built up such a strong admiration for the place because of its people and not the place itself which he acknowledged as being filled with soul destroying concrete blocks of flats intersected by terrible roads and crazy drivers. Of course being a film director he felt the passion of the Romanians more strongly than a humble lawyer such as myself and, also clearly had plenty of success with the females of the Romanian species as he recalled towards the end of his speech.

Speaking to Mr. Davis at the after-show party it was clear that there was a genuine and strong feeling behind his appreciation of the people he had met in Romania on both a professional and personal level. This made me start to think, firstly of why so many expats have ended up in Romania for so many years when Romania wasna??t making progress. On a trip to Sofia I made in 2000 I was shocked to see that we were almost a circus attraction speaking English. At the same time most of the bars and restaurants at the time in Bucharest always had a good percentage of Brits, French, Italians, Americans etc. even if the economy was as flat as a pancake and everyone moaned about the lack of progress.

Moaning about lack of progress, lack of good politicians and leaders in general has always been a standard expat conversation here (as it is with most Romanians). However it is a rarity for this type of conversation to generalise about Romanian people on the whole.

What is it about the people here that attracts expats? Clearly the mix of Latin and Byzantine culture is attractive to the Italians in particular. One look at the ownership, particularly of small businesses, in the Banat area shows how many Italian firms are setting up in Romania. This isna??t just good business sense. When you speak to many Italians, particularly those from Southern Italy, they feel a genuine affinity with the Romanian way of life. The older Italians can see post-war Italy in modern day Romania both in the relative poverty and more importantly the way of life which has now vanished from Italy. The almost over generous hospitality, home-grown food and wine and gentler pace of life in the countryside are all things that appeal to people who have lost that in the pursuit of more material matters. What isna??t so clear is why Romania should be so popular with the rather stiffer countries such as the UK, Germany and Austria.

As a sad reflection on countries such as my own, my conclusion is that Romania corrupts the mind in such an attractive way that even those brought up under the rigid discipline of an English private school, have managed to a??forgeta?? our more staid ways in exchange for the more carefree life that Romania has to offer. The irony of the admittedly heavily bureaucratic Romania is that a parallel and in fact quite simple way of doing business here has sprung up for those working on small projects. For those working on bigger investments or for the multinationals, there are always plenty of Romanian fellow employees to help lift the burden of some of the more tiresome aspects of Romanian life.

I am always being asked to confirm how hard life is here both professionally and personally. I used to just acknowledge how brave I was living so far away from home but now I have to admit that the lifestyle here has many advantages over life back home. The main one is being able to live in a place with people who appear, at least to myself and admittedly as a general rule, to be very selfless, lacking in jealousy, open and, sometimes too much so, wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

Particularly on the social side this makes for far more transparent and honest relationships where issues can be resolved openly, even if this does involve some shouting and arm-waving now and again! The English approach of smiling whilst holding the knife behind the back is gladly almost unknown here.

When one adds to the mix Bucharesta??s status as one of the cheapest cities in Europe and a now fast growing economy, the magnetism of the viata frumoasa in Romania can only increase. Hopefully this wona??t dilute what makes Romania stand out from its fellow South East European neighbours.