The Bank Account

There's absolutely no point to walking around with foreign currency in your wallet when you don't have to. A) It's useless and b)exactly.

As a result, I decided it was time to make my first "official" act in Romania and took a trip to the bank. I picked Banca Transilvania because my western-ness thinks it's cool to have a bank named Transylvania while my Romanian-ness insisted I go for a Romanian bank -pro patria and all that. The teller who helped me was young, very poised and very green eyed so I knew it wasn't going to be too unpleasant. The convo went something like this (but in Romanian):

"Hi, I'd like to open a bank account."
"A personal or business account?" The way you say "personal" here is something like 'physical person'
"Physical person please, it's for me."
"Sure, your ID Card please"
"I don't have one..."
She'd maintained a very neutral tone until now.
"Whaaat?"(It kinda reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqyixwqiCag )
Since I was expecting that, I had my passport ready and just handed it over in reply. She looked it over, looked at me, and seemed a bit unsure about my highly irregular request. Eventually she said it would be fine and handed me some forms to fill out.

The application form was pretty straightforward, there were some unfamiliar terms but my bro in law was a big help. I found it funny that in the name field you have to put your dad's initial...just one initial, I know, no idea what's up with that but I put a D (......for Dad) and that's that. I then had to sign a contract for the account and hillarity ensued. One of the things with contracts in this country is that every single page of a contract has to be signed, wherever. So I literally signed 16 pages one after the other. It felt like those times I was in highschool and I was practicing my signature in case I ever did anything official. I guess that practice finally came in handy. The girl helping me looked it over and pointed out I missed the back page of the contract and then laughed when I said "why not". I felt like such a n00b.

It still wasn't over yet, I had to fill in a form for online banking. You can't just register for it online so I'm going to need to go back and pick the username and password - something that I personally find highly irregular. Then, finally, the last step was to change that useless Canadian cash I had on me. It went almost okay, but one of the 20s had a tiny rip in the corner. I wouldn't have noticed it if the exchange teller didn't point it out, but she said the bank couldn't accept it. I'll have to either keep that $20 as a souvenir or find a less rigid institution...whichever comes first I guess.

Overall, not that bad an experience but you can tell the red tape is thick in Romania. It seems there is a lot of regulation for everything, but things are not necessarily more efficient nor all that secure so what's the point? This is clearly a young people's country though...and I expect changes will come, for the better.

Comments

AnonymousApril 08, 2011
Highly enjoyed the Whaaaaaat link!
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AnonymousApril 09, 2011
Was it a Canadian or Romanian passport?
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MattApril 10, 2011
It was my Canadian passport. Gotta get my Romanian one though...that will probably take up two entries.
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AnonymousJune 19, 2011
Haha:), you need to try a real bank:) ( Millenniumbank :D ).
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AnonymousOctober 10, 2016
I've read that new people cant even open an account for 2 years. Any truth to that? I'm looking at a 2017 term of employment and really want to save the extra funds in a bank that I can transfer back home every now and then. The contract is 1 year with extensions if things go well.
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